As he puts the fur-lined leather hat down on the table he explains how it used to be a beaver. “It was run over” he says, “and then they turned it into a hat.” It is clear that he is very excited to have it. It’s cold outside, November in Ottawa, and he isn’t used to this weather. The hat, the weather and Ottawa are new to him. That’s because he’s only been in the city, in Canada, for 13 months. Before that he was in Jordan. And five years ago, Fadi Sakbani was in Syria.

Sakbani is a refugee. He left his native Syria because his house and his work place were both threatened by the ongoing destruction of the Syrian Civil War. He lost his job as a language teacher and couldn’t make a living. He fled into neighbouring Jordan. Now he sits in an Ottawa coffee shop on Bank Street explaining how he came to Canada.

It was in Jordan where he met Grace Chapman, a Canadian who was teaching English in Amman. Sakbani showed Chapman around the school on her first day. They bonded as they both arrived at the school early every morning and would talk over coffee. They became friends. Eventually they were teaching a course together and Sakbani would join Chapman and her now-husband for dinner at their house.

Fadi Sakbani sits in a coffee shop on Bank Street, Ottawa. A mere 13 months ago he was a refugee in Jordan.
Nathaniel Dove

“He was someone I could always rely on, and as a new teacher that’s an incredible resource to have,” said Chapman via email from Japan, where she now lives and works as an English teacher.

But life in Jordan was difficult for Sakbani. It “got really tough for Syrians,” he says. It was easy to find a job—Sakbani is fluent in English—but as a refugee he was not allowed to work fulltime, even with a work permit.

“You have no social rights there, you can’t get healthcare, you can’t get education, so I just decided to leave,” says Sakbani. He began exploring options. He was awarded a scholarship to Estonia but declined when he realized he would have to commit to returning to Syria after he finished his degree. So in January 2016 Sakbani reached out to Chapman about coming to Canada. She agreed to help.

“As I had e-mailed a family friend and my mom, a thread of e-mails began of us putting together the puzzle pieces and figuring out what we needed,” she said. According to the government’s rules on privately sponsoring a refugee Chapman would need to assemble five people to be sponsors. Those that agreed would need to prove that they could raise the money necessary to support a refugee—collectively about $13 000, according to the website—and that they would all be in Ottawa, where Sakbani would live.

As Chapman was in Kuwait at the time she was ineligible to be a sponsor. But she was still able to organize a group of family friends and her parents to bring Sakbani to Canada.

And his immigration was quick—ten months between the message to Chapman to his plane landing in Canada. Sakbani says that the process usually takes two to three years. He knows he is lucky.

“I think it’s one of the most successful cases that I’ve witnessed here in Canada, because I know a lot of Syrians who were sponsored by the government, by communities or even individuals, private groups, and they’re really grateful but they were not as lucky as me… I was spoiled. I’m still being spoiled.”

Sakbani is an exception to many trends. Not only was the speed of his case so remarkable but he didn’t end up in the areas in Ottawa where most Arab immigrants in the past five years have settled, Osgoode and Versant in Gatineau. Sakbani thinks that so many people live in these areas because they want to be surrounded by people who share the same language and culture.

An interactive map showing where the majority of Arab immigrants to Ottawa now live. The darker the blue colour, the more immigrants reside in that area. Click on the map to explore the data. All data from Statistics Canada

“If I had a family… I would have probably had to live in a community that has more people from my own culture so my family would be able to have friends, because they speak zero English.” He says that not everyone is open to other cultures.

Instead he lived with one of his sponsors in the Glebe for his first year in the country. He now lives with a roommate, another refugee, in Centretown. He has a part-time job and he attends Algonquin College for computer engineering.

He has come very far and accomplished a lot since leaving his home country. His journey has been very different from those of other Syrians.

“Most of my friends just got on a boat together, like all my friends in Syria… got on the same boat, in the Mediterranean, from Turkey—illegally, of course.” This is in 2013, when there were massive amounts of people leaving Syria.

“People where just throwing themselves in the sea…hoping to get picked up near the Greek shores. They were lucky to survive.”

As the cup of tea he is drinking is emptied he starts to look out the window, into the cold street down which he will have to walk to get home. “How can people survive here? I know that I need a couple more winters to get used to it, I’m not looking forward to it. It’s the first snow this year and I’m not happy. I know what’s coming and I’m not looking forward to it,” he says, laughing.

He is wearing a sweatshirt with “Quebec” written on it, the kind that you find in a souvenir shop. And he is smiling. He likes it here. Even in the short time that he has been in the country he says that “Ottawa feels like home.”

