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The Missing Middle with Mike Moffatt and Cara Stern
Welcome to the Missing Middle, a podcast about why the middle class in Canada is disappearing. We hope to help you understand why life is becoming unaffordable for so many in this country, and what can be done to reverse course.
The Missing Middle with Mike Moffatt and Cara Stern
Justice Queen: From Accidental Landlord to Housing Advocate
In this episode of The Missing Middle Podcast journalist Cara Stern welcomes Shaista, a long-time Toronto and 905 real estate observer who provides wonderful insights on everything from the state of Ontario’s tribunal system to the plight of international students.
In this wide ranging conversation, Cara Stern and Shaishta - better known by her twitter handle, Justice Queen - discuss various topics related to Toronto real estate, including the changing market, the impact on landlords & tenants, and the challenges faced by international students. Shaishta shares her personal journey into real estate and highlights the importance of understanding both the landlord and tenant perspectives. She emphasizes the need for education and better enforcement of rules to improve the landlord-tenant relationship. The conversation sheds light on the ethical issues in the recruitment of international students and the mental health challenges they face.
Overall, the discussion provides valuable insights into the complexities of the Toronto housing market. The conversation explores the challenges faced by international students in Canada, particularly regarding housing. It highlights the labour market assessments that employers should be conducting and the high costs associated with it. The discussion emphasizes the need for the international students' experiences to change with a specific focus on addressing the housing crisis in Canada. The role of schools and bad actors in providing adequate housing is also discussed. The conversation concludes with a focus on the government's failure to implement housing policies and the importance of zoning and addressing the shortage of construction workers.
Guest: Shaista, AKA Justice Queen
Hosted by Mike Moffatt & Cara Stern & Sabrina Maddeaux
Produced by Meredith Martin
This podcast is funded by the Neptis Foundation and brought to you by the Smart Prosperity Institute.
Hi and welcome to the Missing Middle. I'm Cara Stern and Mike's not here today, but I'm joined by another person you probably recognize from Twitter if you're into housing topics. This is Shaisa, and we're very happy to choose here with us today, and you might recognize her better from her Twitter name, justice Queen, with the handle RE Barkit Watch. So thank you so much for joining us, shaisa. Thank you, thank you for having me. She asked us not to use her surname, but she's a long time Toronto and 905 real estate observer and she provides really wonderful insights on everything from the state of the Ontario Tribunal system to the plight of international students, and so we're really happy you could join us. So let's start off. How did you get interested in Toronto real estate? Because you're not from Toronto, right? You're from Edmonton.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. So I was actually born and raised in Edmonton and I grew up there for like pretty much almost my whole life. Then I moved to Calgary for a number of years and then I actually went to school in Toronto. So I came here to actually do my MSW, so Masters of Social Work. So I ended up in Toronto and I mean I was not really into real estate for a long time because I rented, like when I came here and then I rented in downtown and then I kind of sort of accidentally got into real estate in terms of my condo that I bought.
Speaker 2:I actually ended up being in this purpose built rental, which was a beautiful building, a really old building in Toronto, but all of a sudden it had a cockroach infestation and I actually I mean I have to be almost like thankful that that happened, because that's the only thing that pushed me to get into the condo market, which is absolutely crazy.
Speaker 2:But it just made me realize like a lot about, like you know, almost like having your future or your life set in the hands of someone else, where you know you can't just call a company and get it fixed. You know you have to go through the property management. You have to figure it out, and it could go on for months and it was something that just really affected me. And then I was like you know what? I'm just going to buy my own place so that I can have control over my property and if anything were to happen, at least I could fix it, because it just kept going on for months and I think, like a lot of tenants have these issues right where they're in certain buildings and there's things that are happening. So that's actually how I ended up getting into real estate.
Speaker 1:And then in terms of when did it cost you to buy back then, so back then.
Speaker 2:So it would have been like over 10 years ago and I have a condo on Queen Street and it actually costed me $280,000 at that time and that today, like wouldn't be possible right. So it's just interesting to see how, even like over this span of 10 years, how much has changed. And I always tell people like if I didn't have that infestation, I honestly think I would have still rented because I had zero interest in getting into the market. Like it never crossed my mind, I honestly never thought of it. I was perfectly happy.
