Why Would Anyone Vote to Be Poor?

That's an excellent question:

Housing department staff in an Access To Information memo to Minister Gregor Robertson complained of the trouble and expense in opening a new office in Toronto or Vancouver. Rents were too high, they said: “There is a 3 to 4 year wait time.”

 

This Gregor Robertson:

When Gregor Robertson first became Vancouver mayor in 2008, he promised affordable housing, fewer drug overdoses, lower crime and a total end to homelessness by 2015.

All of those problems would become catastrophically worse under his watch. But given that Robertson was just appointed federal housing minister on Tuesday, it’s notable that his most iconic failure was on the issue of housing affordability.

On Robertson’s first day as mayor, the average detached Vancouver home cost the inflation adjusted equivalent of $942,000.

It was the most unaffordable jurisdiction in Canada, but Robertson took the helm of a city in which it was still technically feasible for average Vancouverites to own property. According to RBC estimates from the time, the average Vancouver household could still feasibly purchase a townhouse, although it would consume 50 per cent of their income in mortgage costs.

When Robertson left the mayor’s office in 2018, the average cost of a detached house in Vancouver had doubled.

Adjusting for inflation, the benchmark house price on Robertson’s last day was $1.8 million. Across Robertson’s decade-long tenure, the average Vancouver house had surged in price by an average of $84,000 per year, or $230 every 24 hours.

Rents and condo prices had similarly attained record highs, to the point where the City of Vancouver was no longer just the most unaffordable jurisdiction in Canada; it was now one of the most unaffordable cities on earth.

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Mark Kalinowski has been a credit counsellor for nearly 14 years, helping people of all generations manage their debt. But this year, more than a quarter of the clients he saw in his Calgary office were under the age of 35.

"They'll come in and sometimes they'll cry, sometimes they'll be angry, they'll be very, very frustrated because they don't know why their life's on hold," said Kalinowski.

The Credit Counselling Society — the debt management non-profit where Kalinowski works — served more 18-to-34-year-olds in 2025 than at any other point in its history, its spokesperson told CBC News.

Many have a mountain of student loans. Some are facing the daunting task of managing a credit card for the first time. Still others are navigating the high cost of living against slow-growing wages.

As if that weren't enough, Kalinowski and other experts say the ubiquity of "buy now, pay later" plans are compounding the problem and fuelling a debt crisis among 20 and 30-somethings.

"I won't say that they feel hopeless, but they do feel a little bit lost and they're not sure how to gain traction," said Kalinowski.