A new report from the CMHC (Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation) shows that rental vacancies in Calgary are up a full percentage point, now at 1.5 percent from 0.5 percent last year, but the cost to rent in the city of Calgary is downright expensive!

In Calgary the average rent for a 2 bedroom apartment is $1089, making Calgary the most expensive metropolitan city to rent a home in, in Canada – beating longstanding champion Vancouver.

I am reiterating my call for the need of rent controls in Alberta. These rent controls would make it so that landlords can not raise their rent faster then the rate of inflation and limit these increases to once a year. With the average rent increase in Alberta metropolitan areas between October 2006 and 2007 being 17.2% and between October 2005 and 2006 being 13.3%, we are having a rental crisis.

Alberta is out of the norm with rental increases of 17.2% in the previous year. Other provinces are seeing smaller rental increases during this period of time. For example, British Columbia only had a 5.5% rent increase (Meaning we will be well ahead of Vancouver in terms of rent costs next year), Manitoba had a 3.9% increase, Ontario had a 1.6% increase, Quebec had a 2.5% increase, New Brunswick had a 2.3% increase… I think you get the point. Albertans are being ripped off.

Someone making minimum wage in Alberta can not or barely can afford the average 2 bedroom apartment. The minimum wage in Alberta sits at $7 an hour.

I’m going to do some calculations just to show you how difficult it will be for someone making minimum wage in Alberta to afford a place to live. But before I do I want to say that you may hear statistics that only a small portion of Albertans make minimum wage, that is true. But those statistics do not include people making just above minimum wage (For example $8/hour or even $7.10/hour). I was once one of those making $7.10/hour, in reality I was making minimum wage. So I will do these calculations at $8/hour with no tax deductions and no missing days of work.

So here it is: Somebody working 5 days a week, no sick days, at $8/hour with no tax deductions (which wouldn’t happen) will take home $16,640. The cost for their two bedroom apartment is $13,068 per year. This leaves them $3572 left, if they didn’t pay taxes, which of course they did. That leaves this person with only $297.67 before taxes per month left for all other expenses. Not even enough for suitable food and transportation. Now imagine being a single parent making that much, having an extra mouth to feed, extra body to clothe and having to pay $300 or more each year in school fees – There goes a month’s budget. Alberta has a huge poverty problem that needs to be addressed today!

Saskatchewan looks to be headed in the same direction. With a 9.1% increase in rental rates between October 2006 and 2007 compared to an increase of only 3.6% between October 2005 and 2006. Saskatchewan can stop these unfair rental rates before they got out of hand like they are in Alberta, but with a new free market Premier, it seems very unlikely.

So to conclude, Alberta has such high rents that even a full time working person struggles to stay alive. Alberta also is the home of Calgary, the city with the largest homeless population. It’s a shame being the richest province in Canada and having so much poverty. Rent controls are needed in Alberta more than ever, and a full plan needs to be implemented to make poverty history in Alberta.

Update: I’ve made a Facebook group calling for Rent Controls in Alberta. Please join it, and we can have organized action for rent controls. Click here to go to the Facebook group.

From today’s Toronto Star:

Canadians care deeply about poverty and its consequences in this country. That is evidenced by the fact that more than 4,200 Canadians and 330 organizations across the country have offered their views on the issue and the need for a nationwide strategy to solve it since mid-October, when the National Council of Welfare posted a questionnaire online.

The survey will run until tomorrow when the council, a federally mandated body that advises Ottawa on social policy, begins analyzing the results and drafting solutions.

The call for a national strategy comes in the wake of two council reports last summer that showed the poverty rate in Canada has not budged in a generation and the poorest among us are getting poorer.

Despite a raft of reports and countless initiatives, one in six Canadians is still poor, the council reports. That amounts to 5.3 million people who struggle to survive at low-wage jobs or on social assistance, disability benefits or limited pensions. What is needed to combat poverty is a comprehensive plan with clear goals and funding to meet them. Among approaches worthy of adoption are raising minimum wages and taking minimum wage earners off the income tax rolls, investing heavily in training, increasing welfare payments and beefing up drug and child-care support.

In Canada, both Quebec and Newfoundland have adopted anti-poverty strategies that are paying off.

The goal of a national anti-poverty program must be to create a national system that provides a decent level of income for all families in need.

Lend your voice to the call and fill in the welfare council’s questionnaire at http://www.ncwcnbes.net by tomorrow. Politicians must know that Canadians care about this important topic.

I’ve been hearing a lot of talk from fellow Calgarians about having more cops in the downtown core to stop the growing drug problem. Having more police downtown will not be enough to solve this problem, actually it won’t even address it if other things are not done. It will just move the problem to another neighborhood, as seen previously in Vancouver. The homeless will still have no home and dug addicts will still be addicted and using.

What we need to do is go after the root of the problem and stop only fighting the side effects. We need to go after poverty! This can be accomplished by such things as making education more affordable, housing more affordable and implementing a living wage. Not only will these implementations prevent these problems in the future, it will also help the people presently on the street get off the street and eventually we will be able to eliminate the problem of homelessness.

There is a notion going around that I’m hearing quite a lot lately. That is, “Most people on street, choose to be on the street.” Yet when someone says this to me and I ask them to give me an example of one of these people, they can not. They later confide in me that they heard this from someone else but have absolutely nothing to back it up. Let’s stop spreading these lies and get out the facts. Stating the previously mentioned notion is just a way of not addressing the problem and taking away the guilt associated with it. But there is a better way to take the guilt away. You can take away the guilt by addressing the problem!

It may be hard work, but we will be living in a much world if we do the right thing.