Speaker 2:I liked my little, you know purpose built rental bachelor studio. I actually enjoyed it and I guess I was just like so busy with my career, so busy working, and I was like, I don't know, maybe I would go back to Alberta one day. It just never crossed my mind. But it was probably like one of the best decisions, like financial decisions. I would say that I made you know in my life and it completely happened out of nowhere and only because I had that infestation, that I packed up all my stuff in boxes and I was like I'm out of here, like I cannot be in this place.
Speaker 1:I think about how that kind of thing couldn't happen now, right Like someone who is stuck with a infestation, like chances are they can't afford to move on their own, especially if it's you know I don't know if you were living alone at the time.
Speaker 2:I was living alone and it was like very affordable rent, I would say. So. I looked at that building recently because I was like I wonder what they go for now and back then. And that would have been like about like a little bit over 10 years ago I was renting that place for $1,100. And it was like in Yorkville. And now that same place, which was a studio, and it's still like an old building, but it's a really nice building, you know, like it's an old purpose built rental, like very well built, and now it's $2,100, I believe, for that studio and they've kind of like renovated the units and kind of made them look nicer, but still like it's double the price.
Speaker 2:And you're right, like if someone had that problem today they wouldn't have the luxury of really saying oh well, I'll go look. And it was like for me, like that was like just like I just called and I was also able to like I guess the condo market might have been like a little bit down at that point too, because it wasn't like a rush, there was like no bidding wars, there was like no competition. It's like I could just kind of look around, go from condo to condo and make a decision. I mean, I did make my decision. Well, that's like the dream man, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally, and I think of it today and I even think of friends who have bought like in recent years and I remember I had known someone before the pandemic that was looking and it was like they couldn't even look at the properties Like it, because condos were booming before the pandemic, right in early 2020, late 2019. It was like sometimes they just have offer nights, like at the Realtors office, where people would go and like fill in their forms or whatever and put in whatever their bid was and people couldn't even necessarily see the properties.
Speaker 1:That's so wild, because you think about this is like the biggest financial decision someone can make is putting you're getting into that level of debt, and to think that they have to do it totally blind is just like it's. That. That's terrifying, oh totally.
Speaker 2:And it's just like, even when you think of like houses and stuff like that, like people going in without inspections, like when you have that boom market, which has happened in Toronto a number of times right, and it's just the feeling that these people even have right Like going in and you're right, like making the biggest purchase of your life, and you just have to make that decision on a whim and not even know if you're going to get it and there's, like you know, so many offers, like dozens of offers on that property and that's the property that you want. It's so hard. And I even think, like for the rental market, like that's how the rental market has become right, because I remember when I came and I had wanted to get student housing this is, student housing is a really big deal right now right, because there's definitely not enough student housing. When I came I mean, I literally arrived from Alberta I had not even made the decision of where I was going to be living. I had contacted the school and been like they actually gave me a number of options. They were like okay, you can live over here or you can live over here, and I had a few different choices. I didn't even decide where I was going to live until a few weeks before school started and I actually got like a two story, like townhouse back then, like on campus like across from Oz Good Hall, and I was able to live there and it was like no problem. Like you know, you can stay here.
Speaker 1:If I was going to look at your Twitter timeline from like those days your earliest real estate tweets what would I have found?
Speaker 2:So okay.
Speaker 2:So the earliest time, so when I really started getting into tweeting because I had had my account for a long time and I never really used it and I guess when I started really using it was probably 2021.
Speaker 2:And part of my reason for actually even going on Twitter back then was what was going on with inclusionary zoning in the city, and that was sort of a hot topic back then, where they were saying that you know, every new build would include a certain number of affordable units, but those affordable units would basically be paid by people that were buying units in the building and that concept sort of always bothered me Like. I think like development fees in general and how we address development fees, just as municipalities, is a problem because a lot of times the costs are put onto first time home buyers in some capacity or renters, because when you say inclusionary zoning and you add on like, say, $100,000 per unit or something like that, that cost has to be like someone has to bear that cost, and a lot of people would say, oh well, it's just investors buying up those, so who cares if they have to pay $100,000.
Speaker 1:Or city councilors would say that it comes out of the profits of the developers.
Speaker 2:Yes, ultimately it does get passed onto either first time home buyers or renters, because people, if they're spending $100,000 extra on their condo, they're going to expect the money to come from somewhere.
