Columnists
A place to call home
“Buy real estate. They aren’t making it anymore.” Any time my dad said that he’d laugh. I never really understood what it meant until LOML and I decided to buy a home of our own. At the time, we couldn’t believe how much money we’d be investing in our piece of real estate and how long it would take us to pay our death pledge.
What’s happening to the housing inventory in the County? Seriously, how did we go from being a great place to raise your family to being a great investment in a seasonal lifestyle? And truthfully, how does the boom in building starts really help a young couple looking for suitable, affordable housing? When we came to the County we spent four years getting our ducks in a row and then taking the plunge from being tenants to becoming home owners. I know, I know. Times have changed, but this used to be a great place to raise a family. Now it’s a great place to “experience a curated lifestyle”. The true meaning of “lifestyle” has all but disappeared from the little red map. The quiet treelined street we moved to in 1986, and where our kids could play a game of ball hockey with the neighbourhood kids, is now a busy bypass for “lifestyle-seekers” who don’t want to chance a slow motion grind along Main Street. At any given hour of the day there is traffic. No, not the meandering kind of traffic of people enjoying the scenery. It’s the “over the posted speed limit, to hell with the stop signs” kind of traffic. “We’re in a rush to get to the beach, the liquor store, the beer store, the trailer, the cottage, the AirBnB or dinner on the winery/brewery patio.” Don’t get me wrong. I love the revitalization of businesses. I love the new businesses. I love the wineries, the breweries, the cafés and all of the great food. I just don’t love the price we’re paying for it. I don’t like the look on a young, local person’s face when the house that once had two apartments and was affordable is now a rental for tourists and the weekly cost to stay exceeds a month’s rent. We should have been more careful with our wishes. Now we barely get a break during what’s left of the shoulder seasons.
Most young couples don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of owning a piece of this delicious pie when a fixer-upper is selling in the $300,000 plus bracket. And it’s not just here. Our youngest son, his fiancée and her young daughter are in the market for a home in Mississauga. Their needs are basic. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, kitchen, living room. They aren’t looking for granite countertops or kitchen islands, stainless steel appliances or an ensuite spa-like bathroom. They aren’t concerned about walk-in showers or subway tiles. They simply need a place to call home. They’ve outgrown their apartment since our daughter-inlaw’s mother moved in with them. She was unable to manage her monthly expenses on her own. Their three-bedroom, two-bath apartment is just barely adequate. What they’ve looked at, todate, clocks in over $700K and all of them are fixeruppers with serious electrical deficiencies, ageing furnaces and decrepit water heaters, tatty carpets a cat wouldn’t flop on and wet basements. At $700K they are teetering close to the high end of their recommended housing budget. Once they’ve plopped their hard-earned savings into the downpayment they are without a safety net. While prices in the County are lower for a comparable home, wages are a lot lower and full-time, good paying job opportunities are still slim. Because this is a rural community, transportation becomes a huge factor in finding suitable accommodation.
The time has come when I admit my generation probably had it a lot easier in regards to housing and jobs. Yeah, yeah, we had to walk five miles, uphill both ways to get to school in the old days, but we had a place to call home and more often than not, the cost of the place we called home didn’t make a trip to the grocery store a luxury. We need to do better for the generation who will be taking care of us.
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