Ottawa’s rental market isn’t the villain. The villain is the idea that life is supposed to be easy. It never has been.

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When I was starting out, I made $600 every two weeks working full-time at Tim Hortons. Rent in Ottawa for a decent downtown apartment was $1,000–to-$1,400. If you do the math, that was impossible for a single income. The only way to make it work was to hustle: grab overtime, pick up a second job, or live with roommates.

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