Recession: It's a bumpy ride

For days, my street has been rumbling with the sounds of recession.

In the dead of winter, our federal parliament passed a stimulus budget to prevent the worldwide recession from obliterating our economy.

This summer, we are starting to see some of the signs of that stimulus budget.

Throughout my community (the Beaches in Toronto), streets are getting torn up then lined with fresh pavement so smooth, parents and children strapped on their roller blades the moment workers finished paving last night, gliding along my street and enjoying a fleeting moment of perfection.

My neighbour was among the roller bladers. He is smart, charming, energetic, and one of the first persons in my circle whose job was eliminated in the spring, due to recession. He's still without paying work.

My neighbour fits the demographic of Canada's hecession [2]: men, mostly of prime working age (25-55), make up 71% of Canadians who have lost their job since recession hit Canada last October.

In the spring, economists made hay out of rising self-employment numbers - calling them ‘green shoots', signs of hope that Canada's recession would be short and shallow.

My enterprising neighbour is among the newly self-employed, but it takes months, sometimes years, to get a new business functioning. Meanwhile, the money is running out. There's a mortgage to pay, kids to feed.

But, he says, it could be worse. He's got a friend who lost his job, had to sell his house, and now he, his wife and their children are living in a crowded house with their parents.

Three weeks ago, one of my closest friends was informed her job had been eliminated. She's a single mother with no savings and very limited access to credit, so the heat is on for her to find a job and fast.

But it's not like it was when she was in her 20s, able to bounce from one contract to another within days. She's mid-career. Finding career-level work takes time, the one thing she doesn't have.

For the first two weeks in between jobs my friend thought her biggest challenge was to find work in time to pay September's rent. But last week her landlords threw her a major curveball.

They're hurting from recession too so they've decided to sell the house they're living in and move back into the house my friend is renting from them. She has two months to find a new home and even less time to find a new job.

The temptation to sell is strong in my community, which is leading the housing market recovery. Home prices are rising above average [3] in Toronto's Beaches community and bidding wars remain the norm, despite recession.

Rental prices in my community aren't falling either: Landlords feel no pressure to lower rents to accommodate families scrambling to keep it together in tough times.

The streets of my community may be lined with fresh pavement gold, but it doesn't make the experience of recession any less bumpy. And it's not over yet.

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