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IT IS NOT REALISTIC TO LIVE IN TORONTO
So you are a graduate of university or college and have plans to leave Dorchester and move to Toronto. The sad facts of life are that it is not realistic to move to the GTA- the Greater Toronto area. The stats show us that young people who would like to build their lives in Toronto are in time are forced to leave rather then pay the ever increasing cost of rents.
The problems are not limited to uneducated lower income young people. Earning $65,000 per year for a single person is not quite enough to make due in the GTA. A one bedroom basement apartment in North York can cost you $1,250 per month plus utilities, plus TTC, cost of food, cell phone with very left to save for a rainy day if you are laid off.
The reality to be able to afford a semi- detached home in the GTA is an astonishing $1,250,000 and rising for a semi-detached house with a 30 foot frontage.
Wayne Jewell, from Sutton Diamond Realty, kindly e mailed me that the average sale house price in Dorchester in 2017 was a very affordable $418,260.
In due time Toronto will duplicate the dilemma of Canadian graduates who yearn to live in the Vancouver area with none is too many reality for the majority of our young people to live and work in the metropolitan areas. The bank of mom and dad often times have to remortgage their paid up homes in Vista Woods to help their children to live in the big city.
If Toronto is not careful it can be a generational ghost town in the future with the majority of it’s people who are either rich or poor with the middle class in decline. The poor, who are mostly immigrants, live in high rise subsidized ghettos in Flemington or Regent Park. The vast majority of them can’t move to better areas. There is a lack of social/economic mobility for the immigrants whose first language is not English. They are in constant need of social services to be able to get bye.
The rich, mostly professionals, with university degrees in hand, live in their upscale neighborhoods in Rosedale, Forest Hill, Bridal Path. Mom and pop little cottages have been demolished to make way for wall to wall three story homes with nannies to take care of the children while both parents are at work.
We in the London area have a population density of around 350,000 people and there are ample vacancies in apartments and housing for educated, employed people to live well. The mortgage interest rates are very low and if you are employed you can save enough to buy a nice home and plan to have a family in Dorchester.
My advise to our young college/university graduates is to think global and look local to find employment in a fordable place to live without going into life long debts to pay for housing. I know it is not fashionable (cool) for some of our children to opt to stay close to home in Dorchester where they grew up.
But, you can be successful and happy wherever you live if you know who and what you are all about. No need to have the hectic debt filled life in the big city to try and impress your trendy friends. It’s not the quantity of life that matters; it is the quality of life that counts.
Len Lesser is a counselor in Dorchester.
Len Lesser