Seventy-five per cent of Torontonians believe they’ll never own a home
A new poll conducted for CityNews shows that renters aren’t feeling great
A new poll has revealed a dismal view among Torontonians who do not own homes. According to a survey conducted by Canada Pulse Insights at the request of CityNews, 75 per cent of non-homeowners in Toronto and the GTA believe they’ll never make the move to home ownership.
Among the 38 per cent of non-homeowner respondents, just 25 per cent said they believed they’d purchase a home someday. Even as home sales and prices continue to decline, the average benchmark home price in the GTA was $956,800 as of last month.
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Eighty-three per cent of respondents in Toronto said their access to affordable homes for sale was “bad or terrible.” Across the GTA, 73 per cent said the same.
The rental situation isn’t much better. Seventy-eight per cent of respondents said they consider access to affordable rental units “bad or terrible.” (Many renters are feeling extra stressed after the Ford government hinted at the end of security of tenure in its Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act last month.)
The poll was completed between September 30 and October 6. Mayor Olivia Chow has since promised to “give taxpayers a break next year,” but only one in six respondents felt she had made progress toward improved affordable housing and rental assistance during her time as mayor.
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
