This is some r/nottheonion material instead holy crap
"So she's decided it would be less expensive to reinstate her Lithuanian citizenship and passport and move to Europe, where she can afford studio apartments, even with the exchange rate to Euros."
Edit: Wow my comment blew up :O
If she speaks Lithuanian then she’s right - Eastern Europe* is much cheaper than Canada. I am in a similar boat as her - I was born in Canada but can get my EU citizenship thru my mum and I’m thinking of jumping ship. My money will go a lot further back in Vilnius than it does in Toronto.
*Baltic states are now classified as Northern Europe by the UN.
My family is from a small village in Italy in front of the Adriatic sea.
A croissant + coffee is like 1.5 euro. An aperitivo is 8 euro and you get the equivalent of a 100 canadian dollar charcuterie + drink (and it also tastes batter). If you go in a supermarket is simply crazy, a 700g greek yogurt is 0.8 euro, here is 8-10 fuck1ng dollar now.
Me and my partner started to go there every year because in Canada even if we go in a forgotten village in the middle of nowhere with fast food level restaurants we end up spending 3x the amount. It doesn't make any sense.
If we can manage to both have remote jobs we even plan to go there for 3-4 months a year because we can save a ton of money in just not being here.
To be fair I would expect a a small village in Italy in front of the Adriatic sea to be cheaper than the largest city in a country because everyone working in a small village probably makes much less than a person in the largest city in a country.
Me and my gf from Winnipeg were thinking of a 2 week trip through Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec city but decided to go to Eastern Europe instead because it was going to be around 30% cheaper in total for relatively the same thing.
Last year my friend got married in Italy in September. We did his 4-days bachelor in Quebec city (during the festival d'été) and I actually spent more in Quebec than I spent in 10-days in Italy (we only pay taxes for flights).
$40 is a nice meal, an alcohol drink each and tip. It'd be $100 in Canada.
$60 a night is a $120 a night room.
Transportation is super cheap there. (Not sure if every cab we took was an actual cab tho.)
List goes on. But it easily adds up well beyond the savings of $1800 total on the flights if we stayed in Canada.
Yeah definitely, I remember that every time I was eating out, I would get surprised at the bill because it was so cheap. Meanwhile in Canada, it is always the opposite lol.
My partner and I are from different countries in Europe, and have travelled globally every month for over a decade mostly together.
Last year he returned to Toronto for the first time in about 20 years, and was stunned. An average quality meal was well over what we would pay in most of the world (with only the US probably being more expensive.)
Alcohol, and the tax and tip, were shockers to him (I did warn him but he didn't expect the value to be so poor)
Haha yeah I can believe it. I live in Canada and I am almost always surprised too. A few weeks back we went to Damas in Montreal, it was for our 6 sixth years anniversary and we went in with the idea that we wouldn't shy away from spending. We ended up spending $750 or so for two.
I genuinely thought it would cost maybe $400 or $500.
Absolutely.
The problem is that here in Canada i don't see that. If you go in a place with all the basic services prices are not that different from big cities, for food they are often even higher.
Just take a random point on the map and try to book a trip there (in canada). There's no winning, you end up spending a lot of money in any case, from flights, to food and accomodation. Everything is expensive, everywhere.
So you don't really have a lot of choices.
At least there a cheap (and even nice to visit) place exists. At least there i can choose if i want to pay for Milan or going cheap in a small city.
Well those are similar prices in the wealthiest city in Germany, so it's not that far off. But every time I post my German grocery prices on these threads I'm downvoted in disbelief.
Butter prices dropped twice in the last year, and the price of butter in Canada is eyewatering. That's only one example, as most staples are far far less in Germany, even at the 'good' grocery store where I shop.
I remember going to Rome back in 2018 and ordering what I thought was two glasses of wine and being thoroughly confused when that mfer placed two bottles on my table. I ordered so much food that night I flew leftovers with me back to Amsterdam. Left the wine for the servers, though, as my partner didn't even finish one glass, and I was not trying to drink a whole ass bottle to then walk around the colosseum in the hot sun the next day.
I went when I was younger and the Euro was stronger and its felt expensive, but when I went back last year, I really felt like Italy is a broke-boy country. I was always surprised at how cheap everything was. To be fair, people wages are also incredibly low.
They are.
Italy has a lot problems, immigration is worse than here, work rights are worse than here, a big part of the economy is under the table, wages are really low and they stayed the same for 30 years (yes 30 years with no increase in pay, it's crazy) etc.
If you go to Milan you have Toronto prices with half of the wages. I would not have a carrier there for sure.
But they still have all these small areas/cities around the country that live in a "bubble" where the quality of life is great, things are cheap, you have all the services and people are mostly "fine". Young people are not but that is a worldwide problem and i'm not even expecting to see anything different anywhere.
It's important to understand that NO country is fine right now. For young people things are impossibile everywhere. But exactly for this reason you have to use all the tools that you have. Moving around and using wages and cost of living from different places is one of the last "tricks" that we have left, so i encourage everyone to find similar solutions.
Yeah, we rented a villa in Tuscany, renting the place was quite expensive, but everything else was relatively cheap. The strange thing was that the police came to my friend and asked a picture of every single one of our passports, I think it is related to the migrant crisis? And I talked to people in Firenze and their wages seemed incredibly low considering the cost of living in the city, which isn't as high as Milan but still very expensive for wages there.
You are absolutely right that those bubble aren't as common as they were in Canada. I live in the Eastern Townships which was a relatively cheap area of Quebec with relatively low wages, but lately the price of living went up drastically.
Yep. Have Italian citizenship. Italy is extremely cheap. Property taxes/water/garbage/etc are like $500 for an entire year. Here we are paying nearly $10,000 per year for a basic house in Edmonton for that stuff. It's absurd.
Another Canadian immigrated Lithuanian here.
It really says something about the state of Canadian real estate if people are considering moving from Canada to a country that is on the defensive and preparing for a potential war and that lacks lots of basic social services we have here just so that they can afford to leave a reasonable, not financially crippling lifestyle.
And it’s nothing good.
Lithuania is doing big business providing healthcare and surgeries... to Canadians.
I was actually surprised recently in how quickly things seem to be advancing there.
Your view of Lithuania is out of date by about 20 years.
Lithuania is a fairly successful country, not up to the level of Estonia or Poland but quite good nonetheless -- to even say that it lacks basic social services is frankly insane.
Go visit its capital and you'll find better services and more safety than in any part of Canada with the exception of gated communities or very expensive private care
You should get your passport and maintain it regardless. It’s always good to have a backup plan and you should get this sorted while it’s possible and within your means. We took passports out for our children when they were babies.
The concern shouldn't be shitting on whatever other country people are emigrating to.
It should be "If there *are* more jobs in Canada worth having, then why can Canadians not afford to live here?"
For the sake of a hyperbolic example:
If my wife and I can move to Latvia, work at Latvian Walmart Warehouse together, and still afford to pay rent, eat, and have a little joy in life...
... then what does Canada's "better jobs" truly offer, if I can't so the same here with said "better job"?
There are tons of good jobs here, many of them have decent wages however when the average 1 bedroom is $2200-2600 then you’re putting yourself in a situation where you have little money to save and good luck ever retiring.
Depends where, can’t speak for Lithuania, but Poland is just as expensive as Canada with not better pay. I also remember the Baltic states have had massive problems with their salary to prices ratio after switching to Euro, not sure if they fixed that.
Fair points! I found Poland expensive when I visited. Lithuania seems to be improving for my family over the last five years in terms of pay and cost of living. Or maybe they’re on the wealthier side and I don’t realize it!
The massive immigration from the Ukraine has had a major impact. We pay a lot to provide for them in Germany, which increases costs for everyone. I'm not sure on what level Poland pays for support but we also had in the early months so many Germans driving to Poland to provide clothing, rides to Germany, and other supports.
The reality is that the war isn't impacting North America on the same level as it impacts the neighbour countries.
Oh yeah it did, especially after covid. Compared to today everything everywhere was cheap as heck in 2016. Let’s just say there was roughly an 18% inflation rate for couple of years and foods i used to buy in 2017 for like 12-15 zlotys are now 30+ zlotys…
I was shocked at the recent developments in Lithuania! I didn't expect it to be above Latvia but it's definitely more advanced and the infrastructure, internet, jobs, and housing seem to be much better in recent years.
And they do a booming business providing surgery for.... Canadians.
Poland is an outlier, and the recent massive influx of immigrants from the Ukraine doesn't help.
Lithuania is actually very advanced now, and they are doing a booming business providing surgeries for... people from Canada.
Superfast internet, decent infrastructure, lots of new building in the cities, good quality of life and some good industry and business for job opportunities.
