The Sunshine Coast has been branded one of the least affordable places to rent in Canada. The dubious distinction was highlighted with the release Tuesday of the 2018 Canadian Rental Housing Index.
The findings, based on data from the 2016 census, show that Sunshine Coast households are spending a staggering amount of their incomes on rent. Of more than 3,000 households that rent in the Sunshine Coast Regional District (including the two municipalities), 29 per cent are paying more than half of their incomes on rent and utilities. That’s almost 900 households that are functioning at a “crisis level of spending” and potentially on the brink of homelessness, according to the B.C. Non-Profit Housing Association. Based on this key measure, Sechelt was tied as third worst municipality in Canada for renters.
It’s not that rents on the Sunshine Coast are the highest in B.C. In fact, rents and utilities are about 10 per cent lower than the provincial average. What makes the situation so dire on the Coast is that household incomes are more than 20 per cent below the B.C. average; 25 per cent below if median incomes are compared. In a province with an already famously high cost of living, this differential puts the Sunshine Coast into a unique realm of unaffordability.
Landlords might think they are being reasonable by charging less than the going rates on the Lower Mainland or elsewhere. Clearly, however, they are not taking into account their tenants’ relatively much lower household incomes, many of which are fixed. Due to the region’s critical shortage of rental housing stock, they apparently don’t have to. But whether they realize it or not, they are engaged in rent gouging. Not in all cases, of course, but in a statistically significant way.
We agree with former Sechelt mayor John Henderson that this week’s findings are a “stark wake-up call” for the community. If it doesn’t give our politicians ammunition to act and demand an effective response from senior governments, nothing will. It should also put some wind in the sails of the “Victory Suite” campaign launched recently by the Sunshine Coast Regional Economic Development Organization. And in the short term, let’s hope it opens the eyes of some landlords to the grim realities of the situation and that they adjust the amount they charge for rent accordingly.
