The Federation Canadian Municipalities and Household Income Housing

annual income: Almost 20 per cent of all Canadian households are spending 50 per cent or more of their before tax annual income on rent, according to Rabble. For various reasons, over 235,000 Canadians find themselves homeless annually. Spending more than 30 per cent of before tax household income on housing, municipal services, electricity, fuel and water, means there little money left for basic expenditures like food, transportation, clothing, personal toiletries, laundry, and no money for perks like recreation. According to The Federation of Canadian Municipalities' 2012 report, "average incomes have not kept pace with continually rising housing costs. A healthy housing price-to-income ratio is generally considered to be four to one; the most recent figures available for the QOLRS show this ratio as greater than seven to one by 2010. Between 2006 and 2009, average income for the combination of couple families, lone-parent families, and single persons in Quality of Life Reporting System cities increased by 5.5 per cent, while the average cost of homeownership rose by 22 per cent. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.