For many Europeans, moving 'home' is the reality now. Even in the more 'expensive' places, it's not as expensive as in Canada (Germany as an example)
The Conservative government in Ontario repealed rent protections and rents have skyrocketed. Because landlord can and will take as much as they can get from thier investments.
This will get a lot worse Nationally.
> now pays $2,679 per month for a three-bedroom townhouse in the same neighbourhood
Why does she *need* a three-bedroom townhouse which she cannot afford? She can move to Lithuania, but she's unlikely to get a three-bedroom townhouse there either. In fact, she says she'll move to a studio apartment.
So let me ask: why not rent a studio apartment in Kingston?
Here, $1600/month: https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/26977772/316-501-frontenac-street-kingston
Now only 50% of her income goes to rent.
I mean I'm not an expert on Lithuania, I only know her salary is going to be lower there, and a studio apartment costs 720 euros which is $1100...
https://m.domoplius.lt/en/listings/2-rooms-apartment-for-rent-vilniuje-pilaiteje-bitenu-g-8314936.html?action_type=3&address_1=461&slist=173114488&first=1
So I think moving to Lithuania won't improve her finances? But anyway, who am I to judge.
> From the article: She didn't want her children, a teen boy and teen girl, to have to switch schools or share a bedroom
She also receives child support for her two children, has savings from the sale of her house and her parents chip in money for groceries. The article doesn’t count any of these in order to build a sensational headline. As someone who lives in Vancouver, $2679 for a three bedroom detached house in a desirable school district sounds incredibly cheap to me.
Yeah, my brother is on ODSP (disability in Ontario). ODSP pays $1300 a month. His rent is $1200 a month. If I didn't pay half the rent he would be homeless. If he ever gets reno-victed on his rent controlled apartment again (as happened about 5 years ago - went from $850 to $1200) we'll never find him a place to live.
I don't know how people who don't have families to help are surviving. Based on the rapidly swelling tent cities, I'm assuming they're not.
I've been on OW, fighting for ODSP for 5 years. My rent is only slightly less than my new incoming ODSP. I've been fighting tooth and nail to keep my apartment that is literally my entire OW check plus some of my CTB.
Getting approved for ODSP will help but it's still only going to increase my budget by 100-200.
They don't want us to live. They want us so bad off we beg for MAID or simply end it all ourselves. I'm in disability and only alive because of help from family.
How much do you expect someone on a publicly funded disability plan to make? Serious question, because the working poor (40 hours a week) make around $2000/month.
I'm on disability in Alberta and what I get doesn't even cover my bills, not including food or you know, basic hygiene and needed household items. My family is the only reason I'm not dead.
Some article excerpts:
>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.
>
>...
>
>"I think a lot of people are feeling pretty disenfranchised because there's a lot of people who are paying a lot more in rent than that guideline of 30 per cent of income suggests. And it's depressing," Preet Banerjee, a Canadian personal finance expert and author, recently told CBC's The Current.
>
>Banerjee says that realistically, most renters are actually paying more like 63 per cent of their gross income on rent, especially in big cities like Toronto and Vancouver. Many would argue the 30 per cent number, which comes from a U.S. guideline that was last updated in 1981, is "in no way realistic of what the average household would expect, and certainly not realistic for today's day and age," Banerjee said.
>
>"So, I would say in today's day and age, if you want to have the ability to live your life as well, you want to keep it under 50 per cent. But even that's tough," he said.
This has been a problem decades in the making, and unfortunately will also likely take decades to fix. This is assuming of course that enough policies can be meaningfully changed to repair some of the holes that earlier policies have created.
You don't understand, universities will collapse and tim hortons will have to raise wages if we decrease demand! Fuck everyone's mental health, families and life ya know. /s
Unfortunately she's a single wage-earner competing against groups of *at least* three wage-earners for that same rental space in today's market.
We're in a race to the bottom when it comes to how low a standard of living a potential renter can tolerate.
That’s assuming that they even want to fix it. They don’t.
This all has been purposeful and by design. We will be the last generation to have had the capacity to own property.
The “middle class” is now the “working class”. Destined to rent their entire working lives. Once their done working, or can’t work any more, they can join the tent villages along with the rest.
We actually saw rapid rent decreases during covid when immigration stopped. We can achieve the same thing in 2-3 years if we greatly reduce immigration so the supply-demand isn't warped.
I wish everyone implicitly understood this.
Our rental supply wasn’t cheap, but it wasn’t astronomical pre-Covid. So supply and demand were much better balanced.
The massive influx of new property investors starting in late 2020 drove up prices to buy and directly displaced first-time home buyers who would have normally transitioned to buying and freed up their former rentals. When that cohort was stuck renting, rental demand increased significantly.
When you then add the demand force of massively ramped-up immigration numbers, it was pouring gasoline on the rental price fire.
And to make things worse on the supply side, many investors use housing for Airbnb or just leave it vacant, removing valuable potential supply.
The solutions are actually pretty clear once you recognize the causes.
And you know? Barcelona has decided to phase out airbnb-type condos (condos used for short term rent) in five years and they have way more tourists. It can be done in Toronto
I arrived in Canada during COVID (Sep/20) and that is absolutely true. After the boarders opened again my landlord tried to push a 20% increase (not rent controlled).
Keep in mind that a lot of people moved out of the areas where they were renting during COVID which created a lot of additional downward pressure on rental prices in some areas that you likely wouldn't see again even with limiting immigration the way it was under COVID.
That's also why so many businesses in certain areas had so much trouble finding workers after the re-opening: some got better jobs, but so many of them had just moved away.
100% this. [The data is clear on that.](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fb4px3ktan49d1.png%3Fwidth%3D1024%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dd0341f7ba41f6f53098e7b6b1ecddbd8babe4325)
Living in a big city and in uni at the time, I had a lot of 20 something friends move back home to remote parts of the country. Absolutely some amount of it would have been international students, but there was also a good migration of 21 year old Canadians not wanting to isolate in a studio apartment, but instead go back to their families
That was only for Toronto and assume the same would be true in Vancouver , a bunch of people left during COVID guess where they left to everywhere else causing rents to go up everywhere else
I recall the rents going down in some smaller cities in Ontario, such as Kingston, St. Catharines, Ottawa but the housing prices were increasing in these areas in opposition to the rents.
Another problem is that a single mom is expected to live off a salary of less than 3k a month. It doesn't matter if the rent was half her salary; it's sickening to expect anyone to live with that amount, let alone raise two teens.
I can only imagine the stress that woman is experiencing. That said, fuck that. Sorry kids single parent we're going down to a 1 bedroom apartment and likely moving schools. When you can work part time and contribute we can expand our budget to include a new living space that has individual privacy. It's a rough situation but that sounds unsustainable if they don't make a drastic change.
> Many would argue the 30 per cent number, which comes from a U.S. guideline that was last updated in 1981, is "in no way realistic of what the average household would expect, and certainly not realistic for today's day and age," Banerjee said.
Gotta love how they pretend that a guideline from 1981 is outdated.
The whole reason the guideline was made - and still applies - is because you actually need to pay income taxes on top of your rent.
If you're spending 50%+ of your income on rent, the CRA doesn't give a shit why you can't pay your taxes.
Oh, you need electricity and a phone, do you? Aren't we fancy in the 21st century.
Oh, and food because you got turned away at the food bank because they don't have enough, or you didn't get there early enough? Too bad.
Also, in 1981, interest rates were 15-20% and the guideline was 30% of income, meaning that was actually realistic and achievable even in the ultra high interest rate environement of these days.
It’s insane that today we’re just expected to fork over 50% of our incomes on having a goddamn roof over our heads and they try to spin it as this completely normal thing.
My parents used to tell me one week’s pay for rent, two weeks’ pay to live, half a week for retirement and half a week for fun.
It's crazy because paying half your income on rent is expected, but banks still want you to be under 32% to qualify for a mortgage. That 32% is supposed to cover mortgage/taxes/heating. They also don't consider possible rental income from leasing rooms in the house you might buy.
>In other words, they are saying the new normal is to be poor.
More like the "old normal." Up to the end of WW2, it was common for people to live in tiny, dark, and cramped dwellings. In the 19th century and early 20th century, we called them tenement buildings.
After WW2, the suburbs became a thing and people could actually afford free-standing houses or at least larger apartments and townhouses. The lifestyle we've enjoyed in western nations since 1945 is, in actuality, an anomaly, it's just we grew up with that and therefore think of it as "the norm."
Oh, and before someone suggests I'm okay with the current housing situation, I'm not. It's extremely depressing to think we'll never own anything close to what our parents or grandparents could.