Above: The rental community of Accora Village lies just north of Bayshore Mall in the west end of Ottawa.

A collection of apartment towers and townhouses in the west end of Ottawa was the top pick for immigrants looking for a place to live in the city between 2011 and 2016, according to an analysis of census data from Statistics Canada.

More than 1,100 recent immigrants lived in the area tucked between Bayshore Mall and the Ottawa River, which includes the rental community of Accora Village and a handful of neighbouring buildings, far more than any other area in the city.

The majority of those immigrants are tenants of Ferguslea Properties Ltd., the developer that owns Accora Village. Long-time resident Mete Pamir says that while the neighbourhood is attractive for newcomers settling in Ottawa, having a single landlord presents some challenges.

Pamir moved into the community 17 years ago after immigrating from Turkey. Since then, he’s dedicated a lot of time to his neighbourhood, and is the coordinator of the community oven in Bayshore Park, a plot of green space at the centre of Accora Village.

“This is, in many ways, the heart of the neighbourhood,” Pamir says as he stands in the park, gesturing at the children who file out of the nearby school. As the oven coordinator, he meets hundreds of Accora Village residents at “community bakes” where the public is invited to share bread, pizza, and other baked goods fresh from the oven.

Nearby Bayshore Mall, a local public and Catholic school, and a new outdoor rink built by the Ottawa Senators Foundation are all reasons Pamir suggests immigrants are drawn to Accora Village. However, he says many newcomers are professionals working in the tech sector who leave the rental community in favour of homeownership after a few years.

“People don’t live here very long,” Pamir says. As a result, he says there’s a “disconnect” between Ferguslea and its tenants.

Until a few years ago, the community of Accora Village was known as “Bayshore,” but it was rebranded in 2011. Since then, a number of buildings in the neighbourhood have undergone major renovations and Pamir says he’s noticed changes in the branding of the community.

“The bulk of the residents here are newcomers,” he says. “But the image that Accora projects in their marketing is all white, very upper class.”

Pamir says he worries this will have an upward pressure on rents, and he criticises the city for taking a “hands off” approach to resolving housing issues in the community.

Census tracts are visualized based on the number of recent immigrants, according to the 2016 Canadian census. Clicking on the census tract will reveal the number of recent immigrants in the area in 2016 and 2011, as well as the percentage of houses in the area considered “not suitable” in 2016 and 2011. Black lines indicated Ottawa municipal ward boundaries. (Census tracts are small areas in metropolitan areas with between about 2,500 and 8,000 people, defined by Statistics Canada.) 

Census data shows that Accora Village has one of the highest rates of dwellings that are unsuitable according to the National Occupancy Standard. This sets the standard for the number of people who should be living in a residence based on the number of bedrooms.

In 2016, nearly 22 per cent of dwellings in the community were deemed unsuitable, far higher than the Ottawa-wide average of just over four per cent.

“Crowding pressure is certainly felt in [Accora Village],” admits Bay Ward city councillor Mark Taylor. However, he says that’s a reflection of the composition of families who are immigrating to Canada, rather than an issue specific to the community.

“There are a lot of new Canadian families who are bringing multiple children, and our housing stock was really never built for that,” Taylor explains.

Because so many of his constituents live in Ferguslea-owned properties, Taylor says he tries to “walk a fine line” between addressing concerns from constituents while navigating away from landlord-tenant issues.

“They view it very much as their neighbourhood and they want to keep it in good shape,” he says.

A representative from Ferguslea declined to be interviewed for this story. In an email, Tina Fisher, director of communications and marketing, said Accora Village “follows all health, safety, housing and maintenance standards including the City of Ottawa’s Occupancy Bylaw.”

Suzanne Le, executive director of the Multifaith Housing Initiative (MHI), points at the plans of a recently completed development. As Ottawa struggles to keep up with affordable housing demands, not-for-profit providers such as MHI become increasingly important. Photo by Jordan Omstead

Nearly 9,000 more Ottawa households have a housing affordability problem than five years ago, according to an analysis of recent census data.

Defined by Statistics Canada, an affordability problem is when a household spends more than 30 per cent of its income on shelter. The number of houses in the Ottawa-Gatineau region hitting the 30 per cent mark broke 120,000 in 2016, an 8 per cent rise over 2011.

“When you drive around the city, it would never occur to most people that there is a housing crisis going on, but there is,” says Suzanne Le, the executive director of the Multifaith Housing Initiative (MHI). MHI is a not-for-profit charitable housing provider in Ottawa.

