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What It Takes to Afford Rent in Halton

Updated: 4 days ago

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By Richard Lau

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA)[1],[2] calculates the rental wage - the hourly wage a full-time worker (working 40 hours per week, 52 weeks a year) needs to afford the average 2-bedroom apartment[3] while spending less than 30% of before tax income on housing. Put simply, the rental wage is the wage people need to earn to pay their rent without sacrificing other basic needs.


To benchmark housing affordability, rental wage highlights the gap between actual wages (such as minimum wage) and what’s required to rent. For example, if the rental wage is $35/hour but the minimum wage is $17/hour, it means minimum-wage workers would have to work over twice as many hours to afford rent or working more than one job.


In Ontario, the minimum wage rose from $16.55 in 2023 to $17.20 in 2024, a 3.9% increase.


In 2024, the rental wage for Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) which includes Oakville, Milton and Halton Hills was $44.80 per hour and Hamilton CMA which includes Burlington was $33.49. Even with Ontario’s minimum wage increase, rents in both the Toronto and Hamilton CMAs are far out of reach for minimum wage earners.


The affordability gap is particularly acute in the Toronto CMA, where housing costs demand wages more than 2.5 times higher than what many minimum wage workers earn. This misalignment demonstrates why housing insecurity and displacement pressures are rising, as full-time work at minimum wage is no longer sufficient to secure stable housing in either CMA.


Rental Wage in Halton’s municipalities

 

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  • Oakville (excluding Bronte): Rental wage rose from $43.69 in 2023 to $47.83 in 2024, a 9.5% increase. This indicates that housing affordability is tightening, though the increase is more moderate than in other municipalities.

  • Oakville (Bronte only): increased from $43.40 to $72.9, a 69% increase

  • Burlington East: Increased from $41.79 to $44.22, a 5.8% rise, the lowest growth among the four municipalities. This suggests relatively slower rent inflation compared to peers.

  • Burlington Southwest: Jumped from $35.66 to $41.16, a 15.4% increase, showing one of the most significant escalations in rental wage requirements.

  • Milton/Halton Hills: Rose from $31.06 to $36.25, a 16.7% increase, the steepest among all municipalities.


Minimum Wage Hours Required in Halton’s municipalities

As rental wages climb across Halton, so too does the number of hours a minimum wage worker must put in each month just to cover the cost of a two-bedroom apartment.

 

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  • Oakville (excluding Bronte): Increased from 137 hours in 2023 to 145 in 2024, a 5.8% increase.

  • Oakville (Bronte only), grew from 136 hours to 220 hours in 2024, a 62% increase

  • Burlington East: Rose slightly from 131 to 134 hours, a 2.3% increase, the smallest growth in hours required.

  • Burlington Southwest: Increased from 112 to 124 hours, a 10.7% increase.

  • Milton/Halton Hills: Jumped from 98 to 110 hours, a 12.2% increase, the highest growth in hours needed.


What This Means

  • Across all Halton municipalities, the required rental wage has increased from 2023 to 2024.

  • Minimum wage earners are falling further behind, needing more hours to afford rent despite working full-time.

  • For example, in Oakville (excl. Bronte), someone earning minimum wage now needs to work 145 hours per month just to cover a 2-bedroom apartment, well above a standard full-time workload.


Housing affordability in Halton is moving further out of reach for many residents. These numbers highlight the growing gap between wages and rental costs, raising questions about how sustainable housing is for working families.

 

 

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[1] Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), Making Rent: The CCPA’s Rental Wage update 2024, https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/making-rent-the-ccpas-rental-wage-update-2024/

[2] Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), Out of Control Rents, September 2024, https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/OUT-OF-CONTROL-RENTS.pdf

[3] Two-bedroom apartments are the most common rental type in Canada (49 % of all purpose-built units) and data for them is less likely to be suppressed. A two-bedroom unit also acts as a proxy for various family types in Canada, since it provides a modest amount of room for multiple people.



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