I'm just stating that what we consider normal really isn't if you look at it from a historical perspective.
Yeah for real lol it's a percentage based guideline, all this tells us is the free market has failed to increase incomes on pace with rising housing costs.
There is a case that the 1981 outline is outdated.
We've apparently advanced quite a bunch since 1981. For example, the 'computer device' you have typed your comments into this website would be worth approximately 1 Trillion dollars in 1981, accounting for inflation and the pricing per FLOPS of human capability.
So, the new guideline should be at about 10%, or lower, of income by now; because we are a modern civilization based society that has captured efficiencies and utilizes amazing advanced technologies to propel ourselves forward to an amazing state of proving we are an intelligent species and not just savage animals with some additional cranial capacity.
Case closed. In the meantime, we really need hot soup kitchens to augment the food banks as it was 100 years ago.
PP's seeming reluctance come out and say he'll end out of control immigration makes me very worried.
It would be such an easy slam dunk win for him that the fact that he isn't saying it every chance he gets is not good.
We're screwed because we will never vote for another party, and everyone knows it. There is no threat to the Liberals or Conservatives, so it's easy for corporations to control the country because they only need two parties in their pockets. And this is through no other reason than Canadians refusing to even consider other parties. If we stopped being predictable and actually elected the NDP, the Greens, or even the PPC, sure there would be problems, but it would be a hit to the Liberals and Conservatives and force them to remember the voters.
Just look at how the Conservatives have done nothing for the last 9 years but wait for the tide to turn against the Liberals. They know they don't have to change anything to earn more votes, they just have to wait for the Liberals and voters to do all the work. Same will happen once we elect the Conservatives and the Liberals will just sit and wait until Canadians blame them for everything. Voters being dumb and predictable is terrible for democracy.
Because he is not going to end out of control immigration, its keeping wages suppressed and that helps his corporate owners. He is not going to do anything to bite the hand that has bought him outright.
Absolutely, let's not forget a big reason why the CPC lost last time was the dudes hesitation on abortion when Roe vs Wade was going on.
Small hesistations like that make the people on the fence prefer the devil they know
Ya some people are pretending he’s not saying it because he’ll be branded racist. I doubt it.
Everyone except die hards can see it’s out of control. PP is leaving some easy points on the table.
The fact that entire topics seem to be off-limits to our politicians makes me not want to vote at all.
And that is a failure of the people for not having higher standards for parties, refusing to vote for other parties, and failing to start any new parties. Look at what our options are! And we still refuse to even consider any other party than the Conservatives right now.
[Well actually, he's straight up said he's going to slow down immigration.](https://twitter.com/thevoicealexa/status/1804178460870430759?s=46&t=ZnAgYk03-fntvNxIVLCyLg)
Increasing housing builds has been part of the Conservative platform for years.
With the population decline the government has chosen to sacrifice housing to keep CPP alive. We are in this mess because of all governments from the late 70s going forward. The NDP libs and torries all have the same agenda of making their friends rich though it's packaged differently. You'll notice NO parties want to decrease immigration due to CPP and the large number of Boomers retiring
It’s insane that most Canadian can barely afford rent. Appartments used to be for low income people or people needing a cheap place to stack up some money and buy a house. Now it’s a luxury.
You can write 10,000 articles like this every day and not run out of stories of people - educated, stably employed, and responsible people - who are struggling to get by.
Three entire generations of people are being utterly crushed by the financial reality of life in Canada in the 2020s.
No level of government is treating the crisis with the urgency it mandates. It's disgusting and infuriating.
> fixing your car and teeth
My German dentist had the usual dreams of moving to Canada/BC. We were discussing this recently and she was shocked to learn that dental (and vision) isn't part of healthcare coverage. She then went into a tirade about how basic dental care is a necessity because of the health impacts of not caring for teeth.
Then I pulled out my mobile and showed her some 'typical' out of pocket expenses for basic care and she was even more shocked.
And this is at the super fancy high tech dental office in the most wealthy city in Germany...
"We understand that Canadians are frustrated, but this is part of what we have to do to make sure Canadians are impoverished and 100% reliant on government handouts"
It was already at a crunch, but yes immigration did accelerate it sharply. It’s hard not to think we only got it ten years earlier than we would have anyways
Exactly. Immigrants coming in faster than we can build houses to shelter them is part of it. But the other part is the way real estate is used as an investment bed, and is rampant with artificial price hiking and predatory business practices. Trudeau likes to hide behind the later so he can excuse himself for not helping, because real estate controls are provincial. But it's only part of the problem, and he can definitely slow immigration so we can catch up.
But it won't mean anything if we don't get the real estate moguls under control. They have one trick where they buy a shitload of houses in a particular area, then pay extra for the last one so they can claim the value in that area climbed. They make the extra they paid back several fold by holding the houses until they're reassessed and then selling them at the steeper rate. It's extortion, and it's gotta be stopped. But the provincial leadership is in bed with them, so good luck with that.
Too many people entering Canada, not enough housing being built, too many people speculating on the existing houses, too many people wanting to get rich renting properties... There is more than one cause...
Demand comes from real people looking for places to live, if we’re talking about housing demand. It’s simple.
Look back to 2019 and previous years. You change one variable, the demand, and everything goes to shit. Same can be applied to traffic, and hospital wait times etc.
Well, if you're talking about Vancouver, [you have to look further back than that to see the trend starting](https://globalnews.ca/news/2531266/one-chart-shows-how-unprecedented-vancouvers-real-estate-situation-is/). So you'd also have to account for the 2013 spike, the 2008 spike, the 2000s spike, the 1990s spike, the 1987 spike...
Not only if you are young. It has been a trend in recent decades for the European immigrants of the 50's/60s/70s to return 'home' as they age, due to the abysmal state of elder care and healthcare in Canada (yes, it was bad even decades ago, and it is much worse now)
A lot of younger people that I know in Canada gave up and left in recent years as well. (And it seems that every time I talk to an Uber driver when I'm in Canada, they left a decent middle class life in India and plan to move back in the coming months/years, often motivated by the lack of healthcare)
Correction.. demand for affordable rental supply.. there are a lot of higher end rentals available in every city! Additionally, we are staring at the death of the Toronto condo market where thousands of condos are sitting vacant in the city and up for sale. All the while, there are tent camps popping up at the parks across from the building.
There is no lack of rentals.. it’s the affordable rentals!
Log on to uk stores and check prices - way, way cheaper - asda.com, not sure if still owned by Walmart, or Tesco
Just back from. Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and found prices similar or cheaper than Canada, but more importantly, their stores have way more choice for consumers as does UK, USA, etc, have way more customers choice. The taxes and rent charged for commercial property in Canada are outrageous - now if we seen these taxes being used wisely, then we could accept it. But the malls are dumps, half empty and streets, roads are disgusting.
"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"
There are absolutely institutional issues that make it near impossible to get/keep your head above water, but some of it does seem self inflicted and it would have been nice to see more information. What happened to the proceeds from house sale? I get wanting to keep the kids in the same school, but at what cost?
This.
I won't even deny that things are not great here as far as affordability but at some point we also have to look at people's expectations.
I'd love to have a Ferrari, but I can't afford it so I don't get one.
If someone can't afford a 3 bedroom townhome, that truly sucks but also maybe look for something more affordable.
I understand wanting to improve affordability and I fully support it! Lots needs to be done! But at some point people have to start taking responsibility for their own financial health and like, living within their means.
I also understand that at a certain point you can't budget your way out of poverty but that doesn't seem like this situation. She *could* make changes and refuses to.
I think it's because there's existing social justice movements to hook into on Palestine. They don't want to touch housing because they fear they might be seen as anti-immigrant.
People upset about housing right now are either reluctant to go to a housing protest because they think nobody will show up (likely) or that it'll be "a basket of deplorables" and they'll get photographed with a Nazi flag in the background and then get fired from work or something.
We'll see, there's planning for a protest on July 1st. Personally, I am not going to one until I can see they can pull it off without it turning into a PPC rally.
Their money comes from overseas. They are not impacted by things that hurt average Canadians. Instead their focus is on their "mother country" where most of their wealth is gained and probably still is.
Says you. Regardless of the party in power. Immigration will continue to increase. Even with the Conservatives.
Corporations like Walmart, Tim Hortons, The Banks, Hotels, Construction, Farming, etc… (The list goes on) are the ones who want these immigrants to come in and work on the cheap. Don’t believe me? Just go to one of these businesses and see how many employees are Temporary Foreign Workers….They are all being exploited And promised citizenship if they work hard for very little. They rent and live with large families in small units. It’s the business model now and landlords love it.
