Living with your parents. Living with your ex. Giving up basic needs like food and clothing.
These are just some of the sacrifices Canadians say they’ve been making to pay rent amid the surging prices and decreased availability marking Canada’s rental housing crisis. Demand for rentals is outpacing supply across the country. A recent CBC News analysis of more than 1,000 neighbourhoods across Canada’s largest cities found that less than one per cent of rentals are both vacant and affordable for the majority of Canadian renters.
Meanwhile, over half of Canadian renters are spending more than the recommended 30 per cent of their income on rent, according to a recent survey.
“I think it’s sickening,” Karen Charmbury, a single mom living in Kingston, Ont., told CBC News.
Charmbury, 47, has to make sacrifices because 100 per cent of her income goes to her rent.
She had to sell her house after her divorce and now pays $2,679 per month for a three-bedroom townhouse in the same neighbourhood. She didn’t want her children, a teen boy and teen girl, to have to switch schools or share a bedroom.
So, she’s been cashing in her investments. Child support helps with the bills, her mother helps her with groceries and her friends give her their old clothes. She says she barely sleeps from the stress.
Charmbury, who works full time in admin, is also looking for a night job because one income is unsustainable.
“It’s very scary,” Charmbury said of her financial situation. “But you’d do anything for your kids.”
Some single mothers are finding their children are used against them as they compete for apartments in a tight rental market. One lawyer says she sees this often in her work even though it’s illegal, but it’s also hard to prove. Nicola Seguin reports.
In Abbotsford, B.C., Nathaniel Pelkman, 37, says he and his ex-wife lived together for nearly two years after their divorce because they couldn’t afford to live separately. Even then, they were evicted last year so their landlord could move back in.
“While both my ex-wife and I managed to land on our feet, and in separate residences this time, it was not easy to deal with the lack of stability,” Pelkman told CBC News.
“The future certainly looks bleak for renters, even for those whose lives and careers can seem relatively stable.”
‘I don’t know what to do’
To calculate the extent of Canada’s rental crisis, CBC News combined 2021 census data with the most recent findings from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s rental market survey, conducted in October 2023.
CBC calculated affordability based on rental costs and utilities staying below 30 per cent of…
Read More: This woman spends 100% of her income on rent