Chazelle Santana is desperate to move from her one-bedroom apartment to a larger apartment, but can’t afford more space.
A resident of London, Ont., Says her seven-year-old son is growing fast and the family needs more space, but rising rental costs in the city are making it difficult to relocate.
“I got into a ridiculous situation,” said the 52-year-old photographer and artist.
“I really need two bedrooms. In normal times, years and years ago, as it was before, I would even choose to have three bedrooms and … I would have the extra room as a studio. “
Santana moved into her building six years ago and pays just under $ 800 a month. A renovated one-bedroom apartment in her building in north London is now rented for nearly $ 2,000 a month, she said.
Rising real estate prices have also forced her to abandon plans to eventually buy her own home.
“I felt it was completely feasible, I had my goals and plans in place,” she said. “And then for the last few years I’ve been sitting here and I think it doesn’t matter what I do, I feel it will be impossible now because of the prices.
The cost of housing, both renting and buying a property, is one of the most important issues facing residents of this southwestern Ontario city as the provincial election approaches.
All major political parties have pledged housing affordability, with progressive conservatives, new Democrats and liberals promising to build 1.5 million new homes if elected.
The Tory government passed a new law shortly before the election campaign to speed up approvals and other construction processes, but critics said there were no bolder measures such as changing municipal zoning rules to allow more housing to be built than single-family homes. .
The New Democrats promise to build 250,000 affordable housing managed by public, non-profit and cooperative housing providers. They also promise to regain control of rents and allow first-time buyers with household incomes below $ 200,000 to gain access to equity loans of up to 10 percent of the purchase price.
The Liberals promise to work with municipalities to expand zoning opportunities, regain control over rents, and create an Ontario housing corporation to finance and build affordable housing.
The Greens say they will build 182,000 permanently available municipal rental housing over the next decade, including 60,000 supportive housing.
For Kathleen Bruner, finding affordable housing in London has become a real problem.
She says she is trying to find a two-bedroom apartment for rent after securing a new job in the city, but five recent trips to find a new home have failed.
The 53-year-old woman, who currently lives with her partner in a rented house in Bari, Ont., Says she is now considering moving to a motel or living with her 26-year-old daughter to avoid doing so. he lost his new job as superintendent of trustees at a London hospital.
“I have a job waiting, a well-paid job … And I have nowhere to move,” she said.
“At one point they said it was $ 1,095 (per month) … And then I went to look at it, the man called to give me the address to go see, and he said, ‘Oh, that’s $ 1,500.’ “
Bruner says landlords and their agents have told her that rents have risen recently due to high demand from people moving to the city.
She says she hopes to save enough money to buy a mobile home one day before retiring because buying a property is no longer feasible.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get a real house,” she said. “Mobile homes, you can get them for less than $ 200,000.”
Michael Hahn, an associate professor of sociology at Western University, said housing in London was relatively undervalued compared to other jurisdictions because the city’s economy relied on production that had not been doing well until recently.
That situation has changed, he says.
“People come to London with money from Toronto and Montreal, and we’re also starting to increase the number of newcomers we get,” he said.
Hahn says London’s population grew by more than 10 percent between 2016 and 2021, while housing grew by just 6.8 percent.
“It creates a bit of a perfect storm,” he says.
Jared Seifman, chief executive of the London Housing Association, says the city’s housing market can’t keep up with population growth.
“Over the last five years … population growth has almost doubled the supply of housing each year,” he said. “We are now reaching a fever point when there is so much of this demand and this lack of supply.
He says there are a number of problems hampering developers’ ability to increase the supply of new homes, including delays and delays in approval processes for development, zoning and subdivision.
“This is an area where we know that the province has the ability and strong capacity to potentially make some legislative changes … to streamline some of these processes, which can take a very, very long time,” he said.
Problems with the supply chain during the COVID-19 pandemic also affected the ability of home builders to deliver new homes, he said, while the war in Ukraine also affected the arrival of some building materials from Europe.
The industry is also concerned about the lack of skilled workers, Seifman said.
“We are experiencing this every day as an industry, trying to find enough skilled professions to be able to be on sites. “Sometimes you wait weeks to get the right crew,” he said.
“Many retirees will come in the next few years. So while we certainly have challenges now, I think there needs to be a lot of recognition for how we can quickly plan and move forward for this future. ”
Ontario’s election is scheduled for June 2.
This report by The Canadian Press was last updated on May 29, 2022.
Add Comment