Vidia and Amit Mohammed’s new stacked townhome in Brampton has three bedrooms, a garage and a balcony. But its best feature, Vidia says, is the doorbell that symbolizes the privacy that comes with home ownership.

For years, the family lived in basement apartments paying about $1,000 a month from Amit’s job at a courier company. Vidia says their landlords were frequently intrusive, coming in any time they liked — one would even barge in without notice when Vidia was showering her young boys.

“Not having the heat up enough was getting us sick. Not having hot water to shower was a necessity we didn’t always have even though we complained many times to the landlord. We didn’t have enough money for a down payment and no one wanted to rent their basement to a family with three kids,” Vidia says.

The mother of three children, aged one to 7, recounted her experience at the Daniels Corp. presentation centre in Regent Park on Monday, where the company announced its donation of 10 Toronto region homes to Habitat for Humanity, a non-profit housing agency dedicated to providing lower-income families with stable, affordable home ownership. Five of the Daniels homes have already been turned over to families like the Mohammeds. The remainder will be completed by 2022. They are in addition to 73 homes the company has provided over 23 years. Its contribution is considered equivalent to about $6 million.

The partnership with builders such as Daniels allows Habitat to assist lower-income working families that are struggling under the “crippling weight” of the Toronto region’s housing dynamics, said Ene Underwood, CEO of Habitat GTA.

When she started her job six years ago, Underwood said she could never have imagined she would feel nostalgic for the housing prices of the day. Back then, she said, the average condo cost $329,000, a townhome was $350,000 and a detached house cost $635,000.

The Toronto Real Estate Board reported that resale condos sold for $595,000 on average in September. Detached houses averaged about $1 million and rent for a two-bedroom condo was $2,941.

“The price of a two-bedroom rental unit in Toronto has increased 46 per cent in the last five years and during this entire time frame incomes have only been increasing barely at the rate of inflation,” Underwood said.

More families of four or five people are crowding into one-bedroom apartments, she said.

“We are going on home visits in the winter and being greeted by families wearing coats because they simply cannot afford both a roof over their heads and the money to pay to heat appropriately during the winter,” she said.

Toronto is not alone, said Coun. Ana Bailao (Ward 9, Davenport), the city’s housing advocate. “This is a global matter that is facing major urban centres. We need to acknowledge that and we need to face it head on,” she said.

Families qualify for Habitat’s ownership program based on their need, their income eligibility and their willingness to do 500 hours volunteering for the organization.

The non-profit agency facilitates affordable mortgages so the family never pays more than 32 per cent of their household income over a 20-year period toward shelter, Underwood said. Habitat is required to sell the homes at market value but the buyer’s payments match their income.

“In the past we have done 100 per cent financing. Now we have some relationships with banks so (they) are taking part of the mortgage and we are taking the rest,” she said.

While home prices have risen, “there has not been a dramatic shift in what Habitat can afford to sustain their program,” said Daniels’ vice-president Don Pugh, who said the company sells to the agency at prices its program can support.

What has changed is how the homes are delivered to Habitat, Pugh said. Many years ago, the solution was making a piece of land available. Now most Habitat homes are delivered turnkey.

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For homeowners like the Mohammeds, it’s a life-altering model.

“Our kids would have more freedom to be themselves, have their own rooms and we would have control of the heat and water,” Vidia said. “No landlord can just come in whenever they decided or asking us to keep the noise down a bit.”

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