He found it strange at the time. But in the years since, as the mother of a boy who is now six years old, she has begun to understand the directive.
When the couple sought to upgrade to a two-bedroom apartment when their daughter, Reina, was a little girl, she says they faced questions centered on her son. Would it be noisy or would it draw on the walls?
White would assure them that their daughter temperament – spoke adoringly about Reina to the star, describing a lively girl who loves to dance and sing her favorite songs.
But the questions kept coming and the couple was turned away from apartment to apartment.
“We eventually stopped taking her on rental searches, because we were getting weird looks and weird comments,” said White, who feels intimidated considering embarking on another rental search. “It is extremely difficult because what am I going to do? He’s my son “.
In Toronto, where skyrocketing prices are putting home ownership out of reach for more and more families, between 2006 and 2018, median household income increased by 30 percent, while average home ownership costs fell. shot 131 percent, according to a report from the Municipality – Some parents believe that having young children has made it difficult to sign a lease.
The signs can be subtle. Given that Toronto’s low vacancy rate in recent years often means stiff competition for rents, although the pandemic experienced a brief reprieve, applicants often don’t know exactly what factors led to their choosing another potential tenant. Still, tenants like White describe patterns of obstacles that lead them to suspect that there are systemic issues at stake.
In a scan of online listings for rental units in Toronto, several indicate the type of tenants the owners are looking for. In an ad for a two-bedroom apartment in the West End, a listing says it’s “great for a couple or two roommates.” On the other hand, on the east end, a two-bedroom unit is described as suitable for one or two “professional” residents. Elsewhere in GTA, Star found a list explicitly asking for a childless couple.
Bahar Shadpour, a spokesperson for the nonprofit Center for Equality Rights in Accommodation, believes the stakes are much higher for families facing discrimination. For many, the pool of alternative, available and affordable housing is shrinking, Shadpour said.
“Especially when it comes to single parent households, they are often mothers with children, discrimination can be glaring,” Shadpour said, although she noted that it could also be cloaked in other concerns, such as whether a unit is the right size for a family.
Some families face aggravating barriers: a single parent may have a harder time than a partner, and a black or indigenous family may face additional scrutiny, Shadpour added.
In Ontario, the Human Rights Code prohibits discrimination in housing based on family status, as well as on other grounds such as race, age, sexual orientation and gender identity, citizenship status, disability, and whether a household receives any form of income. social care.
There are some exceptions, including cases where an owner lives in the same home and shares a bathroom or kitchen, or buildings where all occupants are of the same sex.
Anna-Kay Brown, a housing advocate in Toronto’s Jane and Finch neighborhood who sits on a housing committee with the Center for Equal Rights, has been searching for a new rental apartment for herself, her husband, and their three young children, 13, seven and seven years old. two.
The family currently lives in a two-bedroom community housing unit, adapted to income. She hopes they can now move into a larger three-bedroom house on the private market.
But she also believes that having young children has made her search difficult. When they initially started searching in 2019, the search was paused when the pandemic struck, he said the topic often changed to its familiar status when he called to inquire about empty drives.
She was especially puzzled by numerous questions about whether she was a single mother.
“Sometimes, they will give you the hint that… we are not looking for families, we are only looking for three single workers,” he said, noting that some owners would also raise the issue of damage to a unit.
Recently, however, she said that it was more common for her to talk about her family, then an owner would say there wasn’t a vacancy or never call her back.
For your family, renting is the only option you can foresee. “I am working full time and part time, and my husband works full time in construction. I still don’t see where it is feasible to have a house for us, ”he said, noting that he also has a lot of student loan debt.
She is hopeful that inclusive zoning, a system the city is working to implement, that requires affordable housing in new developments within certain areas, will make a difference, noting that it opens the door to affordable property units as well as to affordable rents.
In some cases in recent years, tenant concerns about family discrimination have been validated by the Ontario Human Rights Court. Last year, the court ordered the owner of a two-bedroom apartment in Orillia to pay a prospective tenant $ 2,000 in compensation, after finding that the owner had violated the human rights code by considering her familial status, as the mother of two children under the age of 10, as a factor in denying you the rental unit.
The landlord initially gave the woman a different reason for denying her request, saying she would not rent the unit at all, according to the decision. When it was put up for sale weeks later, the woman confronted him and he told her that he thought the apartment was too small for “three and a dog.”
“There appeared to be no problem with renting to the plaintiff until the defendant learned that she intended to live in the apartment with her children,” wrote court judge Douglas Sanderson.
Several years earlier, the court also ordered an Ontario landlord to stop advertising a building as “adult life” after settling a discrimination case with a former tenant who had become pregnant.
The city of Toronto, in a 10-year housing plan approved in 2019, promised a housing commissioner position charged with ensuring that “concrete” steps are taken to address problems of housing discrimination. That role has yet to be fulfilled – the city manager is currently working out advice on what his role might be. A city spokesperson told the Star that more information on the process is expected in a report for the city housing committee meeting this month.
Shadpour sees the role of the housing commissioner as a much-needed oversight mechanism, and says it takes the responsibility away from tenants to expose discrimination issues.
“They do not have time. They are just looking for a home, ”he said.
She sees it as one piece of a puzzle, along with other promises in the 10-year plan, such as housing supports designed specifically for women.
White and her family have spent the past year and a half living in her parents’ home in the city, a decision made in the early days of the pandemic when her and her husband’s jobs disappeared.
Although they are both now earning an income again, she worries if they will be able to afford another two-bedroom apartment in Toronto. Otherwise, White fears landlords will point to their family size as a reason not to rent something smaller to them.
Thinking about his future, he remembers more than a decade that he spent in the abode of his own childhood.
“I would love that for my daughter,” White said. “I really want a place that you can trust, that you can depend on, know that this is your home.”
Reference-www.thestar.com