Few new housing options hampering chances for women, low-income residents
Reports shows Cambridge added five rental units over three years
Political will is what’s needed to improve housing options for women and low-income people in Cambridge, a webinar hosted by the Cambridge YWCA heard.
The Waterloo Region Community Foundation’s 2023 Vital Signs report shows new rental housing in Cambridge was near stagnant between July 2019 and June 2022, with just five units added. That compares to 1,082 new units in Waterloo, 991 in Kitchener and 165 across all four townships.
The lack of new options combined with the continued loss of existing affordable rentals, as well as increasing rents and cost of living, means many people in Cambridge are finding themselves in overcrowded housing or living outside, said Steven Ayers, chief executive officer of Common Good Solutions, which prepared the report.
“There’s just really almost no units renting anymore that are affordable to the folks at the bottom 20 to 25 per cent income distribution,” Ayers said at last week’s event.
The statistics are stark: MLS prices for housing increased 274 per cent in Cambridge from January 2005 to June 2023;
Rental costs of vacant units have increased 141 per cent since 2008 in Waterloo Region. This has accelerated in recent years, with the average monthly rent for units built from 2015 onward at $2,263;
Income has increased between 40 to 50 per cent since 2008, far less than what’s needed to keep pace with increasing rents;
Women in particular are at a disadvantage. The annual income required to rent a unit costing $1,864 a month (2022 average) is $75,000. The median income for women in Waterloo Region was $36,800 in 2021;
Older buildings, where tenants have often lived long-term and had lower rents, have seen significant rent increases. Rental buildings constructed before 1960 saw rents increase 75 per cent on average from 2018 to 2023, an increase from an average of $799 to $1,401.
“It’s like a tsunami of bad events that are happening to people and it’s really insurmountable,” said Shannon Down, executive director of Waterloo Region Community Legal Services.
Down said she’s seeing tenants who had to rent marketrate units and, as a result, have racked up significant rent arrears, often in the range of $15,000 to $20,000.
“Then, if they are getting evicted, their options are so limited in the market that often what we’re seeing is people saying to us, ‘Look, I’m going to be homeless,’ ” she said.
All of these conditions have combined to fuel the current unsheltered crisis, as well as overcrowding as people try to avoid living outside.
People may not be living in the streets but they may be living with folks in an environment where there isn’t adequate space, Ayers said. “They may be couch surfing.”
Between 2016 and 2021, the number of suitably housed households — homes with sufficient space for occupants — grew by eight per cent.
But overcrowding grew by 46 per cent, Ayers said.
The shortfall of one-bedroom units grew 37 per cent, twobedrooms 81 per cent and three-bedrooms a whopping 104 per cent.
This has contributed to a lower sense of belonging and neighbourhood satisfaction for people renting in Cambridge.
It’s estimated more than 1,700 people in Waterloo Region are experiencing homelessness
Long wait list
While some might look to housing subsidized by the region or its partners as the solution, the wait list for such housing means many will wait years.
The wait list is currently at nearly 8,000 people. In 2022, only 3.5 per cent of the people on that list were housed, Ayers said. This disproportionately impacts Cambridge women who are 1.7 times more likely to live in subsidized housing.
In Cambridge, 4.5 per cent of households are subsidized, slightly higher than the rest of Waterloo Region.
“It’s nowhere near adequate to the challenges we’ve raised,” Ayers said.
It’s estimated more than 1,700 people in Waterloo Region are experiencing homelessness.
Kate Taylor, director of programs for the YWCA, said these circumstances are making the need for prevention critical.
“The need to move upstream and address this work through prevention is really just becoming more urgent,” she said.
Other cities are working to prevent the loss of affordable rentals.
Hamilton, for example, is working on a renoviction bylaw.
Renovictions occur when a landlord evicts tenants saying they have to do significant repair work that can’t be done while the tenant is living in the unit.
Often these are older buildings with much lower rates than the current market rent. Then, after the renovations are done, the units are rented out at much higher rates.
Down said tenants often don’t know their rights, which include the option to return to the unit once renovated.
“Those are the units where we really want to make sure people aren’t losing those units because they’re being pushed out into the market,” she said.
Lee Ann Hundt is the executive director of the K-W Urban Native Wigwam project, which has several subsidized homes throughout the region.
She said one of their efforts is empowering the people living in those homes, whether that means taking on some regular maintenance themselves or not fearing they’ll be evicted if they ask for problems to be fixed.
Panel members were asked what solving these challenges would look like in a perfect world and the list was long, including access to justice for tenants and people experiencing gender-based or intimate partner violence, the ability to rapidly rehome people who have lost housing, political will, upstream prevention and a massive influx of subsidized housing.
“I would love to see a change in the collective narrative, more empathy and understanding for the experiences of unhoused folks,” Taylor said. “I think many of us are closer to not having enough than we are to extreme wealth and I would love to see a shift in that fear associated with homelessness, with shelters, with harm reduction in our community.”