Six steps to a housing affordability crisis
The Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation produced this brief visual history of our housing crisis:
Read the details at https://www.equalityrights.org/cera-blog/fifty-years-making-ontarios-housing-crisis-timeline?mc_cid=7c17738ddc&mc_eid=c4e43bbb8f
One result: 60 per cent of renters skimp on groceries to pay the rent
The Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario recently commissioned a survey of tenants in Ontario. Among its findings:
- 60 per cent of renters had to cut back on food to afford their rent
- 74 per cent had to cut back on other spending to afford their rent.
- One in three renters has considered moving to a different municipality because of increases in rent costs where they live.
See more at https://www.acto.ca/a-new-poll-shows-the-majority-of-ontario-renters-are-having-to-choose-between-food-and-paying-their-rents-when-it-comes-to-housing-affordability-this-province-is-on-fire/ And “Ontario’s housing system has never worked worse for protecting affordability” Check out this Generation Squeeze report on just how unaffordable housing has become in Ontario: https://www.gensqueeze.ca/housing_affordability_analysis “A typical young Ontarian now has to work 22 years to save a down payment on an average home – an increase of 6 years over the pandemic. To close the gap between prices and earnings, average home values would need to fall $530k (over 60%), or average earnings increase by 150% to $137k/year. Unsurprisingly, there’s been a 20% drop in the number of younger people who own homes… and their consolation prize for being locked out of the market is rising rents.”
And check out this graph, which shows average annual rent in Ontario since 1981. It’s in constant 2021 dollars, meaning the impact of inflation has been taken out to make the comparison fair. For the nearly $18,000 average rent in 2021 to be affordable, you’d need a household income of $60,000. By comparison, half the workers in Ontario earn less than $26 an hour, less than $51,000 a year if full-time. That means that without a second income, more than half of Ontario’s workers can’t afford the average annual rent.