The Current for March 30, 2021: Living Conditions
We're calling today's show Living Conditions, a special on Canada's real estate market, the surges driven by the pandemic, and the divide between owning your dream home, and chasing a pipe dream.
We hear from Canadians trying to get a foot on the property ladder, including Toronto millennial Jenny Kim, who has just closed on her first home; and Garrett McPhee in Halifax. As the pandemic has driven people east — and driven up prices — he feels priced out of his home province.
Plus, with so much money tied up in real estate, what are the consequences for Canada's economy? And for its people, if that market takes a dive? We weigh up how we got here, and what's at stake, with Armine Yalnizyan, an economist and an Atkinson Fellow on the future of workers, and Doug Porter, chief economist at the Bank of Montreal.
Then, scraping together a down payment is one thing, but racialized Canadians also deal with discrimination, whether renting or buying. Jael Joseph is Black and a single mother, she tells us about what she faced trying to find a place to live, and why she eventually asked a white relative to act as her representative. Henry Yu, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia, discusses the long history of discrimination in Canadian real estate.
And what kind of homes should we be building, and where? How do you make city living more affordable? We talk to Andy Yan, an urban planner and director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, and Naama Blonder, an architect and urban planner at Smart Density, an architecture firm in Toronto.
Is owning your own home, a place to raise your family, now just a pipe dream for many Canadians? We put that question to federal Minister of Families, Children and Social Development Ahmed Hussen, and ask what the federal government is doing to help people struggling.