"If you work in Canada, you should be able to afford a place to call home"
Housing Minister on Canada's housing affordability challenges
Canadian Housing Minister Sean Fraser was in British Columbia visiting Vancouver to address public transit and housing affordability issues. He also spoke to the press to express his views on the housing situation in Canada. According to Fraser, the federal government should have paid more attention to housing in the past. Now the country has come to a point where even people with high incomes cannot always find affordable housing.
"For the better part of the last half century, federal governments of different partisan stripes, by the way, liberal and conservatives, have stepped away from forwarding affordable housing in this country. That should never have happened, but it did," Fraser said.
Fraser believes that people across much of Canada are currently facing a housing crisis. And there are no easy ways out of it.
He said that in the past federal governments were mainly focused on providing subsidized housing for low-income people, but there has been a major shift in this area. Now even working professionals are having trouble acquiring housing.
Fraser said he saw a headline in the newspaper that the average rental price for a one-bedroom apartment in Vancouver is now CAD 3,000 per month. And the minister doesn't quite understand how a senior citizen on a fixed income, or a student who has to pay for education or pay off a loan can afford housing at that cost. Fraser has a hard time saying what a reasonable price is for renting a one-bedroom apartment, but is confident that people shouldn't be paying more than 30% of their income for housing.
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