New website highlights plight of Canadian renters

Affordable housing advocates hope new website puts affordable housing on federal election agenda.

Thestar.com
Sept. 10, 2015
By Laurie Monsebraaten

Voters in Canada’s 4 million renter households have a new tool they can use to grill candidates on affordable housing in October’s federal election.

The Canadian Rental Housing Index, an interactive online map developed by a partnership of non-profit housing organizations and credit unions, tracks renter income, affordability and overcrowding for the first time in more than 800 cities and regions across the country and in all 338 federal ridings. It brings together all types of rental accommodation, including social housing, purpose-built rental, condos, houses and secondary suites in homes.

According to the index, which uses Statistics Canada’s latest census data, 40 per cent of renter households are paying more than 30 per cent of their before-tax income on rent and utilities, an amount widely considered to be unaffordable.

Ridings in the GTA account for 11 of the 15 most expensive ridings for renters, according to the index. Markham-Unionville topped the list with average rents of $1,415 a month.

An alarming one in five households is paying more than half of their income on rent, a situation that puts them at risk of homelessness, say affordable housing advocates who released the index in Toronto Thursday.

More than 10 per cent of rental households are living in overcrowded conditions such as sharing a house or apartment with other families or renting a smaller unit than needed.

“When we talk about housing in Canada during elections, we are most often talking about home ownership and the middle class,” said Tim Richter, of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness.

The index is “calling critical attention to a large number of Canadians excluded from that conversation: renters and Canadians living in poverty,” he told reporters. “It is also calling attention to a part of our housing market that is in desperate need of attention and one that market forces alone aren’t - and won’t - address.”

Part of the reason for the crisis in affordability for renters is that governments stopped building social housing about 20 years ago and there have been no incentives for developers to build rental apartments, said Tony Roy of the B.C. Non-Profit Housing Association, which spearheaded the index.

The group is hoping policy makers at the municipal, provincial and federal levels use the index to better understand the needs of renters in their communities, including seniors, students and service workers who are particularly squeezed due to their low incomes, he said.

“For anyone making below $40,000 a year, there is no housing being built for this group what-so-ever,” Roy said.

Based on the index’s indicators of affordability, income gap, overspending, overcrowding and bedroom shortfall, 13 of the worst 15 ridings for renters in Canada are in the Greater Toronto area. The worst is Willowdale (currently Conservative), followed by Markham-Unionville (currently Liberal) and the new ridings of Brampton East and Mississauga Centre where a majority of residents voted Conservative in the last election.

In Willowdale and Markham-Unionville, about 55 per cent of renters are paying unaffordable rents, including 36 per cent who are paying more than half of their incomes on shelter, according to the index. In Brampton East, 30 per cent of renters are living in overcrowded conditions while in Mississauga Centre and Willowdale about one quarter are doing so.

When people have to spend more than they can afford on housing, they have to forgo other necessities, like groceries, clothes, transit, noted Sharad Kerur, of the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association, which represents 734 non-profit housing providers in the province, including Toronto Community Housing Corp.

“The result is a lot of stress in people’s lives, leading to increased health care costs, poverty and homelessness,” he said.

Kerur urged Canadians to use the new index to push for change.

“This data is irrefutable. It clearly shows there is an affordability crisis in communities big and small and that middle class families as well as low-income households are struggling,” he said.

On Wednesday, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau said a Liberal government would provide $124 million annually in new tax incentives to increase and renovate rental housing. It would fund new affordable housing for low- and middle-income Canadians through its previously-announced 10-year $20 billion social infrastructure plan.

The NDP and Conservatives have not yet released their plans for affordable housing.