Melina D. has rented three different apartments in Calgary’s Mission neighbourhood over the last seven years. She calls Calgary “beautiful” and loves her neighbourhood, but the 28-year-old has no intention of buying property.
“I know I won’t be able to carry the monthly payments, but also just no desire whatsoever to have to deal with maintenance and problems that come up, and those hidden expenses that someone like me would have no idea what to do with.”
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She’s worked at a Calgary non-profit for the past three and a half years.
Her salary is right around the $47,200 Canadian average, but 40 per cent goes to what she calls “outrageous” rent. That ratio puts her well into most policy-makers’ unaffordable housing category.
“I pay $1,100 for 400 square feet … and it’s not the nicest situation,” she explained. “The units themselves are really well kept, and they’re pretty nice, but the building is super old, super sketchy, has bugs, has leak problems. There’s no parking or anything like that.”
While she considers $1,100 expensive, she’s thankful she got in three years ago before a 7-10 per cent hike in rent in her building. She knows other tenants paying $1,300 for the same apartment.
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She has no debt and no car (she walks to work), so she’s only on the hook for rent and about $80 per month for utilities. She’s thought about buying in her neighbourhood, but says safe, attractive places are just not affordable.
“Units in my building … don’t come up very often, and units that are really decently priced go within hours. I have a buddy who just sold his condo four hours after it went up,” she said. “There’s not a whole lot available right now, especially with the flood. So prices are pretty high.”
She described her downtown neighbourhood as a “really hipster Yorkville,” referring to the high-end Toronto area. She said it’s very small and old, has few apartment buildings but no high rises, and lots of independent boutiques.
She likes the feeling of community, explaining her neighborhood is mostly young professionals in their late 20s and early 30s, with very few young children. Evan Woolley, the local councillor, said more than 60 per cent of residents in the ward were renters.
“We’re all kind of at the same place in our life,” she said. “So I think if I were to afford a place, it would force me out of my desired neighborhood, and then I wouldn’t have that feeling of people with the common values.”
She also likes being able to spend on social aspects of her life: she dines out about one meal per day and likes to travel to see family and friends in Toronto and Montreal. She has some savings, but wouldn’t want to sacrifice her lifestyle for homeownership.
“I’m actually starting grad school in January, so there goes the savings,” she said, planning to study criminology through the Adler School of Professional Psychology. “I will literally be paycheque to paycheque in January.”
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She hadn’t been aware of all the carrying costs that come with buying a home. But she’s learned a lot from her boyfriend of nine months, who carries a “fairly large mortgage” on a condo in the same neighbourhood.
“With his mortgage, and his condo fees, and his utilities and all of his monthly taxes … it’s well over $2,000 a month. And I thought, ‘Oh my god…how do you live?’ For me, it’s just not at all realistic.”
So she plans to rent indefinitely.
“I have zero plans to own anything. Ever,” she said, laughing. “I do have a bicycle.”
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