Im happy to have a roof over my head, but Im paying an arm and a leg for it.
The competition is so brisk my friends show up half an hour before the landlord.
I was evicted for disability reasons and Im currently homeless.
Renters and housing advocates sung the familiar refrain of Vancouvers expensive, scarce and frequently substandard rental housing stock at a city-led consultation last week.
The Renters Roundtable was the first of three public forums planned for the citys Talk Housing With Us campaign, intended to inform a revamped affordable housing and homelessness strategy slated to go to council later this month.
Weve finally seen the homeless numbers level off and start to go down over the past year, but the whole continuum of housing is under stress in Vancouver on the affordable side and we have to take steps for affordable rental, for affordable home ownership, to make sure we dont keep having the pressure that creates homelessness, Mayor Gregor Robertson told WE at the May 26 event.
That wasnt news to the 60 or so renters who turned up to the Vancouver Public Library to offer insight into the reality of renting in the city. Many nodded in agreement when city staff painted a statistical picture of Vancouver renters, who make up more than 50 per cent of city residents, have a mean income annual of $34,000 (versus $66,000 for owners) and routinely struggle to find accommodation with the vacancy rate hovering around one per cent.
Fraser Stuart, a Downtown Eastside resident and housing advocate, said Vancouver should look to Montreal, the only Canadian city with a higher percentage of renters than Vancouver, for solutions to its rental housing crunch.
In Montreal I had two bedrooms,
