Families earning $100k in Toronto eligible for Habitat for Humanity
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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.....
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.
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.
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
I'm personally looking at a $5300/mth mortgage for the cheapest home I could find that reasonably fit my family of 5, without needing extensive renovation or being far from work/school/famiy/friends/etc. It's wild. It's not even that big, either. The step down for even tighter accommodation in a much worse/older build was around $4500/mth. That's wild. That's close to what most households in the city net in a month (median income after tax in 2021 was about $60k, and while that has presumably increased, it seems unlikely to be significantly higher). This is the lowest of the low end for families our size.
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.
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.
I found 199 listings within the boundaries of Tornto on Zillow under 2000 Canadian dollars per month, which is well under the rule of thumb for rent to income ratio.
I found 1 and 2 bedroom listings along with studios.
This doesn't include the rest of Greater Toronto, just the boundaries of the city.
And your solutions are...?
The first step is to stop pretty much all immigration into Canada for the time being. This puts a halt to the unsupportable increases in demand for housing and other resources.
The second step is to have all of the "temporary foreign workers", the foreign "students", and the "refugees" promptly return home. This frees up some of the existing supply of such resources.
Some people will claim that doing such things would be economically-disruptive. It will be, and that's necessary at this point.
That leads to the third step: remove the various government-imposed restrictions and controls on rentals, wages, and so forth. After the severe economic distortions that have been introduced by awful government policies over the past several decades, the economy will need to readjust to a natural balance again.
There may be some short-term pain, but it would put Canada into a far healthier position economically and socially over the long run.
Kick out the foreigners is not something I would expect to hear on HN.
At the current time, there's generally no legitimate reason for people from those places to be seeking asylum in Canada.
Legitimate refugees will be seeking immediate safety far closer their points of origin, rather than ending up in Canada, of all places.
Sri Lanka, to use your example, is over 12000 km (7500 miles) away from Canada, in either direction. At the time of the incident you mention, there were numerous safer countries that were much, much, much closer to Sri Lanka than Canada was. Those are the countries where those people should have ended up, if they were truly seeking immediate safety as legitimate refugees.
>there were numerous safer countries that were much, much, much closer
>Those are the countries where those people should have ended up
>legitimate refugees
Yeah, I expect to hear these talking points a lot more in the future. Not that I'm one of those open-borders wingnuts, just pointing out the inevitable slide towards populism in the face of crushing economic and ecological realities.
What happens when the prices of homes (where most people's entire retirement savings are held) stop increasing, or heaven forbid, fall? What happens to the real estate and construction sector (which is a massive portion of our economy)? How do we support our social services with no population growth? We're in a catch 22, that's the issue.
There's no inherent, natural, or real economic basis to them. They're examples of inefficiently-allocated resources.
Artificially propping up existing economic distortions and inefficiencies just makes the situation even worse in the long run, by creating even more distortions and inefficiency.
If a home's nominal value does not match its real value, we should expect the price to drop. This may not be good for the homeowner(s) involved, of course, but it shouldn't be considered any different than any other poor investment.
Industries that exist primarily due to artificial economic distortions shouldn't be expected to survive, at least not in their present form. They're a burden on the real economy.
Social services also shouldn't be so necessary in a healthy economy. They're a brute-force (and ultimately unsuccessful) way that government tries to counteract some of the economic distortions and inefficiencies that government itself has introduced, typically through earlier market interference.
I don't see there being a "catch 22" here. It's simple what will have to happen at some point: the economic distortions and inefficiency will need to be undone, and those who made poor investment decisions will feel it the most.
Isn't doing this introducing more economic distortions?
The solution is to build more and more quickly.
You don’t even have to make the policy from scratch, you can just copy what Tokyo does.
(Tokyo has had completely flat housing pricing adjusted for inflation despite urban growth over the past few decades).
CA, AZ, TX, NY, and everything in between are wonderful places to live. It's why so many young Canadians in Technology/STEM have left Canada with no intention of returning. I welcome them all, they are smart, intelligent and hard working people who deserve more than Canada can offer them.
Disclaimer: 30 year expat.
Is this any more than an advertising vehicle? Are the rankings useful?
>Canada has better healthcare than the US
This is astonishing to me. Our healthcare system is overwhelmed. It's nearly impossible to get a doctor anywhere in Canada. I can't move my elderly parents this way for that reason. Rural emergency rooms are almost always closed. I know, because I live in a rural area; we no longer have ambulance or emergency room services.
>Canadian cities rank highly for livability, including expensive ones Toronto and Vancouver. No US cities were on the list that I found.
Maybe it's just me, but doesn't that make the list seem like nonsense, then? What makes Toronto better than, say, Boston?
