This is grim:
Renters are twice as likely to spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing than homeowners, according to Statscan data released last year, and the agency has found single-person households broadly to be more likely than other household types to be living in unaffordable or unsuitable housing.
…
The report also found higher rates of “material deprivation” among renters and single-person households. Respondents were identified as materially deprived if they couldn’t afford at least two essentials from a list including unexpected expenses, spending money, small gifts, bills, maintaining a comfortable temperature in their home, transportation and more.
It’s something that’s on Joy Edwards’s mind. The 70-year-old has been living in the same Toronto apartment since the 1980s, when she got divorced. While her rent for a two-bedroom apartment is well below the Toronto average, it eats up 60 per cent of her monthly Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security payments.
Ms. Edwards said she was able to retire by minimizing her expenses and sometimes receiving some food from her church and a local community centre. But with developers expressing interest in her building, she said she worries “all the time” about being asked to leave.
The federal Liberals have tied some municipal funding to loosening zoning restrictions (I believe Fredericton is voting on the issue today), and the CPC proposed a similar policy before the election.
It’s one of those policies that relies on builders to construct affordable units in a timely manner, so I don’t expect it to have a significant impact on the housing crisis. Improving density is good for a bunch of reasons that we undoubtedly agree on, so it’s positive overall.
We could just be less weak with our policy and demand builders build a certain % of affordable units on certain plots. We could also start a real government supported affordable unit program. A big part of our housing issues fall on trusting developers to just build what we really need when we know they only build to maximize profits.