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Families earning $100k in Toronto eligible for Habitat for Humanity

ChumpGPT 3y ago
There is no future in this city for anyone who already doesn't own a house/Condo or several. Just visit realtor.ca and browse what you get for 1-3 million. Jobs and pay are piss poor, 100k for a family might be good for many places in the USA but for Canada it is survival mode. If you own a house in Toronto or anywhere in South Western Ontario and make a family income of at least 200k and a mortgage under 500k - 1M, you might be ok without any major calamity. The youth have no chance without an inheritance or massive family help. They will never own a house or Condo and many will never have meaningful work and will be under employed. Most young people pray for a chance to get a Gov job but in a province like Ontario where approx 3 out of 5 jobs is already a Gov job, it is becoming difficult for the private sector to support. New immigrants are living hand to mouth with little prospect of advancement. Yes, it still may be better than the country they came from since they can at least live in safety and poverty with some social assistance. Canada has been on a downward trajectory for the last 20-30 years and the only thing that has kept it from going under is massive debt and an increase in social assistance. This is the reality Canadians face. Other than that, it can be a pleasant place to visit but unless you are incredibly wealthy and willing to bare a heavy tax burden while living in a system where the Infrastructure (roads, hospitals, schools, industry) are under heavy stress, you do not want to live there unless you are fleeing the 3rd world where you didn't even have access to clean water and food. Most Canadians I know have multi generational wealth so they are going to be fine, but any new immigrants or young people who can't rely on family to set them up are done.....
- steve_adams_86 3y ago
  I wonder quite often how this will unfold. You’re right. And thanks for saying it because a lot of Canadians don’t seem to see it this way; they don’t appreciate the history of our economy nor the ongoing trajectories, and seem to soldier on through the madness. Perhaps because the madness is still fairly comfortable. But we have large numbers of immigrants coming here, and I don’t know how they’ll fare given that most immigrants aren’t initially big earners or afforded nearly as many opportunities as their non-immigrant counterparts. What will happen to them? Then the young ones without generational wealth… Where will they go? How will they succeed? We don’t seem to have a great strategy in place. Or any strategy I’m aware of. Our government seems fairly out of touch with what’s happening to them, too. They focus more on current voters I guess, in slightly more influential and older demographics. I wonder if that will seriously backfire and lead to a lot of disillusioned people in their 20s and 30s in a decade. It could be a good thing, but I can’t imagine these people believing any current party gives nor ever gave a shit about them. I’m not trying to be doomsday about this. I know people are resourceful and resilient. Canadians, maybe not as much as we should have been for the last 60 years, but here we are. The kids are alright and they’re going to find a way. I just wonder what the hell it is. My kids living in my city (Victoria) seems laughable too. The rental market is so expensive and volatile, I’d almost hope they don’t stay for their sakes. Yet I’d be sad as hell if they left. Maybe that would be my cue to leave. I’m not going to sit around here if I have grandkids somewhere else. Even if that’s in the boonies somewhere. All the better. Strange times for sure. I’ve been very cognizant of this descent for the last 15 years or so, and I keep checking with myself: am I imagining it? Surely Canada can do better than this? But we keep sliding down.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    > kids living in my city (Victoria) seems laughable too. The rental market is so expensive and volatile The rental market on Vancouver Island has always been hellish. I remember when we first immigrated in the early 2000s, we were a family of 4 living in a single bedroom that we were renting out for several hundred dollars (can't remember exact numbers because I was in Primary), and jobs were hard to come by despite both my parents having STEM educations. My family ended up succeeding, but we moved to the US, and bear a persistent grudge against Canada to this day. Having visited again recently, it seems the same issues persist. One of our family friends who were working as doctors in Oman are now in Victoria living in a dingy basement, but are fine with that sacrifice so they could ensure their kids could attend UVic. The kids will probably try to emigrate to the US as well once their Canadian PR converts into Citizenship.
