Had I found a place to live? That was the first question people asked when I arrived here last month.
I had looked at a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation report from 2014 that did indicate a near-zero vacancy rate. However, the average rental rate cited was nowhere near the cost of what is actually available.
For buyers in Squamish, it’s also tight, and last week we heard of new condos selling out in 90 minutes. I won’t even go into the long-term problems of cities like Vancouver.
Most recently, I lived in Saskatchewan, where things are cheap compared with the West Coast but have been increasing sharply over the last decade. At my last job I came across a report on social conditions in a Regina working-class neighbourhood in 1913, during the midst of its first boom. A house cost $2,100, or $2,500 – get this – without interest. Meanwhile, annual incomes were typically $800 to $1,000, or higher for union jobs.
A century later, the cost of a house in that area, in the midst of another boom, had grown roughly a hundredfold. Not so for income. Safe to say, most people in the neighbourhood are not making $80,000 to $100,000 a year.
Maybe I’m looking at the disconnect between what we make and what we pay for housing the wrong way. Two years ago, the Fraser Institute released a report saying the cost of raising a child in Canada was actually falling, which came as almost laughable news to anyone I know with kids.
The report, though, did not include housing as a cost because the authors defined it as an investment. On the surface, that’s true. Unlike other things we buy, our homes accrue value, or at least that’s the plan.
However, there’s a fly in the Fraser ointment. Unlike any other investment we make, a place to live is not optional; it’s not purchased with surplus income, at least for most of us.
A home, after all, is right up there on our list of needs, which might explain why it’s on the minds of everyone in home-squeezed Squamish right now.
(And, by the way, yes, I did find a place to rent.)
