Affordable? Maybe. Accessible? Not Yet

The Cost–Access Trade-Off Reshaping Migrant Settlement

Justina Nemhara • Precious Ajilore • Koyinsola Titiloye (JPK) – University of Alberta

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🎯 Research Question

How does the cost–access trade-off shape where different migrant streams can realistically live, study, and thrive in Canada?

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📜 Project Summary

High-density cores offer newcomers walkable access to hospitals, immigration services, and universities—but soaring rents push many families into outer suburbs or small towns where those very services disappear.
We weave lived experience with Statistics Canada Spatial Access Measures to show:

• Alberta’s rural ADAs are true service deserts (indices ≈ 0).
• In Toronto refugee-dominant ADAs cluster downtown and score 2× higher on post-secondary access than economic-immigrant suburbs.
• Across four CMAs (Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto, Edmonton) access peaks track the highest rents (ρ = 0.71).

Our maps, box-plots, and non-parametric tests pinpoint where planners should intervene first—before rising costs export today’s urban gaps into tomorrow’s provinces.

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📊 Key Findings

Figure	Insight
Fig A	Toronto – refugee-dominant ADAs cluster downtown; post-secondary index is 2 × higher (p = 0.03).
Fig B	Alberta – 93 % of ADAs score 0.00 for post-secondary → genuine service deserts outside Calgary / Edmonton.
Heat-map	Across four CMAs, access peaks correlate with the highest rents (Spearman ρ = 0.71).

🏛️ Policy Implications

• Pin-point the gaps: Use the index maps to identify the lowest-scoring ADAs and make them first-priority investment zones.
• Build where people will live: Extend rapid-transit lines beyond downtown rings and co-locate new student / newcomer housing at those upgraded hubs.
• Deploy services, not just data: Partner with Local Immigration Partnerships (LIPs) to pilot satellite primary-care clinics and mobile credential-recognition or bridging-programme units in the mapped service deserts.

🔗 Citation

If you use this work, please cite:

@misc{JPK2025,
  title  = {Cost–Access Trade-offs for Newcomers in Canada},
  author = {Nemhara, Justina and Ajilore, Precious and Titiloye, Koyinsola},
  year   = {2025},
  url    = {https://github.com/preciousiajilore/BDG}
}

📄 License

• Code: MIT License

• Data: © Statistics Canada – open micro-data reproduced under the Statistics Canada Open Licence.