Actual Housing Availability Statistics

How do we know that landlords and property management companies are reporting accurate vacancy numbers when a lower percentage of availability can net them higher rental rates? 

Why isn't this done on a public website reporting 
system where landlords and property management companies are required to report: the number of units they have in a building, how many are available, the average rent of rented units, and their current unit listing is. 

Data would be accumulative, meaning that a reader could look back over several months or years to see the changes for an individual property.

They should have to register with this service, and be held accountable to report a snapshot of all of their rental properties four times per year.

It's hard to accept an average rental availability of only 1.6%, when for several months 25% of the building I live in was vacant. 

I believe that completing the survey with CMHC is also voluntary and not mandatory by law. 

Why is it we can count the number of homeless in our community but we can't keep track of the number of available homes with any amount of public transparency?

If we are truly going to combat unreasonable rental rates, lack of affordable housing, availability of housing, development of new housing based on lack of availability, and homelessness then changes need to be made to how rental units are documented and tracked in our city.