  - teg4n_ 3y ago
    I was recently visiting a friend in Victoria and it’s such a nice place. It also seemed like there was construction of new apartment buildings all over the place. At least y’all seem like you are trying to address the housing issues. Where I live (Western, WA) you barely see any construction like that and if you do it’s a McMansion development in the middle of nowhere.
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      That construction is for condos priced at around CAD$600K-1mil. Victoria is Canada's Florida (where Canadians go to retire). Most of the property built there is being built for investment purposes and doesn't impact affordability. At least in Western WA you can move to Vancouver WA, Olympia, Spokane, or Boise. When you're priced out or Vancouver Island, depending on your education you might not find any real options for employment outside of the oil fields in Alberta, especially because all the factories ended up shutting down in the 90s and 2000s
      - phatskat 3y ago
        The same thing appears to be happening in Kitchener, ON. When I visit my friend there and we see all the apartments under construction, she laments that they’re all going to be high-price units. She and her husband are probably immigrating Eastern Europe at some point because finding housing has been a nightmare.
- dangus 3y ago
  “It’s so expensive, nobody wants to be there” Kind of like “nobody drives, there’s too much traffic.” > Most Canadians I know have multi generational wealth so they are going to be fine Translation: Canada is wealthy including most Canadians I know. That’s why things are expensive. Canadian cities rank highly for livability, including expensive ones Toronto and Vancouver. No US cities were on the list that I found. Canada ranks higher than the US on the human development index. Canada has better healthcare than the US (#5 in the world according to US News and World Report, ahead of Switzerland). I straight up don’t believe you that there aren’t decent jobs in those cities. They’re like the NYC and LA of Canada. My hot take is that living in a small rented apartment isn’t some kind of catastrophe. For one thing, North American housing is already considered large by the standards of many countries. More importantly, the size of your dwelling is only one aspect of quality of life, and it’s a factor that’s less important than most people give it credit for. Are Dutch people unhappy because their apartments are small? People want big McMansions to store their consumerist junk because of our HGTV culture but you can live a good life in much less. Your kids can share a bedroom, they’ll even likely be happy with it. Just as a cherry picked example, I’d rather live in a tiny apartment in Vancouver than live in a big house in places like New Orleans, where I have to worry about higher crime and gun deaths, worse education, worse and more expensive healthcare, worse city services and infrastructure, weather and climate flooding my house away, and worse job opportunities. Obviously, Canada needs better housing and immigration policy, but I’d call those pretty minor and resolvable problems for a country that is doing so well.
  - BobbyJo 3y ago
    > Kind of like “nobody drives, there’s too much traffic.” That makes perfect sense to me? I can easily imagine a city where only 1% of people drive because that's all the roads can handle before being slower than walking. > Translation: Canada is wealthy including most Canadians I know. That’s why things are expensive. Wealth doesn't make things expensive. Supply/Demand imbalances and/or costs make things expensive. In this case, intergenerational wealth is consuming more than it produces, creating greater burden on the rest of the economy to make up the difference. Same with many Western countries. That's why debt in the west just keeps going up. > People want big McMansions to store their consumerist junk because of our HGTV culture but you can live a good life in much less. Your kids can share a bedroom, they’ll even likely be happy with it. That argument would carry a lot more weight if a 100k salary could afford even a studio condo in these cities.
- metalforever 3y ago
  Hi I hope this doesn’t come off as insensitive. I just wanted to say some things which I realize is a huge edge case but maybe could be helpful to a young talented Canadian. So I grew up in section 8 housing in the US. This is government housing for very low income. I was able to work really hard and work my way up to buying an SFH worth around $955k CAD on my own as a software engineer. I am in My early 30s and live on my own. It might be possible for a dink tech couple to come here and work in tech for some time and come back to Toronto and buy that way . I know this is super awful that I’m even fronting this idea . I am so sorry this is happening .
