As Premier Doug Ford’s decision to cut council almost in half reignites talk of the urban-suburban divide, the Star finds the old differences aren’t what they used to be. In a new occasional series, One Toronto, we take a look at what divides us and what we share, no matter where the ward lines fall.

Faced with moving out of a mouldy basement apartment, Jesse and Joanna James wanted to find something above ground they could afford in the same neighbourhood, which they love for its diversity, parks and walkability.

The couple, in their early 30s with two kids, had been paying $1,750 for a six-bedroom house, subletting the rooms upstairs to help pay the bills. They’d hoped to find an apartment on their own for around $1,300, something that didn’t seem outlandish the last time they were house-hunting, a little more than six years ago.

They quickly realized times had changed.

They were up against an “astonishing” price jump of about 20 per cent, said Jesse, and worried they might be priced out of the area altogether.

The Jameses live not on Queen West or in Liberty Village, but in Ward 23 Willowdale, in North York. It’s a formerly affordable neighbourhood where tenant households now pay the most on average in the city, at $1,592 a month, for shelter costs (rent and utilities), according to 2016 Statistics Canada data.

As an occasional series this summer, the Star is looking at what unites and divides Toronto’s megacity 20 years after amalgamation. It’s clear the search for affordable housing — once a problem for the old city of Toronto — is something people now struggle with in every neighbourhood.

In every ward of the city, from Etobicoke to Scarborough, at least 40 per cent of renters are putting 30 per cent or more of their income towards rent, a common benchmark for unaffordable housing. In Ward 23, that number is 58 per cent, according to 2016 census data.

“It used to be that if you were looking for more affordable rent, if you felt like you were priced out of, what I’d call just the subway line, anything along there, you’d go to certain areas of the city,” said Geordie Dent, executive director of the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations (FMTA).

But “increasingly we’re hearing that there is no help.”

After Ward 23 Willowdale, the second highest average monthly shelter cost for rentals (a figure which includes utilities and all kinds of rentals regardless of bedrooms or type), is downtown’s Ward 20 Trinity-Spadina, at $1,583 a month, says census data.

But wards in North York, Etobicoke and Scarborough all have averages over $1,000 and only five wards in the city out of 44 have averages under a grand. The lowest is in Ward 43 Scarborough East, at $895 a month.

A place slightly out of the core might save renters $10 or $20 a month “but overall the affordability crisis has basically spread to every corner of the city” with rent “eating up a huge share” of Torontonians’ disposable income, Dent said.

Maize Blanchard has little left over after putting more than half of her fixed income from her pension towards rent for her apartment near Jane and Finch.

“Where am I going to get the money to eat properly and pay my rent at the same time?” asked Blanchard, a member of housing advocacy group ACORN, which recently launched a campaign calling on the city to build more affordable units.

“That’s my beef, that’s my story, and a lot of my friends are just like me,” she said.

Even in suburban Ward 36 Scarborough Southwest almost half (46 per cent) of tenants are putting more than 30 per cent of their income towards rent, according to census data. Forty-five per cent of renters are doing the same in Ward 43 Scarborough East.

“Housing affordability challenges are not a downtown problem,” said Shauna Brail, director of the University of Toronto’s urban studies program.

Though the suburbs have traditionally been associated with homeowners, Blanchard and the Jameses are not the exception.

According to 2016 census data, at least 35 per cent of residents in 39 of the city’s 44 wards are renters.

The highest rates of renters are found downtown (70 per cent) in Ward 14 Parkdale-High Park and the lowest in Ward 44 Scarborough East (17 per cent).

But almost half of residents in adjacent suburban Ward 43 Scarborough East and Ward 1 Etobicoke North are renting (both 46 per cent).

The Jameses didn’t want to leave their community, where they have “deep roots” and are close to families Jesse works with as a community organizer — but owning was out of the question.

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Even for a tiny studio condo in Willowdale, they were looking at $400,000 to $500,000.

“We would have been preapproved for a mortgage that would have only afforded a house in the Yukon or Windsor,” said Jesse, with a laugh.

The Jameses eventually lucked out. They found a four-bedroom house for about $2,350 a month plus utilities. They make it work through leasing spare bedrooms to international students, and the landlord added another bedroom.

To get their rental, they wrote a letter to the landlord to explain how much they loved the neighbourhood, hoping they’d stand out against 18 other aspiring tenants.

They’re grateful for their situation but realize it wouldn’t work for many families that are being forced out of the city due to high rents and unaffordable home prices.

Joanna called the search “bewildering” as they weren’t finding anything in their price range.

“Nobody really had any answers,” she said, adding they had to think of a creative solution themselves to stay in the neighbourhood. “I felt like we had to blaze a new trail.”

Ward 23 Councillor John Filion said what “tilts the number” for rent in Willowdale is the influx of newer investor-owned condos that are more expensive to lease. The ward also has more larger houses than many downtown neighbourhoods, which may skew the average monthly shelter costs for rentals somewhat higher — families like the Jameses are likely to seek larger units than what are available downtown.

But, Filion said, it’s clear Willowdale is not the reasonably priced place it once was.

The councillor, who has lived in Willowdale since 1978, said it used to be “a very affordable area” with “a lot of postwar housing” where you could raise a family and your kids could then buy a house nearby.

“Now even if your kids are doing very well financially they’re unlikely to be able to buy a house a couple of streets over, and it’s difficult for them to even pay rent in the area,” he said.

Dent believes Toronto needs a “tenant city” plan with billions of investment dollars to build affordable housing, adding it’s a problem that transcends an urban-suburban divide.

Officials should also look at zoning, and consider making rental-only zones in some areas, offer incentives like no property tax for the first five years on affordable buildings or just build affordable units on land that’s already publicly owned.

Otherwise, he said, soon only the very rich will be able to afford to live in the city.

“If things keep going the way they are, Toronto as we know it is done,” he said.

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