Imagine you’ve lost your job and now your landlord says you’ve got to move out of your three-bedroom house because he’s moving back in.
Imagine combing your neighbourhood for a dearth of affordable three bedroom rentals to house you and your two teenagers.
Now imagine finding a run down, overpriced rental house on a busy, noisy street being shown by a real estate agent who openly admits he’s screening out renters who don’t have a job and who don’t have a decent credit rating.
I didn’t have to imagine it because this happened to a friend of mine in Toronto this month.
The real estate agent said 20 people had already applied to rent this lemon of a house but were turned down because they didn’t meet the owner’s criteria.
One woman had lost her job – it is a recession, and 66% of all job losses so far in this recession have been concentrated in Ontario – but her mother was willing to cut cheques for a year’s worth of rent to guarantee her daughter a home.
The owner refused it.
Another applicant had a job but didn’t have the best credit rating, and was refused too. Why, the real estate agent mused, were they seeking rental housing when they had bad credit?
Perhaps because banks refuse to allow Canadians with bad credit to qualify for a mortgage, forcing them into a rental housing market that the Ontario Human Rights Commission confirms is discriminating based on age, race and social standing.
With record high unemployment, household debt and a rise in personal bankruptcies during this, the worst recession since the Great Depression, bad credit is a little black cloud hovering over many renters.
On paper, it’s actually illegal for landlords to discriminate against people in Ontario. In practice, it’s another matter.
Affordable housing expert Michael Shapcott, with the Wellesley Institute, observes: “While everyone is affected by the current recession, not everyone is affected equally. Even before the recession, discrimination in housing was being fueled by a province-wide affordable housing crisis, and all indications are that the problems are growing more intense.”
People wonder how it is that so many low-income Americans got lured into bad mortgage deals they couldn’t afford – part of the social phenomenon behind the financial ponzi scheme that brought the world’s economy to a screech halt over a year ago.
Given the discrimination in the housing rental market, you can imagine why home ownership would be so attractive. Sadly, a global economic meltdown has done little to put the lack of affordable housing on Canada’s political map.
Which begs the question: Have we learned anything from the Great Recession – or are things going to get worse before they get worse?
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Nick Seebruch, editor
