Quote:
Originally Posted by HuronZephyr
This is a drop in the bucket relative to the demand that exists for affordable housing. 80% of market rent is still too much money for most people.
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According to CMHC as of a few months ago, there were 52,600 rental units available in the city with a median rent price of $1430 (meaning half of the units are greater than that price, and half less than that price). The vacancy rate was 2.9%, meaning that 51,075 units were being rented. If one were to assume that 1.8 persons lived in each unit being actively rented, then a little less than 92,000 persons were living in rental units in the city. Added to that, approximately 7,000 people are on the waiting list for affordable housing, making approx. 100,000 people who are renting and/or want to rent. If one were to assume that half of the actively renting population (46,000) were paying the median or less rental price, and half of that group could afford the rent but had to make serious sacrifices elsewhere to make it work (i.e. - can pay but it is really too much for them), that would result in 23,000 people who are renting but paying more than they can really afford. Then add to that the 7,000 on the affordable housing waiting list, it would work out to perhaps totalling 30,000 people of the renting and/or want-to-rent population who find the rent prices barely affordable or unaffordable at all. That would be a little less than one third of the “renting population” finding the cost of rent ranging from excessive, to extreme, to outright prohibitive.
That is an awful lot, and unacceptable amount, of people. But, if 80% of the available rental units were truly costing too much for most of the population as you claim, the number of financially disenfranchised renters/wannabe renters would be much higher than 30% of the renting population. Additionally, if that 80% of units are unaffordable assertion were really the case, the vacancy rate would be much, much higher than 2.9%. I’m not debating you assertion that there is a very big problem with available renting units geared for the portion of the population on the lower end of the income spectrum, but it isn’t so dire as to say that 4 out of 5 rental units are financially unattainable for two-thirds to three-quarters of the general population.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HuronZephyr
I love how the city pats itself on the back and tells people it's doing a good job, when they are not even doing the minimum required.
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What is the minimum required? It has never been the role of local government to be a landlord and supplier of subsidized (even free in some cases) housing for very large portions of the population.
Never. That said, the circumstances surrounding the cost of housing have indeed radically changed in the past decade or more and begs for alternative approaches to address it.
In that context, you criticize the City for pointing out that it is doing more than it ever done in this regard, because you feel that it should be doing much, much more. It’s easy to criticize from the stands, but if local government were to take on the much larger role of developer/landlord/social welfare agency as you advocate, the current budget of $40 million for this would likely have to be double or triple that figure to meet that higher service level. Where does that money come from? What existing municipal services are to be sacrificed to pay for this? Or, would you be able to convince a large enough portion of the taxpayers to pay
more property tax to pay for this? And from a principals perspective, could you persuade the rest of council and the public that the municipality should get into the business of becoming one of the largest landlords within its’ jurisdiction?
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