Figures released by the Ontario government Thursday show young professionals are having a hard time finding housing in Toronto. Earlier in the day, the Toronto Real Estate Board reported sales prices are up 25% in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2017. Despite a recent drop, home prices in Toronto are still the highest in Canada, and the third highest in the world.
Last week, five people died in a fire that spread in a basement apartment and burned the structure to the ground. Firefighters described the area as a “ghost town” after people evacuated in minutes and neighbours trapped in the upstairs apartment were unable to escape.
The New York Times reported Thursday that young professionals are moving away from Toronto because they can no longer afford to live there.
“One person,” the Times reported, “sent the following message on Friday on the chat service Quora: ‘$220,000 a year, huge house with fantastic park, location, in Toronto, so much. And all I get is A and B cities?’
“[He] was right to be frustrated. One of the worst things about living in Toronto right now is the ridiculous cost of housing. I think I’ve now lived in most major cities in the world and I can attest to how expensive life is here.”
The 2016 University of Toronto Graduate School of Public Policy report found that salaries in Toronto are well below the national average and the combined Canadian and Ontario average salaries have only risen by a minimal amount since 2009. Young professionals are often forced to work where they can afford to live and Toronto is no exception.
“[I]t got so expensive that my income was insufficient to make ends meet for my family. And when people ask me whether I’m planning to move from Toronto to the greater Toronto area, I always joke that I’m going to go from the other side,” one recipient of the Times story tweeted.
“This is probably the case for many people. Living a life full of meaning, family, friends, community requires more time, attention, money, etc. than people reasonably can afford,” tweeted the StatsCan economist Robin Silvester.
What this boils down to is that economic reality is an issue that is both reinforcing and resisting economic growth. When people are unable to make rent in major Canadian cities, it can affect the development of other parts of the economy. Will creativity, innovation and risk-taking suffer when young people leave major cities?
In a blog post on the Upper Lake in Stittsville blog, The Traveller, Dan Rossi wrote, “As the cost of living goes up, the idea that it is OK to spend 100 percent of your income on rent diminishes and more people can’t afford to live in the core. This is not only bad for downtown Toronto, it’s bad for the rest of Canada, it’s bad for transportation, it’s bad for schools, it’s bad for shopping, it’s bad for transportation, it’s bad for schools, it’s bad for shopping, it’s bad for destinations that offer cheap or free transportation.”
Perhaps the best response to the Times story is from the award-winning Canadian author Michael Ondaatje, who says, “If the quality of life in a city has a tendency to increase in proportion to the growing gap between a) the growing numbers of people who could afford to live there and b) the number of people living there, then we may in time have some real problems.”