When people hear about my miserable 4-month search for an afforadle, available, and non-awful room to rent in Toronto, the glib answer is often that I should leave the city. After all, Toronto’s housing market is notoriously punishing.
I call the answer glib because it doesn’t reflect much awareness of what is also happening in potential alternative cities. Vancouver is about 10% more expensive, and cities with far fewer employment options like Guelph, Hamilton, and Barrie are only marginally cheaper. The crisis for renters is both multi-causal and global.
For instance: The UK housing crisis isn’t just about mortgages – private renters desperately need help too (“Three-fifths of private renters cannot afford a decent standard of living”)
If you’re looking for a place to rent, prepare to duke it out with eight other people, and as many as 23 in the most competitive U.S. housing markets, a new report found.
As daunting as that figure may seem, it’s actually fallen from the pandemic years, when the typical apartment saw between 11 and 13 applicants, according to RentCafe. The firm analyzed apartment applications from parent company Yardi, which offers property-management software, to come up with these metrics, including how long it takes to rent a vacant flat and how likely renters were to renew their lease.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/looking-to-rent-prepare-to-fight-8-other-potential-applicants-data-suggests/
To solve Dutch housing crisis, proposal aimed to ban the rich from buying some homes. Could it work here? | CBC News
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/netherlands-housing-income-dutch-home-ownership-1.6899951