By Erik White
Dany Janssens looks around the room and doesn’t see much. “There’s a bed and a TV and VCR and a couch and a couple of lamps and tables, but that’s about it,” he says.
But Janssens feels lucky just to have a roof over his head.
On Feb. 23 a fire ravaged his two-storey townhouse on Arlington, plunging Janssens and about 30 of his neighbours into the icy cold Ottawa housing market.
“It didn’t sink in for me right-away. For me, it takes a little while for reality to catch up,” Janssens says.
“In the moment, you’re there and everything’s real and going so fast and it takes a couple of days to figure out what you’re going to do.”
He stayed with his sister a few days and then moved into her boss’s brother’s place while he’s away in Thailand.
“I guess I lucked out,” Janssens says.
Peter Thorn, a director of the Centretown Community Association who’s been working on the housing issue for seven years, calls Ottawa’s housing situation “scary.”
“There’s a real dearth of housing out there,” he says. “Creating a real squeeze for people because it really cuts down on the choice from where you want to live and where you can live.”
The 72-year-old building housed about 30 people, mostly students and single professionals.
According to a Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation survey conducted last October, Ottawa has the lowest vacancy rate in the country with just two of every 1000 apartments and single bedroom units vacant. ]Centretown faired slightly better with five vacancies in every 1000 residences, but that only left 44 places open for rent.
Thorn says very little low-income housing has been constructed in the past few years and rents are skyrocketing because of the low vacancy rate.
Property manager Bob Gibson from District Realty says everybody from the Arlington building has found somewhere to stay.
About 10 residents wound up at the YMCA for the weekend. He says District Realty made some temporary space available, but most are staying with family or friends.
Rob Boyd the YMCA’s manager of housing services says the fact that these people found somewhere to stay does n’t mean the housing market is improving.
“I think that we are able in a small degree to mobilize around a crisis,” Boyd says.
“I certainly don’t think it’s a reflection of the fact that we have or do not have a housing crisis.”
Brad Rollo feels lucky too. He lived on Arlington for two and a half years.
A friend of his is in Africa for the next nine months, so Rollo has somewhere to stay for now.
He looked for a permanent place, but came up empty.
He’s hoping something will open up in May when some of the university students leave town.
“Just the inconvenience of finding a place in this housing market is ridiculous,” Rollo says.
However, with post-secondary students leaving for the summer, low-income house prospects should open up in May.