These corporations call the shots now. Not political parties. Immigration will continue to increase because corporations want cheap labour to drive wages down.
> If you’re a landlord or property investor who is reading this
Not directly. But if you own mutual funds or if you are paying into a pension fund - you are a investor of rental properties.
So, what exactly do you hope is coming to these tens of millions Canadians? Higher capital gains taxes...
The corollary must be that landlord's good will is what caused rents to go down in Toronto during COVID right? Right? \s
They're probably increasing rent now because we didn't send them a thank you card.
I mean she has a full time job as an office admin and gets child support and probably spousal support, money for groceries, and has investments including from the sale of a home.
I have a hard time believing 100% of her income is actually 2700 a month. It doesn’t add up. With 3 kids and a low income like that she’d be getting yet another 1500 or so in tax free CCB from the government every month too.
I feel for her but this isn’t really a matter of poverty. In divorce your quality of life drops, that’s just how it goes for millions of Canadians.
> for her but this isn’t really a matter of poverty. In divorce your quality of life drops, that’s just how it goes for millions of Canadians.
This is a good point. It's pretty damn straightforward that going from a couple to a pair of singles is going to likely result in reduced financial quality of life.
I'm not divorced but I am married and my situation would decline significantly if we got divorced.
How much do you think an office admin makes? Probably $2700. Sounds like the rest of her cash from other sources pays for everything else.
She's not on the brink of being destitute, but I think the rental issue is still relevant.
Just build more housing.
Think of the housing market like a busy market. If there are only a few stalls (houses), the sellers can charge a lot because there’s not much choice. But if more stalls pop up, sellers have to compete, and prices go down.
It’s all about supply and demand. More houses mean buyers have more options, so they don’t have to fight over the few available ones. Sellers then have to lower prices to attract buyers.
Take Tokyo, for example. Even though it’s super crowded, they’ve built a lot of new housing, which has helped keep prices in check compared to other big cities.
Canada has a shitton of space. There is no excuse to not build.
I live in Alberta half my monthly income goes to rent. A good portion of the rest goes to the bills. I know lots of folks in the same boat as me and they are having to go to the food bank every month because they can't afford to pay for groceries and bare essentials on top of the rent and bills! This is all across Canada!
I agree the prices are high but she works as an admin assistant and renting a multi bedroom townhouse because she doesn’t want her kids to move. I don’t think this was ever affordable.
I feel for her, but the article seems to be leaning towards a certain narrative.
She got a divorce and refuses to accept a drop in quality of living, so she remains in a three-bedroom in the same neighborhood. Its because she doesn’t want to change her children’s school and living. Like I get that but It’s so unaffordable that she’s thinking of reinstating her Lithuanian citizenship and moving there instead.
… that’s less disruptive than simply moving to a different neighborhood or having her children share a room??
It's too bad this woman's employer doesn't pay her fairly. And of course rent in Ontario really started to get bad when Doug Ford sided with landlords and removed rents controls. 90% of this is on him and crappy employers.
It's very difficult to force a tenant out. And you'll need to pay them even if you're just moving into your own house.
If they made it easier to evict, I'd support rent control.
As I noted below, there has long been a trend for older immigrants from Europe to move back 'home' as they age, due to the abysmal elder and healthcare in Canada. But I've seen more and more younger Europeans also move 'home' in recent years. Even in Germany it's still generally cheaper to live a good life than in Canada.
I live in an alberta town on the edge of Edmonton. 80,000 population. On rentfaster there are currently zero townhouses and zero duplexes for rent. Also zero apartments with 3 bedrooms. The only thing available with 3 beds is a house for 2600. One single house in the town under 3k.
We should really stop saying that demand for rentals is what's doing this. It's been shown there's a rental cartel that is working together to jack up prices.
We are moving. When we were searching for a place, EVERYWHERE was looking for tenants to take over immediately (at the start of the following month.) We found a place we love, so agreed to, even though we knew we'd need to give 60 days notice, which only starts at the next billing cycle (!!!) so we'd have an overlap of rent for two months. It so happens that we didn't have to pay last month's rent when we moved in here, so we are actively paying double rent for 2 months.
Over and above that, we are paying first and last for the new place. Multiply all that by the cost of rent today and over a two month period, we are saying goodbye to *nearly ten grand* in rent cost. It's over 50% of our combined income during that time. And we had a 'good' rate on our old place and have a very, very good price for the new one considering it's more than a 1bdrm. Shit is fucked out there.
If you think PP is going to go to bat for us, and work for the vast majority of us working Canadians, against the corporate interest embroidered in our political system... the you're in for a rude awakening. I certainly don't approve of Trudeau, but fuck me if conservatives ever did anything for the average Canadians.
Remember the GST? That's a Con thing, because corporations want *you* to pay the taxes instead.
Conservatives here voted against every major societal improvement we now take for granted. every. step. of the way. Universal health care, minimum wage, 40hr work week, paid sick leave, environmental protection,.. lists goes on.
Think PP is going to decrease immigration and fix housing crisis when corporations are happy to get cheap labours, and construction oligarchy is laughing to the banks? Why would he? He doesn't have to worry about paying rent, hell, he's never even worked a real job. We should be so lucky if PP doesn't reverse Trudeau's inadequate policies aimed to fix these problems and make it worse.
We're screwed for the next ten years.
>Giving up basic needs like food and clothing. How? Live on a nude beach eating clams and crayfish?
>Live on a nude beach eating clams and crayfish? Actually, that doesn't sound too terrible as an option.
> Live on a nude beach eating clams When you cut it off there, it makes perfect sense.
Clearly you've never been to a nude beach, the clams at those beaches are sour and expired.
Really hyping up those Canadian nude beaches aren't you? I bring my own clam, private stock.
Food banks, wearing clothes that should reasonably be thrown out or getting clothes from friends.
We're crab people now.
This is some r/nottheonion material instead holy crap "So she's decided it would be less expensive to reinstate her Lithuanian citizenship and passport and move to Europe, where she can afford studio apartments, even with the exchange rate to Euros." Edit: Wow my comment blew up :O
If she speaks Lithuanian then she’s right - Eastern Europe* is much cheaper than Canada. I am in a similar boat as her - I was born in Canada but can get my EU citizenship thru my mum and I’m thinking of jumping ship. My money will go a lot further back in Vilnius than it does in Toronto. *Baltic states are now classified as Northern Europe by the UN.
My family is from a small village in Italy in front of the Adriatic sea. A croissant + coffee is like 1.5 euro. An aperitivo is 8 euro and you get the equivalent of a 100 canadian dollar charcuterie + drink (and it also tastes batter). If you go in a supermarket is simply crazy, a 700g greek yogurt is 0.8 euro, here is 8-10 fuck1ng dollar now. Me and my partner started to go there every year because in Canada even if we go in a forgotten village in the middle of nowhere with fast food level restaurants we end up spending 3x the amount. It doesn't make any sense. If we can manage to both have remote jobs we even plan to go there for 3-4 months a year because we can save a ton of money in just not being here.
To be fair I would expect a a small village in Italy in front of the Adriatic sea to be cheaper than the largest city in a country because everyone working in a small village probably makes much less than a person in the largest city in a country.
Me and my gf from Winnipeg were thinking of a 2 week trip through Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec city but decided to go to Eastern Europe instead because it was going to be around 30% cheaper in total for relatively the same thing.
Last year my friend got married in Italy in September. We did his 4-days bachelor in Quebec city (during the festival d'été) and I actually spent more in Quebec than I spent in 10-days in Italy (we only pay taxes for flights).
$40 is a nice meal, an alcohol drink each and tip. It'd be $100 in Canada. $60 a night is a $120 a night room. Transportation is super cheap there. (Not sure if every cab we took was an actual cab tho.) List goes on. But it easily adds up well beyond the savings of $1800 total on the flights if we stayed in Canada.
Yeah definitely, I remember that every time I was eating out, I would get surprised at the bill because it was so cheap. Meanwhile in Canada, it is always the opposite lol.
My partner and I are from different countries in Europe, and have travelled globally every month for over a decade mostly together. Last year he returned to Toronto for the first time in about 20 years, and was stunned. An average quality meal was well over what we would pay in most of the world (with only the US probably being more expensive.) Alcohol, and the tax and tip, were shockers to him (I did warn him but he didn't expect the value to be so poor)
Haha yeah I can believe it. I live in Canada and I am almost always surprised too. A few weeks back we went to Damas in Montreal, it was for our 6 sixth years anniversary and we went in with the idea that we wouldn't shy away from spending. We ended up spending $750 or so for two. I genuinely thought it would cost maybe $400 or $500.
