Vacancy rates in Ottawa lowest in Ontario as community housing wait list grows

By Louise Rachlis
A new report on housing issues shows that it is especially difficult for low and modest income people in Kingston and Ottawa to find affordable rental housing that is appropriate for their families.
The Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association and the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada Ontario Region have released the 2011 edition of Where’s Home? The report analyzes 22 separate housing markets and highlights the need for more affordable rental housing across the province.
According to the report, vacancy rates in Kingston (1.0%) and Ottawa (1.6%) are the lowest in Ontario and well below the 3% vacancy rate threshold for a healthy rental housing market. Affordable homes are needed for more than 152,000 households on community housing wait lists across Ontario.
Among the report’s main findings were:
• Vacancy rates across the province and particularly in urban centers have tightened with the provincial average now at 2.9%.
• One-in-five Ontario renter households are spending more than half their income on housing.
• There is a growing gap in the incomes of tenants and homeowners.
• Median tenant incomes have actually declined by $5,000 over the last 20 years from $41,000 in to $36,000.
• Demand for affordable units is conservatively estimated at 10,000 homes a year for the next decade and at best we are adding only a few thousand units a year.
• An astonishing 94% of the housing starts in the last five year period were in the ownership market, with rental accounting for only 5%. Just 15 years ago, rental construction accounted for over a quarter (27%) of the market.
• Food bank usage is up as many low and modest income households must choose between paying the rent and putting food on the table.
Mary-Ann Schwering is Executive Director of the Co-operative Housing Association of Eastern Ontario. Although she was not involved in producing the report, she has certainly experienced its findings.
“It’s pretty clear that housing charges are on the increase,” she says, “and there is a lot of pressure on people living in the co-ops to pay more than they feel able to. As well subsidy pools are shrinking.”
That means that “everybody is feeling the pinch.” “Coops themselves are aging, and people living in the housing coops who don’t qualify for subsidies are finding that they are paying the same as other rents around in another complex. It’s not because co-ops might not want to provide lower rents, but they can’t. The expenses are the same as in the private sector and they are forced to put their rents up. There always seem to be more people in need than there is housing available.”
Ottawa’s newest co-op housing is Maclean Co-operative Homes, occupied since 2007. Maclean has a group of townhomes and apartments, with slightly lower rent. Blue Heron in Kanata, also with townhomes and apartments, has been around slightly longer, since 2006. “There could be so many more,” she says. “People call us seeking supportive house and we refer them back to the website www.chaseo.org . There is a vacancy report there, but very few geared to income, and they fill up pretty quickly.”
Amanda Shaughnessy is the Manager of Coop Voisins, a 76-unit apartment building in the Sandy Hill neighborhood. “I get calls all the time from people with very low incomes, who are desperate to find an affordable apartment,” she says. “It’s hard to tell them that they will have to wait three to four years due to the long waiting list.”
The Coop’s members are families, students, seniors and singles. Forty-five of the units are subsidized. In 2010, six of the subsidized units changed hands. The turnover is low because members won’t normally move unless they can find another affordable or subsidized unit, and the waiting list for these is long.”
The new members were referred from the centralized waiting list, the Registry. There are over 10,000 applicants on the registry’s waiting list.
“Some of the households came from priority categories,” she says, “such as Special Priority (victim of domestic violence), Urgent Safety and Homeless. A couple of others came from the chronological waiting list. Families sometimes live in motels while they wait for safe, affordable housing. Others wait in shelters.”
Since moving into the Coop, most of the members have experienced a positive change in their lives and have gone back to school or found jobs. “The members find that having a safe, affordable home in a friendly community allows them to get on with their lives.”
The average gross income of all the Coop’s subsidized families is $16,451. The average income for all singles is $10,329. Even with a lower housing charge (rent), she says it is still a challenge for them to pay their monthly bills, especially Hydro bills, since the Coop apartments are heated with electric baseboard heating.
“And yet, the members realize that they are better off than the thousands of people with low incomes who are trying to find an affordable apartment in the marketplace.”

The report “Where’s Home?” can be found on www.onpha.on.ca or www.chfc.ca.