Hannah Hadfield and her partner have a comfortable two-bedroom apartment in Toronto’s west end with relatively affordable rent. But like many renters in the city, she doesn’t know what she’d do if they lost it.
Her landlords are fantastic, but getting older. Meanwhile she and her partner are at the point in their lives where they have an eye to the future, potentially starting a family and looking for somewhere with a bit more space.
But in Toronto’s current rental market, the prospect of finding another place to live is a cause for concern.
“If the market was normal, [losing our apartment] would be unfortunate but fine. We would go out and we would just get another two-bedroom apartment,” she said.
“But going out into the market right now is truly terrifying. Like, I don’t know where we would end up or what kind of apartment we would end up in.”
CBC Toronto has asked you to tell us about your rental experience. So far, hundreds have responded to our callout, with many saying they can afford their unit but are worried about losing it or finding somewhere better.
Some respondents told us they feel stuck, while others are worried about the future they envisioned for themselves and family.
That creates a number of challenges, from rentals that should be entry-level not opening up to many existing in a state of housing anxiety. One expert also says the issue takes away some of the things that have traditionally been a positive of renting housing, like the flexibility to move closer to jobs or daycare services.
Teenagers to expecting couples are worried about moving out
Kathrin Jassmann has an apartment near High Park and said she can’t afford more rent than she’s paying now.
“It’s just depressing because I have a really decent job, I make a six-figure income and I’m scraping by and I can’t afford a house or an apartment or a condo,” she said.
Ideally, Jassmann wants to leave the city for somewhere smaller. But she’s finding rental markets outside the city are no better and ownership is unattainable.
Understanding Toronto’s rental market pain points
Toronto’s rental market has several pain points. CBC Toronto’s Shannon Martin speaks to several housing experts to better understand how Canada’s largest city has been pushed into a rental crisis.
Jim Quick and his wife recently moved into a new place after their previous building was sold. The apartment is slightly smaller than where they were before but has two bedrooms, which will accommodate their baby on the way.
But the idea of owning feels far away.
“Between the two of us, we’re making about $170,000 and the idea of having a home, like our own place, is unattainable,” he said, especially with his wife soon to be on maternity leave.
“It’s very frustrating. I feel like the goalposts keep getting moved further and further away from us,” he said.
George Freeland-Haynes is 16 years old and shares a basement apartment with his mother where he’s lived since he was a couple months old. (Submitted by George Freeland-Haynes)
George Freeland-Haynes is 16 years old and shares a basement apartment with his mother where he’s lived since he was a couple months old. They pay about $1,300 for a one bedroom and learned last summer they may need to move out — something that has since been delayed.
If they had to move out, Freeland-Haynes said they’re privileged in the sense that they’d be able to stay with family, but finding another apartment in the area wouldn’t be possible.
“The idea that I was going to be spending the first four months of [school] without necessarily a place that, a home that was mine, was admittedly scary.”
Issue is not a new one for some: expert
Nemoy Lewis, an assistant professor at the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Toronto Metropolitan University, said this issue is not a new one for some communities.
“Housing precarity and insecurity has been very much prevalent in a lot of racialized and economically disenfranchised communities,” he said. “More recently, even as a result of the pandemic, housing precarity has landed on the doorstep of a lot of households that historically never experienced housing precarity.”
He agrees with the argument that more housing supply is needed.
“But I think we need to be building supply that Canadians can actually afford,” he said. “A big problem is that the housing that’s actually being built right now is vastly unaffordable.”
Ricardo Tranjan, a senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said the weakening of rent regulation in Ontario is what’s led to people feeling like they can’t afford to move.
Toronto’s rental market is in dire need of more supply. But back in the 1960s and 1970s the city had a healthy stock of apartment buildings. So what happened? CBC Toronto’s Shannon Martin explores the timeline of when Canada’s biggest city started running out of rentals.
He pointed to rent control only applying to buildings first occupied before Nov. 15, 2018 and a lack of rent control on vacant units.
“So you create a huge, huge difference between what is being paid in occupied units and what is being paid in vacant and non-controlled units,” he said.
He said regulatory measures like rent control for occupied and vacant units is needed.
Geordie Dent, the executive director of the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Association, says strengthening tenant’s rights could also help.
“If there were easier, quicker ways that tenants can get justice, if there were strong penalties for landlords that actually broke the law, again, people wouldn’t feel so stuck.”
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
