Many young Canadians are delaying having kids — and some say high rent is a factor

Anna Smith would like to start a family.

But she would also like more space for a baby, as the 27-year-old and her partner currently live in a 500-square-foot apartment in Toronto's east end for $1,550 per month. Like many young Canadians, she says she's realizing she can't have both. 

So Smith, a University of Toronto graduate student, has been delaying having children for two years now, a decision she calls "just heartbreaking." 

"I've always hoped I could be a young parent because my folks had me in their mid-40s, and while they were excellent parents, they couldn't keep up with me, and I wanted to give my kids a different kind of childhood," Smith said.

"We feel so stuck, and it's disheartening to be struggling to achieve these life goalposts."

With surging prices and decreased availability, finding housing at all has become daunting. Demand is outpacing supply in a rental housing crisis gripping the country. And vacancy rates have reached a new low, while average rent increases hit a new high, notes a January rental market report from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

Less than one per cent of rentals are both vacant and affordable for the majority of the country's renters, a recent CBC News analysis of more than 1,000 neighbourhoods across Canada's largest cities found.

And it gets worse if you're looking for rentals with multiple bedrooms, which are as scarce as they are costly. Only 14,000 units with two bedrooms or more were potentially vacant and affordable for the median income of families living in a rented place — just 0.5 per cent of all such rentals on the market.

Because of this and other factors, some families are crammed into smaller apartments, with parents sleeping on couches so kids can have bedrooms. Others, like Smith, have delayed starting families at all.

Some, like Zach Robichaud, 37, say they've had to reshape their dreams of having a big family.

Robichaud, who lives in Kitchener, Ont., grew up the youngest of six kids. He says he and his wife wanted three children, but stopped after having Avery, who is now four. Even though they both have full-time jobs, he said, most of their income goes to their $2,000-a-month rent.

Between that and other necessities, he says they just can't afford another baby.

"She'll essentially be on her own," Robichaud said of his daughter. "It's really kind of sad that she won't have that same sort of support system."

Canada's total fertility rate dropped in 2022 to its lowest point in more than a century, at 1.33 children per woman, Statistics Canada reported in January. The agency also previously reported that affordability concerns were a major factor in younger Canadians not having children.