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    That's why most Canadian educated STEM grads are leaving for the US. They can earn 3-4x what they'd earn in Canada, and can then use that nest egg to either buy a house back up north, or just live in the US. If you're from BC, you may as well just live in Seattle at that point as you're still close enough to family. Tbf I'm from BC, and people there seem to be more open to moving away to other cities or even the US.
    - somerandomqaguy 3y ago
      It's not most but it is a lot. https://brocku.ca/social-sciences/political-science/wp-content/uploads/sites/153/Reversing-the-Brain-Drain.pdf https://brocku.ca/social-sciences/political-science/wp-conte... ============================================================== Evidence of Brain Drain in STEM fields • One in four of the STEM graduates in our sample opted to work outside of Canada. Talent Migration is High in Technology-Focused STEM Programs • Two thirds (66%) of software engineering students are leaving Canada for work after graduation. • Brain drain is also high in: computer engineering (30%), computer science (30%),engineering science (27%), and systems design engineering (24%). • Programs such as biology (0%) and chemistry (3.5%) have low migration of graduates. ============================================================ To be fair though I haven't gone through the report in detail so there may be biases in there I haven't noticed.
      - 3y ago
stevenae 3y ago
It feels worth pointing out this is CAD, not USD.
- bobro 3y ago
  And thus (per google) its 74k. Pretty important.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  It feels worth pointing out that Canadians get paid in CAD, and the salaries don’t seem to go through the exchange rate. E.g. 140k CAD is considered senior dev pay where I am in western Canada even though my American peers make significantly more when my salary is converted to USD.
deleted 3y ago
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institor 3y ago
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morkalork 3y ago
A recent quote from a developer talking about another Canadian city but still applicable: "If people can't afford it, they should not live in the city. The city is made for the privileged". Such a bright and wonderful vision of the future. Very inclusive and not dystopian at all.
- ecf 3y ago
  > Very inclusive and not dystopian at all I don’t see how this can be considered dystopian. Some places are going to NEED to be more expensive then others, because they are more desirable than others. It’s like calling California coastal cities dystopian because of their desirable weather, or whatever factors make people prefer to live in them compared to a small town in Montana.
  - zht 3y ago
    some may consider it dystopian to expect all the poors to commute 2 hours into the city to serve the privileged upper class?
    - morkalork 3y ago
      Or 10 people living together in a 1960's bungalow in Hamilton/Brampton/Mississauga that's worth >$1M.
      - alephnerd 3y ago
        Add Surrey, Richmond, Burnaby, Delta, Abbottsford, Kelonwa, Nanaimo, Victoria, etc to that list.
  - morkalork 3y ago
    The fact that a city is more desirable or expensive isn't dystopian. It's the fact that a city doesn't exist or function without a ton of working class people supporting it while simultaneously being excluded.
  - deleted 3y ago
johnny99k 3y ago
a couple of years ago (pre-pandemic), I looked for remote jobs in Toronto (I'm in the same time zone). Senior development roles for 60K USD. I made more than this at my firs job out of college.
- asyx 3y ago
  That's even low for Germany where 1k rent is considered expensive.
- Amasuriel 3y ago
  I don’t think this is particularly representative, since most Canadian companies that hire outside of Canada (even in the same time zone) are doing it because they can pay less. Pre pandemic senior roles were usually double that or more. Even government jobs (which would generally be the lowest paying) would be over 100k for a senior.
slaw 3y ago
> Habitat for Humanity’s threshold for providing its famous interest-free loans to struggling homeowners So the solution for crazy housing market is interest free loans, not building more houses.
- nucleardog 3y ago
  Sure why not. If we make mortgages easier to get we can help enough people to say we’re doing something and still keep the property bubble inflating. It’s win-win! Maybe next we can let people dump all their retirement savings into the real estate market penalty free and inject some more cash and see how far we can take this!
zht 3y ago
to be clear, the headline is a bit of a eye-catcher, but it refers to this sized family: "It could be a family with two income earners — one earning $40,000, and another earning $60,000, with six kids. This is not a family that we would consider to be doing well." given that the average Canadian woman has 1.4 births, it is quite the exceptional family

