Rents dwarf minimum wage in every province. Rising interest rates aren’t helping
Global News
Minimum wage workers are increasingly unable to make ends meet in Canada's rental markets, a new report shows, a struggle only made worse by pressure from higher interest rates.
Pressure from higher interest rates and a lack of affordable housing means renters living on minimum wage in almost every neighbourhood across Canada are falling behind, a new report shows.
A Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) analysis released Tuesday evaluates housing markets in Canada by “rental wage” — the hourly earnings a full-time worker would need to afford the rent on a one- or two-bedroom home at no more than 30 per cent of their income.
The CCPA report finds that the rental wage needed to live comfortably in each province in Canada is well above the minimum wage in those jurisdictions.
The rental wage needed to afford a one-bedroom apartment in Ontario is $25.96 an hour, rising to $29.90 for a two-bed unit; the province’s minimum wage is $15.50, one of the highest in the country.
Results are similar in B.C. and Alberta, while Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador have the smallest gaps between the rental and minimum wages. The northern territories were not included in the analysis.
On a more granular level, 93 per cent of neighbourhoods with enough reliable data to be included in the study did not have minimum wages that matched the market’s rental wage, according to CCPA.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Toronto and Vancouver are particularly unaffordable for minimum wage workers. The rental wage in these cities is more than double that of the minimum wage, meaning two full-time workers couldn’t afford the average one-bedroom apartment together in the cities.
David Macdonald, CCPA senior economist and one of the report’s authors, says that for single parents working for minimum wage in some of Canada’s most expensive housing markets, the rental wage for two-bedroom apartments is far out of reach, leaving entire families constrained to single-bed homes.
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