Households that Can Afford Median Rent

This map estimates the proportion of households in each area that can reasonably afford the median rent in that area. Compare this to the related map of how many can afford to own the median dwelling. We compute the "reasonable" income required to rent a dwelling by stipulating that no more than 30% of pre-tax income should be used toward shelter costs, that is rent and utilities. To estimate the proportion of households we utilize the brackets of pre-tax household incomes and assume that the distribution is linear in each bracket and that for the top bracket of income above $150,000 half of the households always qualify and the other half has incomes linearly distributed between $150,000 and some estimated "halfway" mark in the top income bracket. The variations between and within metropolitan areas in Canada is much lower than the related map for looking how many can afford to own the median dwelling. In Metro Vancouver, where overall 70% of households can rent the median home, we see strong variability on the municipal level. In the City of Vancouver only 76% of households can rent the median home, compared to 82% in Delta. Metro Toronto fairs similar, with 73% of households able to afford the median rent, dropping to 66% when focusing in on the City of Toronto. In Metro Montreal 76% of households can pay the median rent, but only 68% when focusing in on the City of Montreal. Calgary and Metro Edmonton come in around 76%. As always, our maps are Canada wide. Pan, zoom and use the search bar to explore different parts. Zooming into the sub-neighbourhood level leads to data-quality issues due to statistical rounding, and we grey out areas where we deem the data to be unreliable. For added information we show the relationship between the proportion of tenant households and the proportion of the households with enough income to afford the median rent in each area. As one would expect, these correlate quite strongly in Calgary, Montreal and Toronto, but the correlation is somewhat weaker in the Vancouver area.

Author: CensusMapper Team

Dataset: CA11F, CA11N