There is no future in this city for anyone who already doesn't own a house/Condo or several. Just visit realtor.ca and browse what you get for 1-3 million. Jobs and pay are piss poor, 100k for a family might be good for many places in the USA but for Canada it is survival mode. If you own a house in Toronto or anywhere in South Western Ontario and make a family income of at least 200k and a mortgage under 500k - 1M, you might be ok without any major calamity. The youth have no chance without an inheritance or massive family help. They will never own a house or Condo and many will never have meaningful work and will be under employed. Most young people pray for a chance to get a Gov job but in a province like Ontario where approx 3 out of 5 jobs is already a Gov job, it is becoming difficult for the private sector to support. New immigrants are living hand to mouth with little prospect of advancement. Yes, it still may be better than the country they came from since they can at least live in safety and poverty with some social assistance. Canada has been on a downward trajectory for the last 20-30 years and the only thing that has kept it from going under is massive debt and an increase in social assistance. This is the reality Canadians face. Other than that, it can be a pleasant place to visit but unless you are incredibly wealthy and willing to bare a heavy tax burden while living in a system where the Infrastructure (roads, hospitals, schools, industry) are under heavy stress, you do not want to live there unless you are fleeing the 3rd world where you didn't even have access to clean water and food. Most Canadians I know have multi generational wealth so they are going to be fine, but any new immigrants or young people who can't rely on family to set them up are done.....