Households in Ottawa-Gatineau Region Spending More Than 30% of Income on Shelter Costs

The map displays the number of houses in each Ottawa-Gatineau census tract that spend more than 30% of their income on housing. The darker the colour, the higher the number. The lighter the colour, the lower the number. Use the ‘+’ and ‘-‘ to zoom, and click on the arrow in the top left of the frame for the legend and more details. Source: StatsCan Census 2016. 

According to Le, people spending more than 30 per cent of their income on shelter in Ottawa are disproportionately from low-income backgrounds. As housing becomes less affordable to those residents, they will be forced to rely on the city’s strained social housing stock.

As of 2016, over 10,000 households are registered on the waitlist for social housing, with families making up roughly a third of the list.

As the city struggles to keep up with the demand for subsidized housing, not-for-profit providers such as MHI will have to step up, according to Le.

In 2014, the City of Ottawa partnered with MHI to build a $20-million affordable housing community in Barrhaven, or ‘The Haven’ as the development is commonly known. Le gestures at the plans on her office wall as she recalls the morning in January when the social housing registry began to process applications for the 98-unit community.

By the time the registry opened at 6 a.m., the lineup wrapped around the building as people braved temperatures of minus 23 degrees celsius.

It was the registry’s single busiest day in 19 years, according to Le.

“You’re looking around at parents with anxious looks on their face, and I knew none of them were going to get a housing offer because by the time 9 a.m. hit they had already processed well over 100 applications,” Le says. “That’s the situation we’re at.”

A person earning minimum wage in Ottawa would spend 41 per cent of their income on the average market bachelor apartment, according to a recent report from Ottawa Alliance to End Homelessness. Someone on Ontario Works social assistance would be spending 115 per cent of their income on the same apartment.

Anissa Grant was on social assistance when she got the letter from MHI confirming her place at The Haven. She spent six years on the waitlist hoping to upsize from her one-bedroom apartment owned by Ottawa Community Housing, which she shared with her husband and three-year-old daughter.

“It was tough because my daughter grew up to walk and run in tight, sharp corners. She’d get injured a lot,” she says.

The lack of affordable housing is not only an issue in Ottawa. In Toronto, the waitlist stands at over 90,000 households. For every household that moves into a subsidized unit, another eight applications are received by the city.

As construction at The Haven neared completion in the spring, Grant says she would drive by to check in on her soon-to-be home, which at the time was just a skeleton of itself.

“I would walk up the makeshift construction ramp and take peeks inside the home and try to envision what was what,” she says.

As Grant looks back on her time in the one-bedroom apartment, she walks through her airy living room towards the window, her daughter’s toys arranged against the wall.

She says MHI offered her the house overlooking the playground, which will be done in time for summer.

Two years ago, Jordan Harding remembers waiting for an apartment in the Glebe. He was told rent would be $1,375 per month. Six months later when it became available, he said the rent had increased to $1,750, almost 30 per cent more.

Harding isn’t the only one to notice dramatic rent increases in Ottawa. Across the city and its surrounding areas, rent has been crawling – and in some places leaping – up.

On average, rent in Ottawa has increased 14.2 per cent from 2011 to 2016, according to an analysis of Statistics Canada’s 2016 census data. Areas in Gloucester, Nepean and Alta Vista have seen increases higher than 50 per cent.

There are several factors that can contribute to rent increases, said Anne-Marie Shaker, senior analyst with the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. The corporation reports on housing statistics across the country, and Shaker wrote the report on the 2016 rental market in Ottawa.

According to Shaker, renovations to existing buildings and completions of new ones are two main factors causing dramatic rent increases. The newer units and buildings have more amenities, so landlords can charge higher rent. In areas like the Glebe, where few buildings are being constructed, renovations are a more likely factor driving up rent prices.

Ontario’s rental prices are controlled by the province. Existing tenants can only have their rent increased every 12 months, and only by around two per cent. The number varies year by year depending on the market, but hovers around two per cent. New tenants can be charged what the landlords ask, but can only have their rent increased after 12 months in the unit.

Harding decided not to take the Glebe apartment and found a two-bedroom house in Ottawa’s west end, near Nepean.

It’s an old wooden house – the kind that creaks when the heat comes on – that costs him $1,850 per month, excluding utilities. According to data from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation on completed rental units in Ottawa, Nepean saw one of the hightest growths in new rental units from 2011 to 2016.

These new units, according to Shaker, are a factor that drive up rent prices for the surrounding buildings, like Harding’s.

