Calgary single moms come together to find rental housing

Some Calgarians are taking an unconventional approach to finding housing, as rental costs and interest rates continue to skyrocket while inflation has everyone digging deeper into their pockets.

But it’s not just single young people looking for roommates to shave off some of those increasing housing costs — there’s also single moms.

Brittany Squires started a Facebook page, the Calgary Single Mom Roommate Hub, for single moms to find other single moms to live with.

“Being a single mom is the hardest and most expensive job you will ever have and why not ask for some and some relief?” she said.

Emily Campbell is with the Homespace Society and says the struggle for single families to find affordable housing is one they are all too familiar with.

“One of the biggest challenges that families, single moms are facing are the exploding rent prices here in Calgary,” she said. “Average rent between 2021 and 2022 went up 22 per cent. In the past year we rose another 15 per cent on top of that.

“Family-sized dwellings are becoming out of reach for a lot of lower-income families.”

The hike is being driven by a number of factors, including supply shortages, she added.

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“Part of it is that people are flocking to Calgary, we’ve seen that the average number of people moving to Calgary is 62 people per day which means we don’t have enough housing stock,” Campbell explained. “And even before people starting coming in droves to Calgary, there were 80,000 households here in Calgary that were paying more than they could afford for their housing. ”

She says right now, families facing homelessness are staying in shelters because they just can’t find an affordable place to live.

Meanwhile, Squires says if she can’t find a place to live, she may have to send her son to Edson to live with other family, just so he can have a roof over his head.

Living with others lifts some of the weight off the shoulders of a single parent, the mom said

“The women are sharing childcare responsibilities, they’re sharing meal prep responsibilities, they’re sharing shopping responsibilities and bill responsibilities,” said Squires. “It’s somebody to talk to at the end of the day, it’s someone to plan your week with.

“Basically, it’s a family unit, but you’re unrelated and you’re just sharing those responsibilities that would come if you were a normal family unit.”

Campbell says that Calgary is lagging behind in the affordable housing department and the situation is likely to continue to get worse unless there’s dramatic change.

“Calgary in comparison to other major Canadian cities, we have less affordable housing — non-market housing available than those other cities and we’ve really got to catch up because here in Calgary things are going to get worse before they get better,” she said. “Our population is growing really fast and our affordable housing supply is not keeping up.”