Speaker 2:And I think I got really passionate about that because I started realizing how zoning actually worked and how a lot of the times it's always the first time home buyers are newcomers that get affected by those costs because they're the ones that kind of have to pay more money.
Speaker 2:And I think it was just a hot topic back then. Like, I mean, I think there was a lot of city councillors back then that were very pro inclusionary zoning because it is something that sounds fantastic, it sounds really good, but when you look at cities who have tried to implement it without incentives, it doesn't work. And that was one of the problems that Toronto was seeing, like if you're not going to give incentives, if you're not going to give density bonuses, if you're not going to make it worthwhile, it's not going to work. And I guess it was just kind of the city's insistence on not giving incentives which to me didn't make sense, because it's either you give incentives and get more units built or you can't expect people to kind of bear that extra cost when development fees are already extremely expensive, even from like a Canadian standpoint, like Toronto has some of the highest development fees in the country.
Speaker 1:And as someone who owned property and doesn't work in the real estate industry and isn't in planning like how did you get to the point where you started to really care about advocating for first time home buyers?
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 2:So I mean, I guess that was like a really hard one for me because to begin with, like when I had got my property and I almost had like a very old school way of thinking, like I would say I was even like somewhat of a boomer type thinker, like a pull yourself up by the bootstraps. You're not working hard enough. Why don't you just get an extra job? What do you mean? You can't afford it. Why don't you live in a studio? To begin with, like even to like young couples and stuff like that Basically, you're just being very privileged and you're not like wanting to live in a studio. And I had a lot of judgments about that within myself. Like I think anybody like I think a lot of people who follow me today would not recognize my perspective back then. They'd be like this is not her talking. But that is exactly how I felt. I really felt like you're not working hard enough. I did have a lot of compassion always, I mean, because I'm a social worker I've always had compassion towards people who were like lower income, homeless populations, because those are populations I worked with and I thought that's the real kind of housing crisis that's going on here. I don't know what everybody else is complaining about, because that housing crisis really only affecting a certain population. That was really where my mindset was, and I think that that's the mindset of a lot of resident groups in Toronto, a lot of people that say, you know, I want affordable housing, I care about the homeless people, like you know, I want something done for them, but they can't understand that the crisis has become a crisis for people who are middle class. And I think I had kind of like an awakening on that. I think there was a number of things that did change it. So for me, one of the things that did change it was more knowledge about the zoning process in general. I mean, when I learned about exclusionary zoning and I learned that you know, on the yellow belt, you know which is two thirds of the land you could only build detached homes, and that was like very eye-opening for me.
Speaker 2:And then I think, going to, I was invited to go to one of those sessions that they have for new development. When new development comes in, just to hear about some people talking at those sessions, like I was like what are they talking about? What do they mean? Why don't they want a new condo? I don't understand and all the judgments that were in there and the fact that the voice is only reflected a loud minority of people and they didn't include, like the you know, young people. They didn't include disabled people, they didn't include single moms, they didn't include young families, because who can dedicate two hours of their evening to go to this meeting? And I just sat there and I thought you know what? Like, how do people even do that? Like, if you're working and you might even be working two jobs, how are you going to make that time? So, whose voice is really at this table? And I think that really opened my eyes a lot.
Speaker 2:Just to like development into what gets built and who decides what gets built and who decides what's affordable for people? Right, because the idea always was well, affordable to whom? Why would you build it? Like, no one can really afford to live in those condos. And then I think it was like that real estate boom that happened during the pandemic from like late 2020 to early 2022. And just seeing those prices skyrocket like crazy.
Speaker 2:And knowing a lot of young families and young people who worked very hard, did all the right things in their life and couldn't get into the market and these people had been saving for years, they had their down payments and they couldn't get in because it was like those bidding wars and lining up to see a house and only being able to go in there for five minutes and make a decision.
Speaker 2:And there was people that I knew that lost like bidding on like 30 homes and could not get a home. And I think that that's where I realized that there is a problem, and it's not just a problem that's affecting, like lower class people, it's not just a problem that's affecting people in poverty, like it's a problem that's even gone as far as affecting the middle class. And I also feel like in Canada there is this diminishing middle class that we have. And I think another reason that I changed my perspective is just recognizing that when you have a diminishing middle class, it affects things like political stability, like it can create problems with civil unrest, like there's a lot of problems that come when you cause the middle class to diminish. So I guess that's sort of like how my perspective changed. So it was really like informing myself and also being able to self reflect on my own story, right, like, hey, I was fortunate enough to get in early on. Not everybody has that privilege or luxury to get on early Like they can't now, right.
