A constituent recently sent me these statistics on housing that have been published by the Wellesley Institute. One of the federal policies that Mayor Hazel McCallion is calling for is a national housing strategy.

Housing insecurity at record levels

One-in-four Canadian households pay 30% or more of their income on housing – that’s three million households, or close to eight million women, men and children.

Housing is the biggest expense for low, moderate and middle-income households; housing costs over the past decade grew faster than inflation even though incomes were stagnant.

High housing costs are a key reason that 720,231 people across Canada lined up at food banks in March of 2007.

In the early 1980s, more than 10 out of every 100 new homes in Canada were truly affordable. By 2007, less than one-in-one-hundred new homes were truly affordable.

Canada ’s rental vacancy rate has been below 3% (the danger zone) since the year 2000.