All Mary Welsh wants is a place to call home.
The 61-year-old retired librarian who now works as a part-time cashier at Walmart is being evicted from her tiny, one-bedroom apartment that a previous owner built in piecemeal fashion behind the garage of a Matthew Boyd Crescent home, in the Yonge Street and Davis Drive area of Newmarket.
It is illegal, not up to code, and has “101 little things” wrong with it, like no fire door between the rental and the owner’s living space upstairs, no control over heat or air conditioning, and nowhere to easily dispose of garbage and recycling.
Despite all that, Welsh said she is grateful to have it and the thought of trying to find a new place that she can comfortably afford, is close to transit, and where she feels safe is a constant source of anxiety.
She and her nine-year-old cat, Kristi, have to be out by the end of June because the new owners say they need the space for family members.
“All of the apartments I have looked at that are remotely in my price range are illegal and, for the most part, death traps, should there ever be a fire,” Welsh said. “On top of that, they are not easily accessed by public transportation. I try not to stress about my situation, but sometimes I get overwhelmed. I feel very vulnerable.”
Since returning to Canada from the New York City area where Welsh worked in the local library system for 15 years, finding housing has proved challenging at the best of times and, at the worst of times, insurmountable.
'Life blew up'
After leaving the United States about five years ago to join the family dog breeding business in Udora, about half an hour east of Newmarket, Welsh realized the move wasn’t working out as she’d hoped.
“I like to say I lost my mind,” she said, of living and working with family members.
With nowhere to go and her support network largely centred around the eastern townships of Quebec where she grew up, Welsh found herself on the threshold of homelessness.
“Life blew up and I ended up in a shelter for a couple of months,” she said. “I don’t know where I would have ended up without them.”
Concerned about Welsh’s emotional well-being and mental health, a friend picked her up in Udora and brought her to Newmarket’s Yellow Brick House, an emergency shelter for women and children, where Welsh received counselling, employment support and the chance to rent an apartment at the agency-run, transitional housing building known as Reta’s Place.
“I got hired by Target and because I was proactive, I qualified for a two-bedroom apartment for under $400,” Welsh said. “But that can only last for up to six months.”
About the same time she was gearing up to apartment hunt in Newmarket, Target announced it was closing down and Welsh lost her job.
With limited housing options available, Welsh agreed to room with an acquaintance that she said she knew wasn’t a good idea.
“But beggars can’t be choosers,” she said with a long sigh.
With only a small pension from her former US employer, Welsh began job hunting again and landed the Walmart job where she remains today.
A chance meeting with one of her customers and the former owner of the Matthew Boyd Crescent house led to Welsh getting the rear apartment at a price she could afford of $850 a month. The location meant that she could walk to work and save on transit costs, which she has been doing for the last three-and-a-half years.
Precarious housing
A new owner in 2018, however, upped her rent to $950 and offered only a month-to-month rental arrangement.
“That was not legal, but I had nowhere else to go,” Welsh said. “At the time, with paying $850, I didn’t think I could make it. But I didn’t realize how good I had it. I am shocked at the rental prices in Newmarket.”
A recent search for rental apartments in Newmarket turns up bachelor basement apartments starting at about $1,000 plus utilities, and climb progressively skyward depending on proximity to amenities such as shopping, transit, schools and more.
Welsh had owned her own townhouse in New Rochelle, New York, and never expected to find herself in such a precarious situation with respect to housing.
By definition, Welsh is one of an estimated three million households in Canada that are precariously housed, according to not-for-profit organization Canada Without Poverty. That means individuals are living in unaffordable, below standard or in overcrowded housing conditions.
Here in York Region, there are an estimated 16,000 people on the waitlist for subsidized housing provided through Housing York. The average wait time to get a subsidized rental unit is six years, according to a regional government spokesperson. And seniors continue to be the largest group waiting for subsidized housing, making up about 55 per cent of applicants on the waitlist.
Welsh has been on that list for the past three-and-a-half years, and has been asked to check in once a year to see if she has moved up.
“I’m hoping my application will be expedited because I’m now over 60,” she said.
Years-long wait for subsidized housing
As the largest housing provider in the region, the agency serves more than 4,000 residents who live in nearly 2,600 units spread out over 35 properties in the region’s nine municipalities.
According to a March 2019 regional government update on affordable housing development, the towns of Aurora and East Gwillimbury will be the next communities of focus.
Construction is nearly complete on a 162-unit seniors’ building known as Woodbridge Lane, set to open in Vaughan in 2020, and an affordable seniors’ complex with 265 units is scheduled to follow in 2022 in Markham.
While Newmarket has more rent-geared-to-income units on a per-capita basis than any other municipality in the region, it continues to have the lowest supply of rental housing in the GTA.
Welsh said she just can’t just pack up now and relocate to a different municipality.
“It gets complicated the older you get,” she said. “All my health care providers are here in Newmarket and I can walk to work.”
The regional government and Town of Newmarket state that a mix of affordable rental housing options is a key priority, and officials at both levels have created policies to attract developers to build rental units.
Incentives such as a break on property taxes and deferred development charges are on the table for builders. The only purpose-built rental building that went up in York Region in the last 25 years is at 212 Davis Dr., in Newmarket, which opened in 2018. It offers market rents of about $2,295 per month for a two-bedroom apartment, with 25 per cent of units subsidized through Housing York.
But as York University assistant professor Teresa Abbruzzese, who teaches urban studies in the social sciences department, told NewmarketToday in a previous interview, housing that’s provided through the market is divorced from social needs.
Serious stimulation of housing needed
“There’s still a reliance on providing incentives for developers to build, and when the supply of housing is left to the market, you’re not going to get the diverse mix of housing you need, particularly for families and the elderly,” Abbruzzese said. “Housing needs strong regulations in place and we need a serious stimulation of housing production. The money needs to come from the provincial and federal governments.”
Newmarket Mayor John Taylor tackled the affordable housing crisis in his May column here on NewmarketToday.
“We need to ask the development industry to innovate and create new types of seniors affordable housing, such as Stillbrook Seniors Housing, and to consider building basement apartments, Habitat for Humanity homes and even tiny homes,” Taylor said. “Housing affordability is a significant challenge and we must advance new ways of meeting the needs of our community or risk becoming unsustainable in the future.”
By 2020, 10 of Housing York’s properties will be at or approaching 50 years of age, according to a regional report. Just this year alone, the two elevators at the seniors’ Fairy Lake Gardens building had to be replaced, and 66 kitchens and bathrooms were renovated in seniors’ units at Heritage East, both of which are located in Newmarket.
Housing advocates greeted with cautious optimism the April announcement by the Ontario government that it would invest $4 billion over nine years in various initiatives under the Ontario-Canada National Housing Strategy.
Locally, that translates into $4.3 million in funding for 2019-2020 for the Investment in Affordable Housing for Ontario initiative, with only one year’s funding confirmed by the province. Funding for the 2019-2020 Ontario Priorities Housing Initiative will be $7.5 million, and will decrease in 2020-2021 to $3.9 million, with another $6 million promised for 2021-2022.
Funding of $51,500 has also been confirmed for one year only for 2019-2020 under the Canada-Ontario Community Housing Initiative, according to an April 17, 2019 funding allocation letter received by the Regional Municipality of York from Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark.
“I feel like I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place,” Welsh said. “I find it very frustrating. With the new government in power, I mean, things are not going to change anytime soon.”
This is the first of a regular ongoing series, A Place to Call Home, examining Newmarket's growing affordable housing crisis.