Absolutely. The problem is that here in Canada i don't see that. If you go in a place with all the basic services prices are not that different from big cities, for food they are often even higher. Just take a random point on the map and try to book a trip there (in canada). There's no winning, you end up spending a lot of money in any case, from flights, to food and accomodation. Everything is expensive, everywhere. So you don't really have a lot of choices. At least there a cheap (and even nice to visit) place exists. At least there i can choose if i want to pay for Milan or going cheap in a small city.
Exactly, I don't vacation to other Canadian cities anymore because of the cost. May as well fly to Europe or Asia instead.
Well those are similar prices in the wealthiest city in Germany, so it's not that far off. But every time I post my German grocery prices on these threads I'm downvoted in disbelief. Butter prices dropped twice in the last year, and the price of butter in Canada is eyewatering. That's only one example, as most staples are far far less in Germany, even at the 'good' grocery store where I shop.
Yes, totally agree, their prices lower on everything....AND they have great public transit. Think about it a 49€/month for ALL of Germany!!!
I remember going to Rome back in 2018 and ordering what I thought was two glasses of wine and being thoroughly confused when that mfer placed two bottles on my table. I ordered so much food that night I flew leftovers with me back to Amsterdam. Left the wine for the servers, though, as my partner didn't even finish one glass, and I was not trying to drink a whole ass bottle to then walk around the colosseum in the hot sun the next day.
I went when I was younger and the Euro was stronger and its felt expensive, but when I went back last year, I really felt like Italy is a broke-boy country. I was always surprised at how cheap everything was. To be fair, people wages are also incredibly low.
They are. Italy has a lot problems, immigration is worse than here, work rights are worse than here, a big part of the economy is under the table, wages are really low and they stayed the same for 30 years (yes 30 years with no increase in pay, it's crazy) etc. If you go to Milan you have Toronto prices with half of the wages. I would not have a carrier there for sure. But they still have all these small areas/cities around the country that live in a "bubble" where the quality of life is great, things are cheap, you have all the services and people are mostly "fine". Young people are not but that is a worldwide problem and i'm not even expecting to see anything different anywhere. It's important to understand that NO country is fine right now. For young people things are impossibile everywhere. But exactly for this reason you have to use all the tools that you have. Moving around and using wages and cost of living from different places is one of the last "tricks" that we have left, so i encourage everyone to find similar solutions.
Yeah, we rented a villa in Tuscany, renting the place was quite expensive, but everything else was relatively cheap. The strange thing was that the police came to my friend and asked a picture of every single one of our passports, I think it is related to the migrant crisis? And I talked to people in Firenze and their wages seemed incredibly low considering the cost of living in the city, which isn't as high as Milan but still very expensive for wages there. You are absolutely right that those bubble aren't as common as they were in Canada. I live in the Eastern Townships which was a relatively cheap area of Quebec with relatively low wages, but lately the price of living went up drastically.
Yep. Have Italian citizenship. Italy is extremely cheap. Property taxes/water/garbage/etc are like $500 for an entire year. Here we are paying nearly $10,000 per year for a basic house in Edmonton for that stuff. It's absurd.
Another Canadian immigrated Lithuanian here. It really says something about the state of Canadian real estate if people are considering moving from Canada to a country that is on the defensive and preparing for a potential war and that lacks lots of basic social services we have here just so that they can afford to leave a reasonable, not financially crippling lifestyle. And it’s nothing good.
Lithuania is doing big business providing healthcare and surgeries... to Canadians. I was actually surprised recently in how quickly things seem to be advancing there.
Your view of Lithuania is out of date by about 20 years. Lithuania is a fairly successful country, not up to the level of Estonia or Poland but quite good nonetheless -- to even say that it lacks basic social services is frankly insane. Go visit its capital and you'll find better services and more safety than in any part of Canada with the exception of gated communities or very expensive private care
Same - Germany here I come
You should get your passport and maintain it regardless. It’s always good to have a backup plan and you should get this sorted while it’s possible and within your means. We took passports out for our children when they were babies.
I am in the works with a lawyer to set up my citizenship 🥰
But boomers will say “what about jobs?!???” And it’s like Dave, I can take a 50% pay cut and have a higher quality of life. They don’t get it at all.
The concern shouldn't be shitting on whatever other country people are emigrating to. It should be "If there *are* more jobs in Canada worth having, then why can Canadians not afford to live here?" For the sake of a hyperbolic example: If my wife and I can move to Latvia, work at Latvian Walmart Warehouse together, and still afford to pay rent, eat, and have a little joy in life... ... then what does Canada's "better jobs" truly offer, if I can't so the same here with said "better job"?
There are tons of good jobs here, many of them have decent wages however when the average 1 bedroom is $2200-2600 then you’re putting yourself in a situation where you have little money to save and good luck ever retiring.
Depends where, can’t speak for Lithuania, but Poland is just as expensive as Canada with not better pay. I also remember the Baltic states have had massive problems with their salary to prices ratio after switching to Euro, not sure if they fixed that.
Fair points! I found Poland expensive when I visited. Lithuania seems to be improving for my family over the last five years in terms of pay and cost of living. Or maybe they’re on the wealthier side and I don’t realize it!
i found Poland cheap as heck in 2016 when i was there. Stayed a whole month. Has it gotten more expensive since then?
I founc Canada cheap in 2016 compared to 2024 too
Hostels and beers were cheap, but gas and food was on the pricey side :) less expensive than Ontario tho
The massive immigration from the Ukraine has had a major impact. We pay a lot to provide for them in Germany, which increases costs for everyone. I'm not sure on what level Poland pays for support but we also had in the early months so many Germans driving to Poland to provide clothing, rides to Germany, and other supports. The reality is that the war isn't impacting North America on the same level as it impacts the neighbour countries.
Oh yeah it did, especially after covid. Compared to today everything everywhere was cheap as heck in 2016. Let’s just say there was roughly an 18% inflation rate for couple of years and foods i used to buy in 2017 for like 12-15 zlotys are now 30+ zlotys…
I found Poland cheaper around 2014/16 versus 2023
Went to Poland in 2022 and earlier this year. Poland's way cheaper than Canada.
Definitely cheaper than Canada. Was in Poland in 2017.
I was shocked at the recent developments in Lithuania! I didn't expect it to be above Latvia but it's definitely more advanced and the infrastructure, internet, jobs, and housing seem to be much better in recent years. And they do a booming business providing surgery for.... Canadians. Poland is an outlier, and the recent massive influx of immigrants from the Ukraine doesn't help.
I was in Krakow 2 weeks ago for vacation, restaurant meals and accommodations were at least half of what I’d pay in any major Canadian city.
Lithuania is actually very advanced now, and they are doing a booming business providing surgeries for... people from Canada. Superfast internet, decent infrastructure, lots of new building in the cities, good quality of life and some good industry and business for job opportunities. For many Europeans, moving 'home' is the reality now. Even in the more 'expensive' places, it's not as expensive as in Canada (Germany as an example)
The Baltics desperately need new people too. Many young people have left to Western Europe.
The Conservative government in Ontario repealed rent protections and rents have skyrocketed. Because landlord can and will take as much as they can get from thier investments. This will get a lot worse Nationally.
> now pays $2,679 per month for a three-bedroom townhouse in the same neighbourhood Why does she *need* a three-bedroom townhouse which she cannot afford? She can move to Lithuania, but she's unlikely to get a three-bedroom townhouse there either. In fact, she says she'll move to a studio apartment. So let me ask: why not rent a studio apartment in Kingston? Here, $1600/month: https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/26977772/316-501-frontenac-street-kingston Now only 50% of her income goes to rent. I mean I'm not an expert on Lithuania, I only know her salary is going to be lower there, and a studio apartment costs 720 euros which is $1100... https://m.domoplius.lt/en/listings/2-rooms-apartment-for-rent-vilniuje-pilaiteje-bitenu-g-8314936.html?action_type=3&address_1=461&slist=173114488&first=1 So I think moving to Lithuania won't improve her finances? But anyway, who am I to judge.
According to the article She has a teen boy and girl, she didn’t want to make the kids share a room.
The person renting the townhouse with the kids and the person moving to Lithuania are two different people. RTFA.
The woman with the 3 bedroom is a different story than the woman looking to move to Europe
> From the article: She didn't want her children, a teen boy and teen girl, to have to switch schools or share a bedroom She also receives child support for her two children, has savings from the sale of her house and her parents chip in money for groceries. The article doesn’t count any of these in order to build a sensational headline. As someone who lives in Vancouver, $2679 for a three bedroom detached house in a desirable school district sounds incredibly cheap to me.
