WHY DOUBLE?

An article about housing affordability popped up in my news feed. From Business in Vancouver, it was titled British Columbians need to save for up to 20 years to afford first home. I thought that was laughable, so I clicked on it. As happens today, it was mostly just a reprint of another article from a real estate group, based in Saskatoon, that does research and analysis on Canadian and American housing scenes.

The underlying report uses "average renter household income" in their analysis. But the figure they offer appears to be a fictional one. They give all municipalities in Greater Vancouver, for example, the same number. That’s ridiculous. Langley and West Vancouver are identical by their analysis? No chance. From there, the research report claims these are the highest renter incomes in Canada. There’s no chance of that either. At the time of writing, minimum wage here is lower than Yukon and Nunavut, and roughly the same as Ontario, while median incomes in BC are lower than most and half that of many places in Alberta. And then, to cap all this off, the actual number they offer is $73,769. Bwa-hahaha!

Firstly, who are renters? They’re commonly younger folks who have yet to put away a down-payment and/or those with incomes insufficient to purchase a residence, obviously. And that's most people anywhere near a major city, where most people live. Secondly, of course, many people 18 to 40 are in school; others are on a single income (or none at all) while caring for family; some are under some sort of deprivation due to injury or illness; and many are living a more minimalist lifestyle and will always find a way to work with less. Thirdly, as someone who is currently looking for work and has had dozens of jobs over the last couple of decades, I can tell you the overwhelming majority of jobs out there (even those requiring people to have education, certification, or specific skills) pay at or within a few dollars of minimum wage. And the bulk of those are part-time, something like 10 to 30 hours a week. Yeah, all those cafes, bakeries, and restaurants you go to and all the clothing, hardware, and book stores, and on — the vast majority of the businesses you patronize — are all paying $16 to $18 and almost none are offering over 35 hours a week. Many are highly seasonal and lay off staff or limit their hours drastically throughout the year, especially those offering a little more in hourly wage.

(I mention that last example specifically because I just turned down a job paying $24 an hour. It only offers five hour days and twenty-five hour weeks and, working with kids, shuts down when school is out. Everyone there has degrees and various certifications and years of experience. I would have been earning around $25,000 a year at that job [while the business owner turns hundreds of thousands in profit.] This really is closer to the norm than a rare exception...)

All of the above seems obvious to me and accounts for the circumstances of a huge swathe of society. So, this $74,000 figure looks absurd on its face. But what do I know? What if we look up some of this stuff to get accurate and less anecdotal?

Statistics Canada tells me the current median household income, before tax, for everyone in Greater Vancouver is $72,000. So there’s no chance the median for renters (those folks with profiles I note above) is anywhere close to that. As for “average renter household income”, the closest data I can find for Langley. It's a regional district Housing Needs Report from 2021, using 2016 census data. And now get this: the report states that, "The median income of renter households has decreased by 13% since 2006, from $40,008 to $34,839..." Right. So less than half the above figure from the report. (And right about where I imagined it would be.) Shockingly, a similar 2020 Housing Needs Report for West Vancouver, one of the wealthier spots in the country and on the continent, also uses 2016 data. It offers a median income for renter households of —  wait for it — $48,392.

So, the question remains: why is this figure in the reporting twice as high as what the evidence suggests average renter incomes could plausibly be? I don’t know. And both authors of the above articles have not returned my emails.