VANCOUVER—A minimum-wage earner working 40 hours a week cannot afford a modest one- or two-bedroom apartment in any of Vancouver’s 70 neighbourhoods, according to a new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The CCPA calculated the hourly wage a single-income earner would have to make to afford a one- or two-bedroom apartment in 795 neighbourhoods in 36 metropolitan areas to show housing affordability is unattainable for many renters across the country.

The study used data from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s October 2018 urban rental market survey to calculate how much someone would have to earn in order to spend 30 per cent or less of pre-tax income on rent, which it calls the rental wage.

Unsurprisingly, Vancouver had the highest average rental wage — $35.43 — of all 36 cities for a modest two-bedroom apartment.

With B.C.’s minimum wage at $12.65, that’s almost a $23-an-hour gap. It isn’t much better for those who want a one-bedroom, with an hourly wage of $26.72 an hour required to afford the rent, or a $14-an-hour gap.

In Ontario, where minimum wage is $14 an hour, the gap between the minimum wage and the wage needed to afford Toronto’s average rent adds up to a $13.74-an-hour shortfall for a one-bedroom or $19.70 for a two-bedroom.

“We live in Vancouver, so the idea that housing is unaffordable for a lot of people is not new, but this puts some numbers to how unaffordable it is,” said Marc Lee, a Vancouver-based senior economist with the CCPA.

At minimum wage, a single-income earner in Vancouver would have to work 112 hours a week to afford the average-priced two-bedroom apartment and 84 hours a week to afford a one-bedroom.

Even though B.C.’s minimum wage has been gradually rising over the past few years, it’s “still so insufficient to what’s needed,” Lee added.

The data includes apartment buildings, where stronger tenancy protections apply, as well as condos owned by individuals and rented out. It does not include basement suites in houses.

In one of Vancouver’s priciest downtown neighbourhoods, the condo-filled North False Creek, a single-wage earner would need to make $60.93 an hour — or work 193 hours a week at minimum wage — to afford a two-bedroom apartment, the highest rental wage in the country.

Neighbourhoods in the suburban communities of North Delta and Maple Ridge have the smallest gap between rents and wages. In those areas, a single-income earner would need to make just under $18 an hour to afford a one-bedroom and between $24.95 and $25.73 to afford a two-bedroom apartment.

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Even as businesses complain about the difficulty of finding workers to fill jobs in Metro Vancouver’s booming economy, people are being forced to move further and further away from downtown, but that can mean a longer and more expensive commute, Lee said.

He believes the only solution is a building boom, funded by federal and provincial governments.

“We are actually building housing, but too much of that is being built for people who don’t live here or are phenomenally wealthy people,” Lee said.

“I think we need a generation of building affordable rental.”

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