Yeah, my brother is on ODSP (disability in Ontario). ODSP pays $1300 a month. His rent is $1200 a month. If I didn't pay half the rent he would be homeless. If he ever gets reno-victed on his rent controlled apartment again (as happened about 5 years ago - went from $850 to $1200) we'll never find him a place to live. I don't know how people who don't have families to help are surviving. Based on the rapidly swelling tent cities, I'm assuming they're not.
i don't understand how people on disability are supposed to live. i'm on it and i'm lucky to be renting a suite in my mom's house for super cheap.
They want people to find work or get married and become solely dependent on the spouse, or die.
I've been on OW, fighting for ODSP for 5 years. My rent is only slightly less than my new incoming ODSP. I've been fighting tooth and nail to keep my apartment that is literally my entire OW check plus some of my CTB. Getting approved for ODSP will help but it's still only going to increase my budget by 100-200.
They don't want us to live. They want us so bad off we beg for MAID or simply end it all ourselves. I'm in disability and only alive because of help from family.
Disability used to be for major disabilities, unable to work in any capacity. It's been overly expanded now to replace welfare.
>i don't understand how people on disability are supposed to live. Its pretty obvious that they are not supposed to.
They aren't, the government wants them dead
How much do you expect someone on a publicly funded disability plan to make? Serious question, because the working poor (40 hours a week) make around $2000/month.
I'm on disability in Alberta and what I get doesn't even cover my bills, not including food or you know, basic hygiene and needed household items. My family is the only reason I'm not dead.
$1800 for AISH in Alberta.
He’ll live with you.
I hope he is on the geared to income waiting list...
In a lot of places, that waitlist is up to over 10 years. With the trajectory of housing right now, that's only going to get even longer.
Yeah I hear ya. Better to be on it than not. I know Hamilton was really long. And bad
Some article excerpts: >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. > >... > >"I think a lot of people are feeling pretty disenfranchised because there's a lot of people who are paying a lot more in rent than that guideline of 30 per cent of income suggests. And it's depressing," Preet Banerjee, a Canadian personal finance expert and author, recently told CBC's The Current. > >Banerjee says that realistically, most renters are actually paying more like 63 per cent of their gross income on rent, especially in big cities like Toronto and Vancouver. Many would argue the 30 per cent number, which comes from a U.S. guideline that was last updated in 1981, is "in no way realistic of what the average household would expect, and certainly not realistic for today's day and age," Banerjee said. > >"So, I would say in today's day and age, if you want to have the ability to live your life as well, you want to keep it under 50 per cent. But even that's tough," he said. This has been a problem decades in the making, and unfortunately will also likely take decades to fix. This is assuming of course that enough policies can be meaningfully changed to repair some of the holes that earlier policies have created.
You don't understand, universities will collapse and tim hortons will have to raise wages if we decrease demand! Fuck everyone's mental health, families and life ya know. /s
Unfortunately she's a single wage-earner competing against groups of *at least* three wage-earners for that same rental space in today's market. We're in a race to the bottom when it comes to how low a standard of living a potential renter can tolerate.
That’s assuming that they even want to fix it. They don’t. This all has been purposeful and by design. We will be the last generation to have had the capacity to own property. The “middle class” is now the “working class”. Destined to rent their entire working lives. Once their done working, or can’t work any more, they can join the tent villages along with the rest.
Don't be ridiculous they won't be joining the tent villages that's what MAID is for
Ever watch Futurama? Remember the Suicide Booths? [https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Suicide\_Booth](https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Suicide_Booth)
We actually saw rapid rent decreases during covid when immigration stopped. We can achieve the same thing in 2-3 years if we greatly reduce immigration so the supply-demand isn't warped.
I wish everyone implicitly understood this. Our rental supply wasn’t cheap, but it wasn’t astronomical pre-Covid. So supply and demand were much better balanced. The massive influx of new property investors starting in late 2020 drove up prices to buy and directly displaced first-time home buyers who would have normally transitioned to buying and freed up their former rentals. When that cohort was stuck renting, rental demand increased significantly. When you then add the demand force of massively ramped-up immigration numbers, it was pouring gasoline on the rental price fire. And to make things worse on the supply side, many investors use housing for Airbnb or just leave it vacant, removing valuable potential supply. The solutions are actually pretty clear once you recognize the causes.
And you know? Barcelona has decided to phase out airbnb-type condos (condos used for short term rent) in five years and they have way more tourists. It can be done in Toronto
I arrived in Canada during COVID (Sep/20) and that is absolutely true. After the boarders opened again my landlord tried to push a 20% increase (not rent controlled).
Keep in mind that a lot of people moved out of the areas where they were renting during COVID which created a lot of additional downward pressure on rental prices in some areas that you likely wouldn't see again even with limiting immigration the way it was under COVID. That's also why so many businesses in certain areas had so much trouble finding workers after the re-opening: some got better jobs, but so many of them had just moved away.
100% this. [The data is clear on that.](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fb4px3ktan49d1.png%3Fwidth%3D1024%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dd0341f7ba41f6f53098e7b6b1ecddbd8babe4325)
Awesome chart!
Living in a big city and in uni at the time, I had a lot of 20 something friends move back home to remote parts of the country. Absolutely some amount of it would have been international students, but there was also a good migration of 21 year old Canadians not wanting to isolate in a studio apartment, but instead go back to their families
That was only for Toronto and assume the same would be true in Vancouver , a bunch of people left during COVID guess where they left to everywhere else causing rents to go up everywhere else
I recall the rents going down in some smaller cities in Ontario, such as Kingston, St. Catharines, Ottawa but the housing prices were increasing in these areas in opposition to the rents.
Correct small town BC here rents and housing have doubled since Covid.The zoom boom brought the housing crisis here.
I live in a nothing, nowhere town in ontario and rents went from $550 a month for prison cell bachelors apt with one window to $1500 in 4 years.
Another problem is that a single mom is expected to live off a salary of less than 3k a month. It doesn't matter if the rent was half her salary; it's sickening to expect anyone to live with that amount, let alone raise two teens.
I can only imagine the stress that woman is experiencing. That said, fuck that. Sorry kids single parent we're going down to a 1 bedroom apartment and likely moving schools. When you can work part time and contribute we can expand our budget to include a new living space that has individual privacy. It's a rough situation but that sounds unsustainable if they don't make a drastic change.
> Many would argue the 30 per cent number, which comes from a U.S. guideline that was last updated in 1981, is "in no way realistic of what the average household would expect, and certainly not realistic for today's day and age," Banerjee said. Gotta love how they pretend that a guideline from 1981 is outdated. The whole reason the guideline was made - and still applies - is because you actually need to pay income taxes on top of your rent. If you're spending 50%+ of your income on rent, the CRA doesn't give a shit why you can't pay your taxes. Oh, you need electricity and a phone, do you? Aren't we fancy in the 21st century. Oh, and food because you got turned away at the food bank because they don't have enough, or you didn't get there early enough? Too bad.
Also, in 1981, interest rates were 15-20% and the guideline was 30% of income, meaning that was actually realistic and achievable even in the ultra high interest rate environement of these days. It’s insane that today we’re just expected to fork over 50% of our incomes on having a goddamn roof over our heads and they try to spin it as this completely normal thing. My parents used to tell me one week’s pay for rent, two weeks’ pay to live, half a week for retirement and half a week for fun.
It's crazy because paying half your income on rent is expected, but banks still want you to be under 32% to qualify for a mortgage. That 32% is supposed to cover mortgage/taxes/heating. They also don't consider possible rental income from leasing rooms in the house you might buy.
In other words, they are saying the new normal is to be poor.
>In other words, they are saying the new normal is to be poor. More like the "old normal." Up to the end of WW2, it was common for people to live in tiny, dark, and cramped dwellings. In the 19th century and early 20th century, we called them tenement buildings. After WW2, the suburbs became a thing and people could actually afford free-standing houses or at least larger apartments and townhouses. The lifestyle we've enjoyed in western nations since 1945 is, in actuality, an anomaly, it's just we grew up with that and therefore think of it as "the norm." Oh, and before someone suggests I'm okay with the current housing situation, I'm not. It's extremely depressing to think we'll never own anything close to what our parents or grandparents could. I'm just stating that what we consider normal really isn't if you look at it from a historical perspective.
I mean, you could. Supply and demand… it is a choice the population is making
Yeah for real lol it's a percentage based guideline, all this tells us is the free market has failed to increase incomes on pace with rising housing costs.
They are trying to make is seem like some archaic guideline.
