MGMT capstone 3 – What’s Going on with Rent in Halifax?

As of September 2021, there is growing awareness about the price of housing across Canada, and notably
in Halifax. During the summer Nova Scotia provincial election period, for example, the price of rent and
shortage of housing became a major point of discussion, with some advocates describing the situation as
“several years into a crisis” (Pace, 2021). However, both politicians and citizens alike often disagreed about
the scope and magnitude of the issue.
Fortunately, we have data that can help. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) is a
crown corporation with a mandate to assist housing for Canadians. Founded shortly after the second world
war, its purpose was once to find housing for veterans. Now it provides programs for making mortgages
more affordable and enforces policies designed to make rent more accessible. The CMHC also provides
data on rental affordability, including information on the average price of rent for various regions in Halifax
through its information portal. They also annually provide high quality rental market survey data, which
reflects a comprehensive survey of rental markets used to inform sound business, personal and
government decision making (CMHC 2021)
The data provided by CMHC is not formatted in a way that is conducive to data analysis, though it is
incredibly useful for learning about Canada’s rental markets. They provide data in rows and columns,
complete with notes at the bottom of the file, and provide the various tables of interest in Excel tabs. The
is approximately one year behind the present, and largely represents changes in rental markets between
October 2019 and October 2020. Unlike in previous capstone labs, it will be your job to search for the
necessary tables and prepare your data necessary for analysis. You have been provided with two files,
which are simplified versions of the CMA’s data:
1. rmr-canada-2020-en.xlsx – CMHC’s rental market data for Canada as a whole.
2. rmr-halifax-2020-en.xlsx – CMHC’s rental market data for Halifax
As before, use Tableau or Excel to create visualizations that help you learn about Halifax’s housing
situation. While your visualizations and analysis will be graded as normal, your ability to retrieve and
critically assess the data will be extra-important for this task.

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