Article content continued

For most homebuyers in the Toronto region, the choice is between renting and buying — 53 per cent of GTA homebuyers are first-time homebuyers, according to an Ipsos survey conducted for the Toronto Real Estate Board. Many tenants look at the rent they’re paying, compare it to the cost of carrying a starter home, and decide that, on balance, they’d be better off jumping into the housing market. What they don’t realize is that they’ve been pushed into making the jump because the scales have been tipped against tenants and for owners by governments at all levels.

Toronto’s municipal government is especially good at gouging tenants. Unbeknownst to most tenants, their property-tax rate is three times that of homeowners since apartments are taxed at triple the rate of private homes. City councillors have good reason to turn the screws on tenants. For one thing, tenants don’t pay property taxes directly — these are buried in their rent, leading tenants to blame their landlords, rather than their councillors, for high rents. For another, homeowners are likelier to vote than tenants, largely because many tenants are immigrants who lack citizenship.

If the city taxed homeowners and tenants equally — or even better, if the city moderated the property tax through user fees that had homeowners and tenants paying a fairer share of the costs they impose on the city — home ownership would look much less the bargain to the tenant feeling pressure to buy a home. If city property taxes on businesses also reflected actual costs — rather than being raised to confiscatory levels to cross-subsidize the homeowner — home ownership would look like no bargain at all.