Ontario has updated income thresholds used to guide provincial social service agencies and subsidized housing providers, as of January 1, 2022. Based on data from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CHMC), the new benchmarks establish parameters for defining financially stressed renters and estimate the earnings needed in order to spend no more than 30 per cent of income on housing.
Generally, four brackets of presumed housing costs and cut-offs for assistance are applied throughout the province, with some minor variations in northern Ontario. The most populous areas of the Greater Toronto Area, with the exception of Durham Region, are presumed to have the steepest housing costs, while smaller cities and rural areas are deemed to have the lowest.
In Toronto, Peel, York and Halton Regions, it’s suggested renters with one-bedroom apartments would need an annual income of at least $56,500 to ensure housing costs ate up no more than 30 per cent of their budget, while renters with three bedroom-units would need a yearly income of $72,000 to keep housing costs at the same quotient. Renters in those jurisdictions are to be designated as “high-need” households — meaning that they earn less than 60 per cent of those stipulated amounts and are spending at least 50 per cent of their income on housing — if they require a one-bedroom apartment and have an annual income of less than $33,900 or require a three-bedroom unit and have an annual income of less than $43,200.
More moderate cost assumptions are used for urban centres in Durham Region, including Oshawa, Pickering, Ajax and Whitby, as well as for Hamilton, Niagara Region, Kitchener-Waterloo, Guelph, London, Windsor, Peterborough and Greater Sudbury. In those jurisdictions, it’s assumed that renters earning $41,400 annually would not need to pay more than 30 per cent of their earnings for a one-bedroom apartment. Similarly, three-bedroom units would presumably cost no more than 30 per cent of earnings for renters with annual incomes of a least $58,000. The demarcation mark for “high need” is set at earnings of less than $24,900 for a one-bedroom apartment or $34,800 for a three-bedroom apartment.
If expending no more of than 30 per cent of their income on housing, renters in Ottawa would need to earn $48,000 annually to secure a one-bedroom unit or $56,000 for a three-bedroom unit. To be considered high-need households, renters of one-bedroom units would earn less than $28,200, while renters of three-bedroom units earn less than $41,400.
Kingston, Belleville, Cornwall and Chatham-Kent represent a minority of cities where income thresholds are grouped with a larger number of rural and more sparsely populated areas. In this cohort, it’s assumed tenants with annual earnings of $34,000 would not need to pay more than 30 per cent of that amount to rent a one-bedroom unit, and tenants seeking one-bedroom units would not be designated high-need households unless their annual income fell below $20,400.