Focus on statistical outcomes, not hyperbolic qualitative measures. For example, life expectancy in Canada is one of the top in the world, well above the USA. That is a quantitative number that is partially influenced by the quality and availability of Canadian healthcare (among other factors).
In the USA, a city-operated ambulance will bill you over $3,000 for a trip less than a mile.
What makes Toronto better than Boston? Well, for starters, Boston is significantly more expensive than Toronto. Not really the best place to start making cost of living/housing comparisons.
How do the 8% of Americans who have no health insurance or any kind handle child birth? I legitimately don’t know.
If people in all those expensive Canadian cities are less sedentary, obese, and alcoholic it sounds like they have a better overall life.
> Translation: Canada is wealthy including most Canadians I know. That’s why things are expensive.
Most Canadians are not wealthy; the median salary, adjusted for taxes and transfers (so including healthcare spending and social welfare) is lower than almost any US state. There are very many Canadians, who live in places like Trois-Rivieres, Kelowna, or Kingston, that are very poor and are almost destitute. There are also very many people who can barely afford rent—average rent in Toronto is about ~2K CAD per month. That is almost the median salary for Canada as a whole.
> Canada has better healthcare than the US (#5 in the world according to US News and World Report, ahead of Switzerland).
I agree, but its getting worse. Doctors (thanks Ford, Legault, and Smith) are underfunded and leaving, a good portion of Canadian cannot find a primary care physician, and haven't been to the doctor in months.
> 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.
There are decent jobs, but open to those who have university degrees due to the rampant credential inflation in Canada. If 60% of Canadians have tertiary education, what good jobs are available to the 40% who don't, due to family circumstance, money, or time? What jobs are available to the 500,000 immigrants per year?
> 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.
People also want to spend less than $2K a month for a 1 bedroom apartment in a suburb. Canada's problem isn't that there aren't enough McMansions going around, but that there aren't enough *houses* going around. Again, the average Canadian pays something like 40% of our income in rent and/or mortgage, with little option to downsize to pay less.
dangus 1 hour ago | parent | context | flag | on: Families earning $100k in Toronto eligible for Hab...
“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.
I'm sorry, but this is really out of touch. Canada needs better housing policy, but its not a minor and resolvable problem. It's something we've known about since ~2000, but haven't fixed yet due to entrenched interests. Many Canadians—especially those with high-paying, senior dev roles as you would find on HN—are doing well, but there is a significant underclass of people—including those who came here for a better life—who are struggling. Please do not diminish their struggles.
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 .
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.
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.
I was just limiting myself to my friend group (most UBC and Waterloo grads, so not the most representative).
Also I should have said Software, Electronics, and Healthcare - those STEM fields are more likely to leave for the US.
So, come live in a closet in SF for 10 years while you pocket money? How are young people supposed to establish roots?
The economy is large enough in the US that there are plenty of opportunities. The entire economy of Canada is roughly the size of Florida, yet has 2x the population.
If you can't find a job or opportunity in Orlando or Tampa, you can always move to Atlanta or Dallas or NYC or Charlotte or Sacramento. Within Canada you don't have a similar option - most jobs are located in a handful of highly expensive cities (Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary), which limits your mobility.
There is no city in Canada that has both relatively high wages and relatively low CoL. There is no equivalent of Phoenix or Columbus or Dallas within Canada.
Additionally and separately, what you are saying about high paying jobs in a select few cities is true here also. I worked for a company based out of Atlanta and got paid like crap . There isn’t really a lot of tech jobs in the tier 2 cities you are bringing up.
Such a bright and wonderful vision of the future. 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.
If we were to carry the analogy through, it would be like if the California coastal cities were prohibitively expensive but there were only like 8 other cities in the US spread across the entire current land mass far away from everything and they all had expensive real estate, even shittier salaries, and no good job opportunities.
And then someone told you that’s fine, the coastal cities with the jobs and opportunity are for the privileged and you just need to hoof it back to Mobile, Alabama and stop complaining.
Can’t afford to live where the opportunities are because you don’t live where the opportunities are. guessilljustdie.jpg
It definitely starts to sound like the setup for some pretty standard dystopian scifi movie with a underclass of exploited people serving the privileged.
If you’re from the US, most friends and do-workers I have down there are always surprised and I don’t think fully grasp the differences and just how little is up here in America’s hat. Canada doesn’t really do the in between cities the US does. It’s a few major metro areas and a whole lot of empty space. It’s the population of California living in a country bigger than the US. The province I’m originally from is larger than Texas but with 1/30 the population. I’d have to drive 8 hours to get to an IKEA. When someone says “the big city is for the privileged” that’s the option left for you.
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.
I made more than this at my firs job out of college.
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.
So the solution for crazy housing market is interest free loans, not building more houses.
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!
"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