steve_adams_86 3y ago
I wonder quite often how this will unfold. You’re right. And thanks for saying it because a lot of Canadians don’t seem to see it this way; they don’t appreciate the history of our economy nor the ongoing trajectories, and seem to soldier on through the madness. Perhaps because the madness is still fairly comfortable. But we have large numbers of immigrants coming here, and I don’t know how they’ll fare given that most immigrants aren’t initially big earners or afforded nearly as many opportunities as their non-immigrant counterparts. What will happen to them? Then the young ones without generational wealth… Where will they go? How will they succeed? We don’t seem to have a great strategy in place. Or any strategy I’m aware of. Our government seems fairly out of touch with what’s happening to them, too. They focus more on current voters I guess, in slightly more influential and older demographics. I wonder if that will seriously backfire and lead to a lot of disillusioned people in their 20s and 30s in a decade. It could be a good thing, but I can’t imagine these people believing any current party gives nor ever gave a shit about them. I’m not trying to be doomsday about this. I know people are resourceful and resilient. Canadians, maybe not as much as we should have been for the last 60 years, but here we are. The kids are alright and they’re going to find a way. I just wonder what the hell it is. My kids living in my city (Victoria) seems laughable too. The rental market is so expensive and volatile, I’d almost hope they don’t stay for their sakes. Yet I’d be sad as hell if they left. Maybe that would be my cue to leave. I’m not going to sit around here if I have grandkids somewhere else. Even if that’s in the boonies somewhere. All the better. Strange times for sure. I’ve been very cognizant of this descent for the last 15 years or so, and I keep checking with myself: am I imagining it? Surely Canada can do better than this? But we keep sliding down.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  > kids living in my city (Victoria) seems laughable too. The rental market is so expensive and volatile The rental market on Vancouver Island has always been hellish. I remember when we first immigrated in the early 2000s, we were a family of 4 living in a single bedroom that we were renting out for several hundred dollars (can't remember exact numbers because I was in Primary), and jobs were hard to come by despite both my parents having STEM educations. My family ended up succeeding, but we moved to the US, and bear a persistent grudge against Canada to this day. Having visited again recently, it seems the same issues persist. One of our family friends who were working as doctors in Oman are now in Victoria living in a dingy basement, but are fine with that sacrifice so they could ensure their kids could attend UVic. The kids will probably try to emigrate to the US as well once their Canadian PR converts into Citizenship.
- teg4n_ 3y ago
  I was recently visiting a friend in Victoria and it’s such a nice place. It also seemed like there was construction of new apartment buildings all over the place. At least y’all seem like you are trying to address the housing issues. Where I live (Western, WA) you barely see any construction like that and if you do it’s a McMansion development in the middle of nowhere.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    That construction is for condos priced at around CAD$600K-1mil. Victoria is Canada's Florida (where Canadians go to retire). Most of the property built there is being built for investment purposes and doesn't impact affordability. At least in Western WA you can move to Vancouver WA, Olympia, Spokane, or Boise. When you're priced out or Vancouver Island, depending on your education you might not find any real options for employment outside of the oil fields in Alberta, especially because all the factories ended up shutting down in the 90s and 2000s
    - phatskat 3y ago
      The same thing appears to be happening in Kitchener, ON. When I visit my friend there and we see all the apartments under construction, she laments that they’re all going to be high-price units. She and her husband are probably immigrating Eastern Europe at some point because finding housing has been a nightmare.
dangus 3y ago
“It’s so expensive, nobody wants to be there” Kind of like “nobody drives, there’s too much traffic.” > Most Canadians I know have multi generational wealth so they are going to be fine Translation: Canada is wealthy including most Canadians I know. That’s why things are expensive. Canadian cities rank highly for livability, including expensive ones Toronto and Vancouver. No US cities were on the list that I found. Canada ranks higher than the US on the human development index. Canada has better healthcare than the US (#5 in the world according to US News and World Report, ahead of Switzerland). I straight up don’t believe you that there aren’t decent jobs in those cities. They’re like the NYC and LA of Canada. My hot take is that living in a small rented apartment isn’t some kind of catastrophe. For one thing, North American housing is already considered large by the standards of many countries. More importantly, the size of your dwelling is only one aspect of quality of life, and it’s a factor that’s less important than most people give it credit for. Are Dutch people unhappy because their apartments are small? People want big McMansions to store their consumerist junk because of our HGTV culture but you can live a good life in much less. Your kids can share a bedroom, they’ll even likely be happy with it. Just as a cherry picked example, I’d rather live in a tiny apartment in Vancouver than live in a big house in places like New Orleans, where I have to worry about higher crime and gun deaths, worse education, worse and more expensive healthcare, worse city services and infrastructure, weather and climate flooding my house away, and worse job opportunities. Obviously, Canada needs better housing and immigration policy, but I’d call those pretty minor and resolvable problems for a country that is doing so well.
- BobbyJo 3y ago
  > Kind of like “nobody drives, there’s too much traffic.” That makes perfect sense to me? I can easily imagine a city where only 1% of people drive because that's all the roads can handle before being slower than walking. > Translation: Canada is wealthy including most Canadians I know. That’s why things are expensive. Wealth doesn't make things expensive. Supply/Demand imbalances and/or costs make things expensive. In this case, intergenerational wealth is consuming more than it produces, creating greater burden on the rest of the economy to make up the difference. Same with many Western countries. That's why debt in the west just keeps going up. > People want big McMansions to store their consumerist junk because of our HGTV culture but you can live a good life in much less. Your kids can share a bedroom, they’ll even likely be happy with it. That argument would carry a lot more weight if a 100k salary could afford even a studio condo in these cities.
metalforever 3y ago
Hi I hope this doesn’t come off as insensitive. I just wanted to say some things which I realize is a huge edge case but maybe could be helpful to a young talented Canadian. So I grew up in section 8 housing in the US. This is government housing for very low income. I was able to work really hard and work my way up to buying an SFH worth around $955k CAD on my own as a software engineer. I am in My early 30s and live on my own. It might be possible for a dink tech couple to come here and work in tech for some time and come back to Toronto and buy that way . I know this is super awful that I’m even fronting this idea . I am so sorry this is happening .
- alephnerd 3y ago
  That's why most Canadian educated STEM grads are leaving for the US. They can earn 3-4x what they'd earn in Canada, and can then use that nest egg to either buy a house back up north, or just live in the US. If you're from BC, you may as well just live in Seattle at that point as you're still close enough to family. Tbf I'm from BC, and people there seem to be more open to moving away to other cities or even the US.
  - somerandomqaguy 3y ago
    It's not most but it is a lot. https://brocku.ca/social-sciences/political-science/wp-content/uploads/sites/153/Reversing-the-Brain-Drain.pdf https://brocku.ca/social-sciences/political-science/wp-conte... ============================================================== Evidence of Brain Drain in STEM fields • One in four of the STEM graduates in our sample opted to work outside of Canada. Talent Migration is High in Technology-Focused STEM Programs • Two thirds (66%) of software engineering students are leaving Canada for work after graduation. • Brain drain is also high in: computer engineering (30%), computer science (30%),engineering science (27%), and systems design engineering (24%). • Programs such as biology (0%) and chemistry (3.5%) have low migration of graduates. ============================================================ To be fair though I haven't gone through the report in detail so there may be biases in there I haven't noticed.
    - 3y ago

