Waterloo Region is one of the most expensive places to be a renter in Canada, according to a recent study from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
According to the study based on statistics from 2024, to afford a two-bedroom unit in Waterloo’s University District, people will have to earn more than $45 an hour, or roughly $90,000 per year.
“You’d basically need to work almost two minimum wage jobs just to afford a one-bedroom apartment and have it be affordable,” said Marc Lee, senior economist with CCPA.
In order to calculate the “rental wage” of various Canadian cities, Lee’s team calculated how much a person would have to earn to spend 30 per cent of their income on housing, taking into account rental prices in specific neighbourhoods of each city.
Waterloo Region ranks among the top of the list, but the high price of rental wages in the cores of Waterloo and Cambridge are levelled out by the more-affordable rental prices in the townships, coming in at $33.96 per hour for the region as a whole for a two-bedroom apartment.
Guelph comes in as slightly more affordable than Waterloo Region, but remains near the top of the list at $33.46 per hour to afford a two-bedroom unit.
“A lot of the media attention is on the home ownership market, but for about one third of households that are renters, its the really high cost of rental housing, particularly in recent years, that is top of mind,” said Lee.
In Ontario, the average price of rent has increased by 35 per cent since 2018, while minimum wages have only increased by 23 per cent.
Lee added that government intervention is required in order to help folks afford rent. He said minimum wage could be based on the city they live in, meaning areas with higher rent prices could have higher minimum wages, and minimum wages could be lower in areas with cheaper rent.
Slowed population growth by the newly implemented limits on immigration and increases in housing stock could give renters some much-needed relief in the coming years, according to Lee.
