Carla and Garry Knipe moved back to Canada three years ago after living in England. They were attracted to Calgary by its reputation as a thriving city with plenty of work opportunities, and Garry soon found work in IT for an oil-and-gas company. So far, however, they haven’t done what so many other Canadian families strive for by buying a house.

“We looked at the house prices and wondered how anyone could afford a house on the wages,” Carla Knipe says. “For us, it was simple economics. We looked at how much we’d have to put into a mortgage versus renting and thought renting makes a whole lot of sense right now.”

They pay $1,700 per month for a 1,600-square-foot, three-bedroom home in Rocky Ridge in the city’s northwest. To buy the equivalent home, they figure they would need to spend about $2,500 per month on a mortgage plus property taxes. Instead, they are taking the difference and plowing it into RESPs for their young son and other long-term investments.

But their decision faces a surprising amount of criticism, Knipe says.

“We’ve really come across a lot of hostility in terms of, ‘Boy, you’re renting?’ People tell us, ‘You’re throwing your money away.’ You’re somehow a second-class citizen. That’s the undercurrent we get. Even my husband’s colleagues are really pressuring us to buy a house. ‘You have a good job, why aren’t you buying a house? You’re crazy!’ We really feel that we’re really going against the grain.”

The Knipes have run headlong into what they call Calgary’s “cult of home ownership,” an almost overwhelming societal attitude that values home ownership as inherently good, and stigmatizes renters as irresponsible transients with no connection to their neighbourhoods who are throwing their money away.

A closer look at renting, however, reveals that perception may not always be accurate.

Johanna Schwartz has felt that stigma. In a dispute with her ex-partner over where her children will go to school, she feels like she’s been labelled as irresponsible simply for renting.

“I’d love to have (my son) go to the school in my neighbourhood where my daughter attends, and (my ex is) trying to use the argument that because I’m renting, I might not be in the neighbourhood in a year or two,” the Calgarian says. “I’ve lived in Mount Pleasant in three different houses over 10 years. That’s the neighbourhood I love.

. . . (The mediator) couldn’t understand why I just wouldn’t move across Deerfoot Trail (and buy a house).”

Schwartz defends her decision to rent because it provides an affordable and livable lifestyle in a neighbourhood she loves.

“I love the fact that I rent,” she says. “I am a mother of two. I work in the arts for the Calgary Folk Festival, and I live and work in the inner core. I don’t drive a car. I’ve resigned myself from thinking that I’m ever going to play in the mortgage market in Calgary.”

Perhaps the biggest rub in the rent-versus-own debate is the perception that rental properties act as a there-goes-the-neighbourhood downward drag on property values. James Carlson, a Calgary realtor and condo specialist who owns rental property and often talks to people interested in buying rental property, says there’s some truth in the perception.