stevenae 3y ago

It feels worth pointing out this is CAD, not USD.

bobro 3y ago
And thus (per google) its 74k. Pretty important.
dghlsakjg 3y ago
It feels worth pointing out that Canadians get paid in CAD, and the salaries don’t seem to go through the exchange rate. E.g. 140k CAD is considered senior dev pay where I am in western Canada even though my American peers make significantly more when my salary is converted to USD.

deleted 3y ago

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institor 3y ago

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morkalork 3y ago

A recent quote from a developer talking about another Canadian city but still applicable: "If people can't afford it, they should not live in the city. The city is made for the privileged". Such a bright and wonderful vision of the future. Very inclusive and not dystopian at all.

ecf 3y ago
> Very inclusive and not dystopian at all I don’t see how this can be considered dystopian. Some places are going to NEED to be more expensive then others, because they are more desirable than others. It’s like calling California coastal cities dystopian because of their desirable weather, or whatever factors make people prefer to live in them compared to a small town in Montana.
- zht 3y ago
  some may consider it dystopian to expect all the poors to commute 2 hours into the city to serve the privileged upper class?
  - morkalork 3y ago
    Or 10 people living together in a 1960's bungalow in Hamilton/Brampton/Mississauga that's worth >$1M.
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      Add Surrey, Richmond, Burnaby, Delta, Abbottsford, Kelonwa, Nanaimo, Victoria, etc to that list.
- morkalork 3y ago
  The fact that a city is more desirable or expensive isn't dystopian. It's the fact that a city doesn't exist or function without a ton of working class people supporting it while simultaneously being excluded.
- deleted 3y ago

johnny99k 3y ago

a couple of years ago (pre-pandemic), I looked for remote jobs in Toronto (I'm in the same time zone). Senior development roles for 60K USD. I made more than this at my firs job out of college.

asyx 3y ago
That's even low for Germany where 1k rent is considered expensive.
Amasuriel 3y ago
I don’t think this is particularly representative, since most Canadian companies that hire outside of Canada (even in the same time zone) are doing it because they can pay less. Pre pandemic senior roles were usually double that or more. Even government jobs (which would generally be the lowest paying) would be over 100k for a senior.

slaw 3y ago

> Habitat for Humanity’s threshold for providing its famous interest-free loans to struggling homeowners So the solution for crazy housing market is interest free loans, not building more houses.

nucleardog 3y ago
Sure why not. If we make mortgages easier to get we can help enough people to say we’re doing something and still keep the property bubble inflating. It’s win-win! Maybe next we can let people dump all their retirement savings into the real estate market penalty free and inject some more cash and see how far we can take this!

zht 3y ago

to be clear, the headline is a bit of a eye-catcher, but it refers to this sized family: "It could be a family with two income earners — one earning $40,000, and another earning $60,000, with six kids. This is not a family that we would consider to be doing well." given that the average Canadian woman has 1.4 births, it is quite the exceptional family