When Gina Athanasiou’s father died in 2016, she realized that her mother, who bounced between Canada and Greece for most of her life, did not have a pension large enough to cover the high costs of a Toronto house.
The solution? Athanasiou, a real estate agent, invited her mother to move into the East York house where she lived with her husband and children.
“There’s no way my mother would have existed financially for herself in Toronto if she didn’t have us to live with,” Athanasiou said.
The lifestyle that placed three generations of Athanasiou’s family under one roof is becoming more common, the latest stretch of data from Statistics Canada’s census revealed on Wednesday.
While the figures show that there are more people living alone than ever before, the proportion of households where roommates live together or several generations of a family share a home is rising rapidly.
The number of homes shared by several generations of a family, two or more families living together or a family living with people they may or may not be related to has grown by 45% over the past 20 years.
These households amounted to nearly one million in 2021, accounting for seven per cent of Canada’s households.
About one in 10 children up to the age of 14 lived in the same household as at least one of their grandparents in 2021, seven percent more than in 2001.
Of the 553,855 children living with grandparents last year, 93% were living with at least one parent and at least one grandparent.
“If we look at the provinces and territories, in Nunavut, among very young children under the age of five, about one in three lives with one of their grandparents, and that’s the highest in Canada,” he said. the senior of Statistics Canada. analyst Nora Galbraith.
“The lowest is in Quebec. It’s five percent, so that reflects different cultural preferences, as well as different housing and economic situations.”
Economists and demographers have attributed these trends to wages that are out of date with rising cost of living, along with immigration and high house prices.
The Canadian Real Estate Association said the average home sold for $ 711,316 in May, up 3.4% from $ 687,595 in the same month last year, well above what people were going for. pay for a house years ago.
Rentals.ca data shows that the average Canadian rent reached $ 1,885 a month in June, up 9.5 percent from the same month last year.
To cope, many live with roommates or family, often for much longer than their parents.
Aaron Ottho, for example, never imagined that he would still be renting an apartment with a roommate when he turned 40, but months after celebrating his fourth decade, this is exactly the situation he was in.
In April, the Vancouver marketing specialist moved into his fourth rental unit, the most expensive so far, from college and, like many of his friends, is still far from his dream of having a home.
“People take longer to get married and settle down because they don’t feel safe in their lives or in their careers, when they pay so much rent,” Ottho said.
“Almost everyone I know is renting.”
The census shows that the number of homes shared by roommates increased by 54% between 2001 and 2021, the fastest growth of any type of household.
Sharing housing with roommates was more common in the downtown regions of large urban centers, especially in cities where there were large postsecondary institutions.
Some of the most interesting changes that Mike Moffatt, senior director of policy and innovation at the Smart Prosperity Institute, has seen between this census period and the last one that have affected people between the ages of 20 and 30, who are prone to living with roommates in small apartments or flats.
The 2021 census showed that 39 per cent of Canadians between the ages of 20 and 34 lived without their parents but with a spouse, partner or child, compared to almost 50 per cent in 2001.
The number of people in this age group living with at least one parent, roommate or single at the same time grew from 51% in 2001 to 61% in 2021.
Immigration is fueling part of the trend, Moffatt and Athanasiou said.
They found that first-generation Canadians with foreign heritage sometimes do not form and live with nuclear families who make others because it is more traditional or accepted for children to live with their parents in their cultures.
“In my culture, I’m Greek, it’s totally okay for kids to stay home until they get married,” Athanasiou said.
The combination of different housing structures and high prices causes many Canadians to marry and have children later in life.
“No one wants to raise children who live in their parents’ basement, ”Moffatt said.
“We’re seeing life milestones range from 20 to 30 years.”
When people have children, Athanasiou realizes that they don’t want to be away from home. Many of his 30-year-old clients rent or buy properties near his parents, who help him with the care of the children.
“For the millennial generation, it’s more like a dependency on parents, while for my generation, we’re caring for parents.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said these remarks are part of the reason his government restored the long census after it was cut by the Conservatives in 2011.
“As we make historic investments in housing … we do so from a knowledge and information base,” he said at a news conference in Kingston, Ontario. “Developing a policy based on data and facts is something that Canadians understand is essential and the way forward.”
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on July 13, 2022.