“It’s not reasonable at all,” said Harding, a website developer who works primarily from home, stacking three monitors, speakers and two servers on his kitchen table. “I’ve rented three-bedroom penthouses 10 years ago in Ottawa for $1,050.”

Renters would be hard-pressed to find many apartments at that price anywhere in Ottawa now, with average rent crawling up to $1,440 in 2016 according to the census data.

Some areas of Ottawa saw increases in rent as high as 87 per cent. That’s more than 17 per cent per year, significantly above Ontario’s rent increase guidelines which hover around two per cent.

Peter Dazé, another long-time Ottawa renter, said he has seen an increase every year for 25 years, although it’s rarely more than the two per cent guideline.

“If I didn’t get an increase, I would think something was wrong,” said Dazé from his office at Public Services and Procurement Canada. “I expect an increase, always, always, always.”

He admitted that such increases can pose challenges. “Some years, I’ve gotten rent increases, but my salary did not go up during those years,” he said. “So it causes some grief, some stress.”

It was that stress that inspired Harding to create a website, rentalreport.ca. It’s a portal for renters across Canada to share information about their unit, like cost of rent.

“It’s just good for people to know what they’re getting themselves into,” said Harding. He said knowing the previous tenant’s rent could be “a good bargaining chip” in lowering rent prices.

Harding is set to move back to the Glebe next month, into a two-bedroom apartment for $2,500. While he said it’s way more than he’d like to pay in rent, it’s still cheaper than buying it.

Featured photo: New buildings can drive up the rent of the surrounding buildings, says Anne-Marie Shaker with the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. | Photo by Rachel Levy-McLaughlin

One milk, one sugar— up to five times per day, depending on how much Brittany Wesson needs to get done and if the coffee maker at the retirement home she works at is functioning.

Living in a townhouse off Strandherd Drive in old Barrhaven, Wesson has two kids under three, juggles a part-time nursing job and interns at a local church, while her husband commutes to Gatineau on weekdays for night shift duty.

Fifty thousand dollars a year of combined income seemed a decent amount, until Wesson crunched the numbers: more than $20,000 goes to her mortgage, rent and other utilities and expenses.

“It is emotionally taxing,” the twenty-five year old said, sipping coffee from a flower-patterned mug on her kitchen table. “It’s the gig straight for 13 days: barely seeing my kids, struggling to see them and actually being invested when I’m home with them.”

“I’m in this permanent state of tired,” she said.

The Keurig doesn’t sit far away.

Wesson and her family are among the spike of Ottawa households spending 30 per cent or more of their income on housing.

The percentage has risen most dramatically in certain parts of the suburbs like Kanata, Orleans and Barrhaven in the last five years, according to an analysis of data from Statistics Canada’s 2016 census report.

“It’s a crazy life for young families now—people stretch their income,” said Marianne Wilkinson, councilor to Kanata North, ward four. “It’s all west end, it’s growing much faster than the east end now.”

Taking the kids to art lessons, basketball and dance classes—all in one evening— turns parents into taxi drivers, Wilkinson explained, recalling conversations she’s had with members of the community.

With more residents in suburb communities, more people frequent the long commute to the office via OC Transpo instead of sitting in traffic and fuming gas, according to Wilkinson.

The average income for families living in Ontario was $81,450 in 2015, according to Statistics Canada.

“If you’re making 40,000 a year, 30 per cent that’s one thing,” said Wilkinson. “If you’re making 100,000 a year— that’s another thing.”

The census data for employment is expected to be released on November 29, and may help provide context to how much families are actually spending on housing.

“There’s a lot of jobs that would normally be downtown and are moving westerly,” said Dan Salhany, a local real estate agent with Hallmark who has been in the housing business since 1988.

There has been stronger momentum and higher consumer confidence in the marketplace in the last five years, and 2017 in particular has been a strong year for selling homes overall, Salhany noted.

“Of course, you can certainly dampen someone’s dream,” he said, regarding prospective homeowners’ expectations exceeding their budgets. “Your job is to keep them realistic and give them the facts. They have to decide from there.”

Ottawa housing, like other Canadian cities such as Toronto and Vancouver, is benefiting from foreign investors and is growing in number and price, according to Salhany and the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

“I’ve cut back on a lot in my life,” said Wesson. “For me, it’s been realizing that I can’t go out for coffee with friends, I can’t go shopping, I can’t buy the kids new clothes … because we’ve had so many expenses.”

Wesson has learned the practicality of making ends meet, such as rationing gas usage, meal prepping and budgeting winter jackets for her kids.

“My parents have been a huge support,” she said, explaining her goal of creating her own safety net for her family. “They’ve bailed me out way too many times.”