While Vancouver's rental woes are nothing new—the average for a one-bedroom, the highest in the country, is $1,900—a local CBC reporter nonetheless found herself stunned while checking out an open house yesterday.
Angela Sterritt tweeted a photo of a massive crowd of 150 people looking to check out a "modest" two-bedroom apartment in a co-op in the city's Mount Pleasant neighbourhood."So this is a showing of a 2 bedroom rental in #Vancouver. Ridiculous, depressing and ….." she tweeted.
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Sterritt the crowd was so large that people were viewing it in groups of 20 and that people with children were given first priority (you know, like on the Titanic.)
As for the unit itself, Sterritt said there was no dishwasher, no backyard, and when someone asked if there was mould in the building, the answer was "yes.""This is the hunger games of renting in Vancouver," she tweeted.VICE reached out to Sterritt for comment, but she said she was unavailable.Vancouver's vacancy rate for bachelors, and one and two-bedrooms is around 0.7 percent, according to a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. survey from last year.Co-op housing is not-for-profit and therefore can offer rents that are often much lower than market value. Sterritt said the unit she saw last night started at $1,200 but was salary-dependent.Meanwhile in Ontario, the government just announced a new affordable housing strategy that includes a foreign buyers' tax and increased rent control.Toronto has the second most expensive rental in the country, with an average one-bedroom priced at $1,620 a month.Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.