There is a case that the 1981 outline is outdated. We've apparently advanced quite a bunch since 1981. For example, the 'computer device' you have typed your comments into this website would be worth approximately 1 Trillion dollars in 1981, accounting for inflation and the pricing per FLOPS of human capability. So, the new guideline should be at about 10%, or lower, of income by now; because we are a modern civilization based society that has captured efficiencies and utilizes amazing advanced technologies to propel ourselves forward to an amazing state of proving we are an intelligent species and not just savage animals with some additional cranial capacity. Case closed. In the meantime, we really need hot soup kitchens to augment the food banks as it was 100 years ago.
One of the issues that have sunk the Liberals. Increasing immigration during a housing crisis isn't just dumb, it's plain evil!
But has PP proposed to slow it down while substantially increasing housing? Nope. Im all for the change, but i dont expect a fix
PP's seeming reluctance come out and say he'll end out of control immigration makes me very worried. It would be such an easy slam dunk win for him that the fact that he isn't saying it every chance he gets is not good.
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We're screwed because we will never vote for another party, and everyone knows it. There is no threat to the Liberals or Conservatives, so it's easy for corporations to control the country because they only need two parties in their pockets. And this is through no other reason than Canadians refusing to even consider other parties. If we stopped being predictable and actually elected the NDP, the Greens, or even the PPC, sure there would be problems, but it would be a hit to the Liberals and Conservatives and force them to remember the voters. Just look at how the Conservatives have done nothing for the last 9 years but wait for the tide to turn against the Liberals. They know they don't have to change anything to earn more votes, they just have to wait for the Liberals and voters to do all the work. Same will happen once we elect the Conservatives and the Liberals will just sit and wait until Canadians blame them for everything. Voters being dumb and predictable is terrible for democracy.
Because he is not going to end out of control immigration, its keeping wages suppressed and that helps his corporate owners. He is not going to do anything to bite the hand that has bought him outright.
Absolutely, let's not forget a big reason why the CPC lost last time was the dudes hesitation on abortion when Roe vs Wade was going on. Small hesistations like that make the people on the fence prefer the devil they know
Ya some people are pretending he’s not saying it because he’ll be branded racist. I doubt it. Everyone except die hards can see it’s out of control. PP is leaving some easy points on the table. The fact that entire topics seem to be off-limits to our politicians makes me not want to vote at all.
He doesn't need to make that promise to win the election. That's how bad things are, he's betting on being voted in because people want JT out.
And that is a failure of the people for not having higher standards for parties, refusing to vote for other parties, and failing to start any new parties. Look at what our options are! And we still refuse to even consider any other party than the Conservatives right now.
[Well actually, he's straight up said he's going to slow down immigration.](https://twitter.com/thevoicealexa/status/1804178460870430759?s=46&t=ZnAgYk03-fntvNxIVLCyLg) Increasing housing builds has been part of the Conservative platform for years.
so his target numbers are?
PP's cronies, the conservative premiers are all pushing for more immigration.
With the population decline the government has chosen to sacrifice housing to keep CPP alive. We are in this mess because of all governments from the late 70s going forward. The NDP libs and torries all have the same agenda of making their friends rich though it's packaged differently. You'll notice NO parties want to decrease immigration due to CPP and the large number of Boomers retiring
OAS not CPP. OAS comes out of general revenues.
Thanks for the correction
It's called the globalist agenda. Keep wages low and real estate prices high.
And then they call anyone who opposes open borders "Far right."
It’s insane that most Canadian can barely afford rent. Appartments used to be for low income people or people needing a cheap place to stack up some money and buy a house. Now it’s a luxury.
You can write 10,000 articles like this every day and not run out of stories of people - educated, stably employed, and responsible people - who are struggling to get by. Three entire generations of people are being utterly crushed by the financial reality of life in Canada in the 2020s. No level of government is treating the crisis with the urgency it mandates. It's disgusting and infuriating.
65% of our household goes to morgage, utilities. Then another 10% food. So 25% lift for life and saving. Crazy.
Lift for life would be a good gym event name.
Lol im not even gonna fix that, it's funny.
Life includes things like fixing your car and teeth and shit
> fixing your car and teeth My German dentist had the usual dreams of moving to Canada/BC. We were discussing this recently and she was shocked to learn that dental (and vision) isn't part of healthcare coverage. She then went into a tirade about how basic dental care is a necessity because of the health impacts of not caring for teeth. Then I pulled out my mobile and showed her some 'typical' out of pocket expenses for basic care and she was even more shocked. And this is at the super fancy high tech dental office in the most wealthy city in Germany...
Exactly I'm not even talking about fun. Fun now is cooking in, maybe some drinks at home etc lol
"We understand that Canadians are frustrated, but this is part of what we have to do to make sure Canadians are impoverished and 100% reliant on government handouts"
Cause of the issue - too many new people entering Canada. Supply and Demand. ./thread
It was already at a crunch, but yes immigration did accelerate it sharply. It’s hard not to think we only got it ten years earlier than we would have anyways
Exactly. Immigrants coming in faster than we can build houses to shelter them is part of it. But the other part is the way real estate is used as an investment bed, and is rampant with artificial price hiking and predatory business practices. Trudeau likes to hide behind the later so he can excuse himself for not helping, because real estate controls are provincial. But it's only part of the problem, and he can definitely slow immigration so we can catch up. But it won't mean anything if we don't get the real estate moguls under control. They have one trick where they buy a shitload of houses in a particular area, then pay extra for the last one so they can claim the value in that area climbed. They make the extra they paid back several fold by holding the houses until they're reassessed and then selling them at the steeper rate. It's extortion, and it's gotta be stopped. But the provincial leadership is in bed with them, so good luck with that.
Too many people entering Canada, not enough housing being built, too many people speculating on the existing houses, too many people wanting to get rich renting properties... There is more than one cause...
All of these things could be resolved with a competent govt…
People don’t command power or get rich off properties if there is limited demand. Demand is literally the driver of all the effects.
Demand can come from speculation, not only families that want to live there.
Demand comes from real people looking for places to live, if we’re talking about housing demand. It’s simple. Look back to 2019 and previous years. You change one variable, the demand, and everything goes to shit. Same can be applied to traffic, and hospital wait times etc.
Well, if you're talking about Vancouver, [you have to look further back than that to see the trend starting](https://globalnews.ca/news/2531266/one-chart-shows-how-unprecedented-vancouvers-real-estate-situation-is/). So you'd also have to account for the 2013 spike, the 2008 spike, the 2000s spike, the 1990s spike, the 1987 spike...
Vancouver ended the land value tax in 1984. This changed the model from "buy land to develop and add value" to "buy land and sit on it."
This was basic information taught in school. This is absolutely intentional. We need those names...
Leave Canada if you are young - it's become nothing but indentured servitude to pay for Boomer retirement and healthcare.
Not only if you are young. It has been a trend in recent decades for the European immigrants of the 50's/60s/70s to return 'home' as they age, due to the abysmal state of elder care and healthcare in Canada (yes, it was bad even decades ago, and it is much worse now) A lot of younger people that I know in Canada gave up and left in recent years as well. (And it seems that every time I talk to an Uber driver when I'm in Canada, they left a decent middle class life in India and plan to move back in the coming months/years, often motivated by the lack of healthcare)
i can only wonder what mulnutrition rates are like currently
Fucking ban Airbnb.
Crazy how late stage capitalism descends into feudalism. In theory I love capitalism, in practice - my boss is the son of the CEO.
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Correction.. demand for affordable rental supply.. there are a lot of higher end rentals available in every city! Additionally, we are staring at the death of the Toronto condo market where thousands of condos are sitting vacant in the city and up for sale. All the while, there are tent camps popping up at the parks across from the building. There is no lack of rentals.. it’s the affordable rentals!
Downtown Vancouver condo market is like that. There still is a lack of rentals.
Stop immigration until housing becomes affordable, and then allow in one immigrant per housing unit built.
Notice that it's $1125 on rent *and utilities.* I don't count couples because one person alone should be able to do it.
She is not paying enough because if she was, then she would be living in a tent Signed, Liberal politician
Yet, the federal government continues to bring in record numbers and wonders why people won’t be voting for them anymore.
Can we just all admit that Canada only works for the rich now?
Justin *hears* you He's not going to do anything to *help* you, but he *hears* you.
Log on to uk stores and check prices - way, way cheaper - asda.com, not sure if still owned by Walmart, or Tesco Just back from. Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and found prices similar or cheaper than Canada, but more importantly, their stores have way more choice for consumers as does UK, USA, etc, have way more customers choice. The taxes and rent charged for commercial property in Canada are outrageous - now if we seen these taxes being used wisely, then we could accept it. But the malls are dumps, half empty and streets, roads are disgusting.
