A “staggering and worsening” shortage of affordable housing threatens the health and well-being of low- and moderate-income Ontarians and undermines the province’s economic competitiveness, says a 20-year retrospective on the issue.

“The lack of a sufficient supply of affordable housing shuts the door on opportunity for too many Ontarians,” says the report by the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association and the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, Ontario Region. “This undermines our collective prosperity.”

Recent federal efforts aimed at cooling the housing market will make it even worse. As up to 20,000 households unable to buy remain in an already tight rental market, rents will continue to rise, says the report, titled “Where’s Home?”

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According to Census data, Ontario lost “an astonishing” 86,000 rental dwellings between 1996 and 2006 due to redevelopment and conversion to ownership, says the report.

Even though low interest rates have helped more Ontarians become homeowners and there are more condominiums and new homes for rent, the province needs at least 10,000 new purpose-built rental units a year to meet demand, the report notes.

“Growing competition for limited rental units will drive up rents, making it even harder for low- and moderate-income renters,” says the housing association’s executive director, Sharad Kerur.

This will put even more pressure on Ontario’s affordable housing waiting lists, which already top 156,000 households, including almost 73,000 in Toronto.

They are “the frontline evidence of the market inability to address affordability challenges,” the report says.

The federal-provincial affordable housing program is helping to create about 1,500 new affordable rental units annually in Ontario. But relatively few are affordable to low-income households and just two-thirds are in the non-profit sector and likely to remain affordable over time, the report notes.

Meantime, the monthly gap between incomes and rents for low- to moderate-income households has widened since 2002 by 20 per cent, to almost $300, the report says.

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That means the average low- to moderate-income household would need an extra $3,500 to $4,000 per year to manage their rent without using food banks, going into debt or being forced to live in substandard housing.

About 20 per cent of Ontario households pay more than 50 per cent of their income on rent or live in homes that are too small or in need of repair. The national average is just 13 per cent.

Toronto’s Lin Chou, who has struggled to hold on to her bachelor apartment since she was laid off in 2011, spends almost all of her monthly income on her $790 rent.

She is grateful for the Daily Bread Food Bank, where she volunteers for 30 hours a month in exchange for food and household cleaning supplies.

“I don’t know what I would do without them,” says Chou, 56.

Through an Employment Insurance self-employment training program, the theatre company administrator is building a business as a part-time piano teacher, a job she did for 25 years when she was younger.

But she continues to apply for odd jobs, “anything I can find to make some money to pay the bills,” she says. “It’s hard, because every time I try to climb the wall it gets higher and higher.”

The future for people like Chou looks increasingly dire, says Kerur.

“Nobody is taking ownership of the problem,” he says. “Senior levels of government are not owning it, so it is left to local communities to solve. But they need senior government support.”

About half of Ontario’s 1.3 million renter households live in private purpose-built apartments, while 21 per cent live in social housing. The remaining 30 per cent live in the so-called “secondary rental market” in rented condominiums, houses, duplexes and units above stores that are easily lost from the rental market, the report says.

Condos are also largely unaffordable. The average one-bedroom condo in Greater Toronto rents for about $1,430 a month, while a purpose-built one-bedroom apartment rents for about $1,100 a month.

Clearly, the private market is not meeting the demand for new affordable rental housing, says the co-op federation’s Harvey Cooper.

“We need robust, dedicated programs that will enable the non-profit, co-operative and private markets to build the homes that Ontario needs for our economy to grow,” he says.