Finding Affordable Rent in Canada

The cheapest province to rent a two bedroom apartment in Canada is Quebec. If you earn the minimum wage you would only have to work 52 hours a week to afford an averagely priced two bedroom apartment. This might sound like a lot of hours to work just for your rent but it is a lot less than the 105 hours a week you would have to work to rent an apartment in British Columbia at minimum wage.

A new interactive map from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives shows the levels of rental affordability across Canada. Rental Wages in Canada allows you to explore housing rental affordability compared to local minimum wage earnings in 795 different Canadian neighbourhoods.

Individual neigbourhoods on the Rental Wages in Canada interactive map are colored to reveal how affordable they are. If you click on an individual neighbourhood on the map you can find out how much you would need to earn an hour to afford to rent in the neighbourhood. The map also shows how many hours you would need to work to afford to rent in the area if you earned the minimum wage.

A minimum-wage worker would only be able to afford to rent in 3% of the 795 neighbourhoods displayed on the map. In the majority of Canadian cities a single person, earning the minimum wage would not be able to afford to rent a one or two bedroom apartment.