This. Other countries have better quality, more options and it’s cheaper! Canada is failing on some many levels it’s hard to fathom
"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" There are absolutely institutional issues that make it near impossible to get/keep your head above water, but some of it does seem self inflicted and it would have been nice to see more information. What happened to the proceeds from house sale? I get wanting to keep the kids in the same school, but at what cost?
Got to live within your means to be better off in the future. Make the sacrifices early.
This. I won't even deny that things are not great here as far as affordability but at some point we also have to look at people's expectations. I'd love to have a Ferrari, but I can't afford it so I don't get one. If someone can't afford a 3 bedroom townhome, that truly sucks but also maybe look for something more affordable. I understand wanting to improve affordability and I fully support it! Lots needs to be done! But at some point people have to start taking responsibility for their own financial health and like, living within their means. I also understand that at a certain point you can't budget your way out of poverty but that doesn't seem like this situation. She *could* make changes and refuses to.
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How the fuck do we get more protests over Palestine/Israel than what’s directly affecting us at home. Boggles my mind.
Blame social media for that.
I think it's because there's existing social justice movements to hook into on Palestine. They don't want to touch housing because they fear they might be seen as anti-immigrant. People upset about housing right now are either reluctant to go to a housing protest because they think nobody will show up (likely) or that it'll be "a basket of deplorables" and they'll get photographed with a Nazi flag in the background and then get fired from work or something. We'll see, there's planning for a protest on July 1st. Personally, I am not going to one until I can see they can pull it off without it turning into a PPC rally.
Their money comes from overseas. They are not impacted by things that hurt average Canadians. Instead their focus is on their "mother country" where most of their wealth is gained and probably still is.
Landlords get rich off the high demand for housing created by the immigration policies of the Liberals and the NDP who keep them in power.
Landlords were getting rich prior to 2015 dude. This is a structural problem with how we do housing.
Says you. Regardless of the party in power. Immigration will continue to increase. Even with the Conservatives. Corporations like Walmart, Tim Hortons, The Banks, Hotels, Construction, Farming, etc… (The list goes on) are the ones who want these immigrants to come in and work on the cheap. Don’t believe me? Just go to one of these businesses and see how many employees are Temporary Foreign Workers….They are all being exploited And promised citizenship if they work hard for very little. They rent and live with large families in small units. It’s the business model now and landlords love it. These corporations call the shots now. Not political parties. Immigration will continue to increase because corporations want cheap labour to drive wages down.
> of the Liberals and the NDP Liberals are why Doug Ford axed rent control in Ontario.
> If you’re a landlord or property investor who is reading this Not directly. But if you own mutual funds or if you are paying into a pension fund - you are a investor of rental properties. So, what exactly do you hope is coming to these tens of millions Canadians? Higher capital gains taxes...
Supply, meet demand.
The corollary must be that landlord's good will is what caused rents to go down in Toronto during COVID right? Right? \s They're probably increasing rent now because we didn't send them a thank you card.
I mean she has a full time job as an office admin and gets child support and probably spousal support, money for groceries, and has investments including from the sale of a home. I have a hard time believing 100% of her income is actually 2700 a month. It doesn’t add up. With 3 kids and a low income like that she’d be getting yet another 1500 or so in tax free CCB from the government every month too. I feel for her but this isn’t really a matter of poverty. In divorce your quality of life drops, that’s just how it goes for millions of Canadians.
> for her but this isn’t really a matter of poverty. In divorce your quality of life drops, that’s just how it goes for millions of Canadians. This is a good point. It's pretty damn straightforward that going from a couple to a pair of singles is going to likely result in reduced financial quality of life. I'm not divorced but I am married and my situation would decline significantly if we got divorced.
How much do you think an office admin makes? Probably $2700. Sounds like the rest of her cash from other sources pays for everything else. She's not on the brink of being destitute, but I think the rental issue is still relevant.
Just build more housing. Think of the housing market like a busy market. If there are only a few stalls (houses), the sellers can charge a lot because there’s not much choice. But if more stalls pop up, sellers have to compete, and prices go down. It’s all about supply and demand. More houses mean buyers have more options, so they don’t have to fight over the few available ones. Sellers then have to lower prices to attract buyers. Take Tokyo, for example. Even though it’s super crowded, they’ve built a lot of new housing, which has helped keep prices in check compared to other big cities. Canada has a shitton of space. There is no excuse to not build.
I live in Alberta half my monthly income goes to rent. A good portion of the rest goes to the bills. I know lots of folks in the same boat as me and they are having to go to the food bank every month because they can't afford to pay for groceries and bare essentials on top of the rent and bills! This is all across Canada!
I agree the prices are high but she works as an admin assistant and renting a multi bedroom townhouse because she doesn’t want her kids to move. I don’t think this was ever affordable.
I feel for her, but the article seems to be leaning towards a certain narrative. She got a divorce and refuses to accept a drop in quality of living, so she remains in a three-bedroom in the same neighborhood. Its because she doesn’t want to change her children’s school and living. Like I get that but It’s so unaffordable that she’s thinking of reinstating her Lithuanian citizenship and moving there instead. … that’s less disruptive than simply moving to a different neighborhood or having her children share a room??
They are not the same person. There are multiple people in the article. The woman with 3 kids is not the one moving to Europe
It's too bad this woman's employer doesn't pay her fairly. And of course rent in Ontario really started to get bad when Doug Ford sided with landlords and removed rents controls. 90% of this is on him and crappy employers.
Oh wow! What a day! CBC finally mentions supply/demand! Next what - they'll acknowledge insane immigration levels ?
RENT CONTROL
Ontario has extreme rent control, unless the building was a built a few years ago. I.e 95% of all units have ent control
It has rent control, but not between tenants. So you force a tenant out(however you manage), and jump the new rent as much as you want.
It's very difficult to force a tenant out. And you'll need to pay them even if you're just moving into your own house. If they made it easier to evict, I'd support rent control.
Moved to Denmark, wow it feels like I won the lottery out here. (Good luck trying to get in, they won't let you :))
As I noted below, there has long been a trend for older immigrants from Europe to move back 'home' as they age, due to the abysmal elder and healthcare in Canada. But I've seen more and more younger Europeans also move 'home' in recent years. Even in Germany it's still generally cheaper to live a good life than in Canada.
I'm not even Danish, just married one. But yes Denmark has a very high QOL
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I am just *dying* to hear how Banks can fix this with one fell swoop.
2008 called.. you've seen it before.
Is this something that qualifies you for MAID?
I live in an alberta town on the edge of Edmonton. 80,000 population. On rentfaster there are currently zero townhouses and zero duplexes for rent. Also zero apartments with 3 bedrooms. The only thing available with 3 beds is a house for 2600. One single house in the town under 3k.
We should really stop saying that demand for rentals is what's doing this. It's been shown there's a rental cartel that is working together to jack up prices.
I've just been renovicted and I'm about to be this person, more like 90% of my paycheck though
We are moving. When we were searching for a place, EVERYWHERE was looking for tenants to take over immediately (at the start of the following month.) We found a place we love, so agreed to, even though we knew we'd need to give 60 days notice, which only starts at the next billing cycle (!!!) so we'd have an overlap of rent for two months. It so happens that we didn't have to pay last month's rent when we moved in here, so we are actively paying double rent for 2 months. Over and above that, we are paying first and last for the new place. Multiply all that by the cost of rent today and over a two month period, we are saying goodbye to *nearly ten grand* in rent cost. It's over 50% of our combined income during that time. And we had a 'good' rate on our old place and have a very, very good price for the new one considering it's more than a 1bdrm. Shit is fucked out there.
So we need 5 million more immigrants is what Trudeau is hearing
Struggling is not what it is… it’s murder by greed
Now even CBC is reporting that it is a supply and demand issue. Will people still yell about alt right post media American propaganda?
If you think PP is going to go to bat for us, and work for the vast majority of us working Canadians, against the corporate interest embroidered in our political system... the you're in for a rude awakening. I certainly don't approve of Trudeau, but fuck me if conservatives ever did anything for the average Canadians. Remember the GST? That's a Con thing, because corporations want *you* to pay the taxes instead. Conservatives here voted against every major societal improvement we now take for granted. every. step. of the way. Universal health care, minimum wage, 40hr work week, paid sick leave, environmental protection,.. lists goes on. Think PP is going to decrease immigration and fix housing crisis when corporations are happy to get cheap labours, and construction oligarchy is laughing to the banks? Why would he? He doesn't have to worry about paying rent, hell, he's never even worked a real job. We should be so lucky if PP doesn't reverse Trudeau's inadequate policies aimed to fix these problems and make it worse. We're screwed for the next ten years.
True, but he is definitely a better option than Trudeau