One of Toronto's last affordable neighbourhoods is no longer affordable for many long-term residents

With two adults and four kids squeezed into her two-bedroom apartment, Rosanna Araujo recently got rid of her dining table because it was eating up too much space.

Now she eats most of her meals standing over the kitchen counter. 

"It's not big enough," said Araujo, who works for a non-profit and lives in Weston, a neighbourhood in northwestern Toronto.

"We flirt with the idea [of moving] often, but we cannot afford to go anywhere. We can't afford to rent in Toronto," she said, speaking at a public forum in Weston hosted by The Current on Monday. 

Araujo and her husband both have good jobs, but feel like they're at their financial limit. She estimates that a place big enough to meet her family's needs would cost $4,000 a month — a 64 per cent increase on their current rent. 

Until recently, Weston was considered one of the more affordable neighbourhoods in Toronto, avoiding the pitfalls of gentrification that have driven residents from so many other neighbourhoods in the city. But in the past five years, as housing prices and living expenses have soared across the country, Weston has not been spared. 

More residents like Araujo are facing the impossible choice wrought by skyrocketing rents: drain their bank accounts to pay ever-higher rents, or leave the community they love?

Even if they could move to a bigger place, Araujo says she would rather stay in Weston, a neighbourhood she loves for its diversity and sense of community, as well as its easy access to trails along the nearby Humber River. There's a mix of single-family homes and high-rise apartment towers nestled around a busy shopping street, and a popular weekend farmers' market.

Long-time Weston resident Sharlene Henry said she's seen rents in the area jump by as much as $1,000 in the last five years. She said the spike has been driven in part by the 2015 opening of the UP Express, a rail link connecting Pearson International Airport and downtown Toronto, which has a Weston stop.

Henry said these changes amount to gentrification, which has left her community wondering if they still have a place here.

"It feels like they want all of the people of colour out of this community so that they can charge high, [exorbitant] prices," she said.

Weston isn't the only community facing these challenges. As Canada grapples with a deepening housing crisis, issues around rising costs and gentrification are playing out across the country — from community-led efforts to protect historic Black communities in Nova Scotia, to rapid change in small-town B.C., to attempts to preserve Vancouver's struggling Chinatown.

A report this month showed rental costs across Canada have increased by 9.6 per cent in the past year, to an average of $2,117 a month. Separately, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. estimates that Canada needs to build an extra 3.5 million new units by the end of the decade, over and above what's already in the works, in order to ensure enough housing supply to close the country's affordability gap.

Bryan Douthwright is an advocacy manager at the Weston King Neighbourhood Centre, which helps people struggling with access to housing, health care and basic necessities such as food.