An ‘untenable situation’: Most Hamilton apartments unaffordable to those earning less than $65,000
A new report from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) has found that only 12 per cent of vacant apartments in Hamilton are affordable to those earning $46,000 a year.
In fact, most vacant apartments in the city were only affordable to those earning a yearly salary of $65,000 or more, according to the report.
For a rental to be considered affordable in the eyes of CMHC, 30 per cent or less of an individual's income would go toward rent - meaning those empty units would need to cost around $1,150.
Meanwhile, a national rent report from Rentals.ca found that the average one-bedroom apartment in Hamilton was renting to new tenants for $1,764 in December.
Released Thursday, the CMHC report utilizes data collected through the corporation's latest housing survey and includes the cost of rent for both tenanted and untenanted units in the city.
Tom Cooper, director of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction, told The Spectator that with such little supply of affordable rentals, some tenants are spending upwards of 80 per cent of their income just to be housed.
In turn, other facets of their life - such as healthy eating, education and community participation - have to get dropped," he said.
By any argument, $46,000 shouldn't be a poverty wage," said Cooper. But that's what it has become, simply because the cost of housing is so overwhelming for people."
According to the 2021 Statistics Canada census, the median household income in Hamilton was $86,000 in 2020, while the median income for a single-person household was $40,400.
Rentals in Hamilton continue to be in high demand, with the city's vacancy rate for purpose-built apartments sinking to 1.9 per cent in 2022 - the lowest it's been since 2002.
That number comes just months after a report from the Social Planning and Research Council (SPRC) found the number of renters in Steeltown had grown by 11.5 per cent between 2016 and 2021 to an all-time high of 76,400 households.
The rise in rental demand was fuelled by several factors, including an increase in the number of student renters, a jump in the amount of full-time earners and skyrocketing mortgage rates, which have forced would-be homebuyers to the sidelines, according to the report.
The supply of rentals has also failed to keep pace" with demand, according to CMHC.
Only 65 purpose-built rental units were added to the city's stock last year - nearly matching the number of apartments that had been removed from the inventory.
Those factors have resulted in stiff competition" in the rental market, which has led to sharp rent increases for future tenants. The rent for an average two-bedroom unit went up by 26 per cent after it had been vacated, according to the report. According to Rentals.ca, the average price of a two-bedroom apartment in Hamilton was $2,145 last month.
Cooper said skyrocketing rent prices have made it impossible for people to save for a down payment on a home in the city.
In December, the average price of a house in Hamilton was $750,601, according to the Realtors Association of Hamilton-Burlington (RAHB).
Cooper called on all levels of government to legislate much stronger" tenant protections and create more proactive" affordable housing initiatives - otherwise the city's housing crisis will only worsen for vulnerable residents.
It's an absolutely untenable situation for people in Hamilton," he said.
Fallon Hewitt is a reporter at The Spectator. fhewitt@thespec.com