By Angela Burton
Out with the old, in with the new. Profit-driven developers are transforming old office buildings and schools into funky downtown abodes for a new generation of young, urban professionals and well-to-do empty-nesters.
This influx of well-to-do homeowners, however, is leaving low-income renters out in the cold.
Literally and figuratively.
“Rental vacancies decline,” the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. trumpeted last month, just as the chill of winter was settling in.
Nowhere in Canada is the rental squeeze being felt more acutely than right here in Centretown, where the vacancy rate in October 1999 was just 0.4 per cent.
There are less than 1000 rental units in downtown Ottawa, according to CMHC.
That means if you’re apartment hunting in Centretown you have about 36 units to choose from. If you need a one-bedroom apartment, the vacancy rate is a mere 0.1 per cent.
Even if you find an apartment in Centretown, expect to pay a premium.
Rent for two-bedroom apartments increased 5.6 per cent between October 1998 and 1999; rent for three-bedroom apartments rose even more, 8.5 per cent.
Low supply and high demand means rent in Centretown will continue to rise and low-income renters will face an increasingly difficult challenge of finding shelter.
Advocates for disabled people, students and anti-poverty activists are petitioning and demonstrating with increasing regularity.
The problem is they don’t know who to petition and where to protest – Parliament Hill, Queen’s Park, Regional Headquarters, City Hall? Take your pick – they’re all passing social housing around like a hot potato.
In the 1996 federal budget, the government said it would transfer management of all its social housing resources to the provinces.
Last month, after four years of slashing, cutting and ‘getting their financial house in order,’ Ottawa and Queen’s Park finally got around to inking the agreement to transfer power.
Now that the province has control over social housing, their first order of business is to get rid of it, by downloading the responsibility to municipalities.
Legislation has to be drafted, and best-case scenario will see it introduced this spring, says Janet Mason, the assistant deputy minister for policy at the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.
Now that Ottawa-Carleton’s municipalities are in flux pending amalgamation it could be several years before any level of government takes any real action on social housing in Centretown.
Not acceptable.
Centretown needs a plan for social housing now, before low-income renters end up on the streets.