Rental Crisis: It costs $18 an hour to afford average Hamilton apartment
(Hamilton Spectator, Teviah Moro, May 23 2018)
It takes at least $18 an hour to afford an average apartment in Hamilton, putting the city in league with others in the province where rent continues to outpace incomes.
Nearly half of Ontario tenants earn less than $40,000 a year, and three out of four of those households pay "unaffordable rents," the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO) says in a new report.
Affordability is based on the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's benchmark: shelter costs are less than 30 per cent of pre-tax household income.
The ACTO report, called "Where Will We Live? Ontario's Affordable Rental Housing Crisis," is released as provincial leaders jockey for support ahead of the June 7 election.
"We wanted to remind voters we are facing a crisis and to remind politicians they have a responsibility to make sure the crisis doesn't get any worse," Kenneth Hale, ACTO's legal services director, said Tuesday.
The report says rising rents are forcing tenants to sacrifice basic necessities, displacing them from their communities and driving them to homelessness.
Arguing "the status-quo is no longer an option," it makes five recommendations:
•Provincial matching of federal National Housing Strategy funds;
•More purpose-built housing with "deep affordability" meaning rent is no more than 30 per cent of income;
•Preservation of existing affordable units by reducing "financial incentives for landlords to push out sitting tenants";
•Recognition of the right to housing in law.
Based on 2016 census data, ACTO found 45.4 per cent of renter households in Hamilton pay unaffordable rates. (Factoring in Grimsby and Burlington, which are part of the census metropolitan area, it's 45.2 per cent.)
The average monthly shelter cost in Hamilton was $947 in 2016.
Someone earning $14 an hour, the current minimum wage, would have to work 52 hours a week to afford that, the report says.
Read it in full
here.
Courtesy the aforementioned
ACTO report,
Hourly Wage Needed for Average Rent to Be Affordable:
Vaughan: $31/hr
Mississauga: $25/hr
Toronto: $24/hr
Barrie: $23/hr
Ottawa: $22/hr
Oshawa: $21/hr
Guelph: $20/hr
Kingston: $20/hr
Kitchener: $20/hr
Hamilton: $19/hr
London: $19/hr
Peterborough: $19/hr
Greater Sudbury: $17/hr
Thunder Bay: $16/hr
Windsor: $15/hr
So Hamilton fares better than most of its peers. Although the data is somewhat opaque in that the rental stock universe may include 3+ bedroom units, which is not something that a minimum wage earner would typically expect to be an affordable option.
The tension is also lopsided, since more than a third of the rental stock in Hamilton is located in what have historically been the wards with the lowest household income, Wards 2 & 3. As of 2011, according to the most recent
Ward 2 Profile, 76% of Ward 2 residents rented; the
Ward 3 Profile from the same year found that 48% rented. (Those profiles noted affordability as well. As of 2011, 48% of Ward 2 households and 51% of Ward 3 households were spending 30% or more of household total income on shelter costs, compared to a city-wide average of 43%.)