There’s a running joke in one of my friend circles that, if we ever pooled our resources and lived together, we’d need a cat room. We daydream about what our space would be like beyond feline accommodations: Everyone would have their own bedroom with en suite bathroom, naturally. We’d have a communal kitchen and living space, so we could hang out and get some friend time in. We’d have a housekeeper come in once a week, and as we get older, maybe a nurse to check in on us. It’s a great dream, and I think we’re half serious about living together, especially because half of us still rent. As my friend Diane once said, “As soon as I think I’ve saved enough for a down payment, prices jump.”

Housing is undeniably one of the major questions of our time. In Canada, not only is home ownership out of reach for many people, but even paying rent is getting harder. A 2024 Abacus survey showed nearly three in five Canadians are somewhat or very concerned about losing their home or rental because of financial issues. And that precarity is even more pronounced for single people.

The old rule of thumb was that housing should be 30 percent of your net income. At 40 percent, the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) considers a household “overburdened.” Overburdened is starting to look like the new normal.

In 2025, when I wrote this, surveys found that some Canadians were spending way more than 30 percent of their income on a place to live. The median gross income for single people was $45,069, and 30 percent of that is $13,521, or $1,125 per month. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Canada, in January 2025, was $2,109, almost double the 30 percent guideline for a median income Canadian. The average monthly mortgage payment in 2024, according to the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, ranged between $1,337 in New Brunswick and $2,836 in British Columbia. In the United States, the average monthly mortgage payment in 2024 was $2,209 (US). California has the highest monthly payments at $2,500 (US), compared to West Virginia’s $960 (US).

But where did this 30 percent guideline even come from? I asked Carolyn Whitzman, a housing and social policy consultant who has worked as an expert adviser to the University of British Columbia’s Housing Assessment Resource Tools project, which developed standardized best practices for analyzing housing needs using detailed, open data. When we spoke, she worked as a senior housing researcher at University of Toronto’s School of Cities, researching best practices to scale affordable “missing middle,” modular, and replicable housing.

“It’s both arbitrary and standard,” she said. The standard part of the housing costs calculator was set by the OECD in the 1980s, and Canada has used it since. Other countries, such as the US, the United Kingdom, and Australia, also follow this guideline.

“Back in the early days of labour rights, there was a notion of eight hours for rest, eight hours for work, and eight hours for what you will. Out of that same era, there was advocacy for one day’s work for one week’s rent, which means 20 percent, not 30 percent. And when Canada started doing housing policy, for instance, there’s a report called the Curtis Report on postwar reconstruction that came out in 1944. They used 20 percent as their standard of affordability, which slowly crept up to first 25 percent and then 30 percent. Quebec still uses 25 percent as its definition of affordability.”

The Curtis Report was produced by a committee set up to analyze and manage possible problems of postwar reconstruction, policies, and programs. It used income category measures, a clear definition of affordability based on proportion of household income, as well as a housing need assessment method that included both “accumulated needs” and future “needs arising from population growth and [affordable housing] replacement.” It recommended one-third of new construction be nonprofit public housing, one-third regulated rental, and one-third private market home ownership.

But the federal government decided to, instead, let the market........

© The Walrus