Low wages leave Londoners caught in a housing crunch

A series exploringreal estate, trends and the importance ofhome

Amid the real estate boom in London, there's also a very different reality.

A third of Londoners rent that's higher than the provincial and national average.

Almost 20 per cent of people here live on less than $30,000.

• Two London families struggle to make ends meet

The average rent for a single person isjust over $800 almost double what social assistance allocates for housing per month.

More people are earning less than they did in 2005 and a quarter of children live in low-income households, the third-highest rate in the country.

"This is about poverty. It's an income problem," said Tracy Smith-Carrier, a professor in the school of social work at King's University College and a researcher with the London Poverty Research Centre at King's.

"With the loss of manufacturing we also have high unemployment rates and low employment rates. Our employment rates have been steadily declining since 2000."

London also has more people paying at least 30 per cent of their income on housing a measure of affordable housing which leaves precious little for bills, foodand other necessities.

"It's interesting to see how much London is booming in terms of housing, because it's not across the sector. When you look at what's happening, there's new high-end condos in the core, there's single family homes in the suburbs. But for folks that can't pay for that level of housing, there's very little," said Abe Oudshoorn of the London Homeless Coalition.

This week he called oncity politicians to ask the provincial government to raise the housing portion of Ontario Works rates by $245. An average bachelor apartment in London costs $621 and an average one-bedroom apartment costs $802.

There's a one-per-cent vacancy rate for one-bedroom apartments in the city, on par with the vacancy rate for Toronto and Vanvouver. That means single people looking for affordable housing struggle to find it.

Affordable housing needed

The city offers incentives for developers who build affordable or geared-to-income housing units alongside those priced at market-rent, but there's not enough of those to help all those who need housing, Oudshoorn said.

"There are new affordable housing builds happening every year, we get provincial and municipal money to do that, but it's the scale of the need versus the amount of funding that's the problem," Oudshoorn said. "There are 3,000 people on waiting lists for affordable housing."

That housing has a reputationfor being old many have electricheating, which quickly eats up a budget as well as run-down and dirty.

Wednesday's census data revealed that 17 per cent of Londoners are living on low income 34 per cent of those are lone-parent families.

Living on low income, one paycheque away from homelessness, is incredibly stressful, said Smith-Carrier.

"I grew up in poverty. I grew up with a single mom on social assistance. I'm familiar in my history with what that's like, and I've also focused my research on social assistance rates," she said. "Food insecurity was a chronic problem for our household. You end up thinking you're not worthy to have your basic needs met. You end up going from one problem to the next."