A new report on the Future of Housing by the United Way Perth-Huron’s social research and planning council highlights the potential impacts of housing-cost increases continuing to outpace wage increases in Perth and Huron counties.
A report released this week by the United Way Perth-Huron’s social research and planning council shows increases in the cost of housing is continuing to outpace wage increases in Perth-Huron, an issue that could have far-reaching impacts on both the local workforce and the region’s aging population.
According to the council’s director of research and one of the authors of Future of Housing, Joelle Lamport-Lewis, the report stemmed from meetings with local stakeholders who shared data from a number of different economic sectors.
“We brought together a number of presenters that had a voice in the area of housing on either income, workforce or housing in particular,” Lamport-Lewis said. “So we had a conversation and then we started getting into the impact on our local community and what that means.”
Through their research, Lamport-Lewis and co-author Leith Deacon found the average price for a detached home in Perth-Huron over the past year increased by more than 35 per cent to $549,000 while the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment increased by 18 per cent to more than $1,200 monthly.
Meanwhile, the report showed the average household income in Perth County rose from roughly $53,300 to roughly $76,300 between 2016 and 2020, representing a growth of just 43 per cent over four years. Across Canada, the report showed household incomes had increased by just a little less than 30 per cent in the same period while home prices have increased by almost 60 per cent.
“Our income is not keeping pace with our cost-of-living increases, so it’s making our rents unaffordable. It’s making our basic needs unaffordable. … On top of that, we looked at our workforce and what was happening in the Perth-Huron region. We’re seeing more precarious work. We’re seeing the inability, with automation, to move into higher-paid positions and things like that,” Lamport-Lewis said.
Since many residents of Perth and Huron counties can’t afford to purchase a detached home at that average price while more attainable or affordable housing options are harder to find, Lamport-Lewis said local employers are having a harder time attracting and retaining workers to the region.
Without that workforce, she said the region could become less attractive to new industry and business, which could lead to area municipalities losing out on much-needed tax revenue to support the health and social services the large and growing population of aged Perth-Huron residents 65 and older need.
With so much at stake, the authors of the Future of Housing report included a number of recommendations and solutions with their findings.
“There’s a lot of opportunities for living-wage employers to step into the ring. We’re looking at education and awareness around sort of the changing merit of housing. We need all types of housing, not just the single-detached home anymore. We also need to maybe utilize the not-for-profit housing corporation because they’re focused on affordable and attainable housing (and) we really need to look at strategies for retention of the workforce,” Lamport-Lewis said.
In addition to providing area municipalities with the information they need to address the housing crisis locally, Lamport-Lewis said she hopes the report will serve to educate the general public around the need for all styles of housing in their communities.
“We get caught up sometimes in an individual housing development that may not look like our current community,” she said. “We need to really focus on where our communities are moving to. It’s really about looking at our community as a whole instead of individual developments.
“The way that we used to think about some of that (multi-residential) development is really not the narrative of today. We sort of need to understand what that actually means in our community as opposed to what it means in my backyard.”
Lamport-Lewis said there is a commonly held stigma around higher-density residential developments being rented to lower-income families and individuals but, in many cases, that style of housing is perfect for seniors looking to downsize or young people looking to move to the area to begin their careers.
“It’s just about making the choice for (greater availability) of different types of housing, and for the public to sort of get on board with that would be great,” Lamport-Lewis said.
To read Future of Housing in its entirety, visit perthhuron.unitedway.ca/research.