Truth is, we saw pretty much all three. But for reasons that I will explain later in this post, we have as of yet not found a suitable place for our family. And the more houses we visit and apply for, the more I start to realize that it may turn out to be a much greater endeavour than I had anticipated. Because the way it looks like right now, all assumptions I had about finding a place to live in Vancouver are wrong...and we basically have a hand filled with short sticks wherever we go.
As a former scientist, I find that when things don't add up the way you anticipated them to add up, it is always a good idea to look at some numbers. Numbers are pretty important. What with square footage, monthly rent and the numbered avenues around here, looking at a housing add can make you feel as if you are looking at a halfway filled bingo ticket. And right away, something else struck me as well. On craigslist, the place where I have been looking for rentals, you can set a number of search filters. At first, we only ticked the box for 2+ bedrooms. And I found that only 1 in 10 ads actually had a rent that started with a 1 (followed by 3 digits...I have seen 1's that were followed by 4 digits.). Menno quickly taught me to set the max. for rent at $2000 so as to make my searches on craigslist slightly less depressing.
Still, the high costs for rentals kept bugging me. How could it be that there basically was no suitable housing for us in our price range? I mean, I know that a scientific career is not the most lucrative one, but it's also not a minimum wage kind of job. But, my assumption that we would be able to easily live of Menno's wage, heck, even easily find a place to live, proved to be wrong. And, when a former scientist says "proved to be wrong", it means she has got the numbers to back it up!
Browsing the "for rent" adds, I found a rental property that was part of a subsidized housing community of Metro Vancouver Housing Corporation. I clicked the link to their website and quickly came to a pdf showing me EXACTLY how wrong I was in thinking that I could easily find a place for our family. Take a look at this page. See if you can find where things don't add up...
http://www.metrovancouver.org/about/publications/Publications/2013_HILs.pdf
Don't feel like reading it all? Well, I'll help you out. This page contains information on Housing Income Limits. A HIL "represents the income required to pay the average market rent for an appropriately
sized unit in the private market." Now, you see, for an average market 2 bedroom apartment, the HIL is $45,500.-. For a 3 bedroom, it is a whopping $55,500.-. So, where Menno's wage might just meet the HIL for a 2 bedroom, a 3 bedroom is clearly out of our league.
But hey, we got that portion covered, right? Remember how I wrote in a post not too long ago about my new found asceticism in relation to worldly goods and housing requirements in particular? By now, I can easily envision us living in even closer quarters than we do now, especially if we have to pay less rent. However, it seems it may not be as simple as that...and, again, I have some data to back up that hunch.
Below the HIL-rates, is a little list of the federal/provincial occupancy standards. The list is very short, so I will copy it here.
Occupancy Standards:
1. There shall be no more than 2 or less than 1 person per bedroom.
2. Spouses and couples share a bedroom.
3. Parents do not share a bedroom with children.
4. Dependants aged 18 or more do not share a bedroom.
5. Dependants aged 5 or more of opposite sex do not share a bedroom.
Although short, I find the implications of these standards to our situation pretty, erm, strong. Let me break it down for you:
1. Aha, so, should we ever manage to find an affordable 3-bedroom place, my daydreams about putting all three kids in one room to sleep in order to have a playroom-annex-guestroom go bye-bye.
2. No more marital feuds for us! What if an inspector came by that one morning a year when I have decided to sleep on the couch. Or what if Menno or myself would ever develop sleep-apnea?!
3. Yeah right...explain that to my children! Right now, all 3 sleep in one room, which is out of the question because of point 1 anyway, but for sleep deprivation issues, I am still very happy that Eluin slept in our room for as long as she did!
4. HA! Our family is still way to young for that!
5. HA again! No boys!!! *sticks out tongue to the person that came up with these standards*
Anyway, I feel like I am breaking the rules, or at least know of people that break the rules, which would probably make me an accomplice to that crime. Even more so, I realize that these "occupancy standards" give every rental agency or property owner the right to deny us a 2-bedroom place. Which is exactly what happened with the housing corporation here at UBC which would not allow us to rent a 2-bedroom unit.
Looking at the evidence, I start to feel pretty desperate about finding a place to live for our family. And yet I can't help but feel that we can by no means be the only family in Vancouver struggling with this issue. I don't know what the solution is. Except for us either moving away or me finding a job. Both seem quite out of reach at the moment. So for now we stick with our strategy of applying to cheap, crappy houses and hope that one day a house owner will favour our family of 5 over 2 UBC students.
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