Canadian mayor can't afford a home in her town despite making $90,000 (VIDEO)
Canadian Mayor Natasha Salonen still can’t afford a home in her town, even with a salary of $90,000.
The mayor of Wilmot, a rural township in southwestern Ontario, went viral recently for getting candid about housing affordability in Canada.
Her stance has struck a chord with people nationwide struggling with the dream of home ownership amid the soaring cost of living.
“It’s a whole generation that we have that is struggling to get into the housing market, whether they’re looking for home ownership or rentals,” she said.
Salonen says that the university-to-good-job-to-home-ownership pipeline isn’t the reality for millennials nowadays ā and she’s the prime example.
The politician has been mayor of Wilmot for almost a year; before that, she worked in the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.
Still, Salonen says her $90,000 salary is no match against the average price of a home in Wilmot, which was $916,000 in July.
“That is not what it was like growing up when I was a kid,” she said.
For context, while the town is small ā with a population of just 22,000 people ā it does sit right next to the urban centres of Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge.
The mayor says that during COVID-19, the city saw an influx of homebuyers from the Greater Toronto Area who wanted to escape the city for more space.
As a result, Salonen has seen her peers from high school be forced to move to other small communities because they can no longer afford homes in Wilmot. In turn, they end up pricing those other people out of their own market.
It’s a vicious cycle.
“I think it’s really showing that it isn’t just an affordability crisis in our cities and our metropolitans across the country, but that this problem is now trickling out and having a domino effect on all our communities,” she said.
The Canadian government’s role
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated in early August that housing isn’t a “primary federal responsibility.”
Salonen disagrees with this.
The mayor says there are two big pressure points that she thinks are the federal government’s responsibility ā immigration and international students.
“When we’re bringing in over half a million people a year… yet they arrive, and housing prices are unattainable for themselves, as well as people who are already here… I don’t think we’re really giving a great opportunity to the immigrants that we’re trying to attract,” she said.
“They’re putting a direct strain on an already stressed circumstance.”
Salonen adds that international students from nearby universities like Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier are putting pressure on Wilmot’s rental supply.
“To the point where I spoke with some individuals that say the food bank sees a lot of these international students show up because, by the time they pay rent and their international fees, they can’t afford food,” she said.
The Canadian government recently announced plans to tackle international student housing issues.
Housing Minister Sean Fraser said Ottawa is considering a cap on international student visas to tackle the housing crisis.
On a local level, Salonen says her government has focused on creating more purpose-built rentals to open up housing affordability.
Overall, the mayor wants to see the federal government work with facts, not biases.
“Most of the policymakers I know, certainly federally, are property investors,” said Salonen. “How are they supposed to make policy that goes directly against their personal financial interests?”
She says governments must stop blaming each other and other parties for the housing crisis.
“Just take facts and go, ‘Alright, what are our next steps?'”
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