Speaker 1:Like it's too late, and social workers, like, in my mind, are always like some of the most underpaid people in society. There's a lot of people who aren't paid their worth, but social workers is definitely one of them, and I think about how, like, if you were able to, I don't think a social worker can buy a place on their own anymore, like at all, like it's not even in the realm of possibility, without, of course, if they have like, obviously, if they have family help, they might be able to diswing it. But other than that, yes.
Speaker 2:For sure. Like I mean, the average paid social worker wouldn't be able to manage that. And it's like a lot of helping professions that you see that with now right, like with nurses, like back in the day, like a nurse could buy you know property. I mean I remember one of the first programs that I worked in in Toronto. It was actually started out by a nurse who worked in one of the emergency rooms in a downtown hospital and she purchased a home. She actually purchased a home. I think it's in Cabochon Now I can't even remember where it's located but she purchased this home with her money and it was an emergency shelter she made for women. And you think about that story, like she purchased a home like a mansion to do that with. That would never happen today. Like you could not do that under nurses' salary.
Speaker 1:So that's sad. I know that you talk a lot about landlords and tenants and I know that you often show some, I guess, empathy for landlords in a space that isn't the most empathetic to landlords on Twitter. What made you get into kind of looking into the landlord side of it as well, defending kind of the plight of landlords right now?
Speaker 2:Sure. So I mean I think like for the longest time I have seen that there's two perspectives right, because there has been problems with the landlord tenant tribunal. Like there's been problems for a number of years, even before COVID started. So even before all these delays started at the board, like there has been cutbacks to the tribunals in Ontario. There's been like a cut in funding for them. I mean recently they did hire more adjudicators.
Speaker 2:I also have had friends over the years who are investors in the market, who do buy rental properties, and they're not bad people, like they're not like the way that the media would portray them. They literally are just looking to invest their money somewhere. Some of them are looking for a retirement plan, some of them are looking for a future property for their kid because they know that their kid is not going to be able to afford their property. And if they have the money, they're just putting it down to invest in. And I do always clarify that there is a difference between a person who is an investor and a speculator. I mean speculators are known to sort of like distort the market right, like they can distort the market on the way up and they can do it on the way down and I think, like I did learn a lot about different kinds of landlord issues from the investors that I knew.
Speaker 1:What's the difference between speculator and investor?
Speaker 2:Sure so, for speculators are not really assessing their risk, they're not really having an exit plan if something goes wrong, whereas a seasoned investor is going to know, like, this is my exit plan If things go down under. I have a plan and I have savings. You know, if someone's not going to pay me my rent for a certain amount of time, they have a strategy that's there, whereas a speculator is not assessing their risk and they're not even assessing the property. They're not really seeing like is it going to cash flow? Should I be looking at the landlord tenant rules before I buy this? You know there's people who bought properties, for example, that didn't even know that there's rent control on your building and they think they can actually put up the rent. Like a speculator is not assessing for all of that, they're just saying you know what? It's almost like a gambler, like I'm going to buy this, it's going to go up in price and I'm going to flip it, I'm going to sell it, whereas I feel like a lot of investors are in it for the long term and they actually have a plan. They have enough savings to sustain themselves. So that's sort of to me like the difference and I think because I did have a lot of friends that I knew that were investors and that did invest in the real estate market kind of gave me like a different perspective that they're, for the most part, I think most tenants and most, like most landlords in Ontario are doing fine, because most of them don't end up at the LTB the landlord, tenant board yeah, landlord tenant board and I actually, like during the pandemic it just became an accidental landlord.
Speaker 2:I never set out to buy a rental, I never desired to buy a rental, but I was sort of stuck in my studio apartment and I had lived there for 10 years, basically, right, like I was in this little tiny like 400 square foot studio and I was getting sick and tired of it. During the pandemic I was just I didn't have a balcony. It was very like isolating. I didn't find there was a lot of space for me and I really wanted something different, because I think, like the pandemic just really affected me that way where I think a lot of people wanted more space. So basically what happened was I decided that you know, I couldn't sell my condo at that time because the condo market was actually depressed, so it wasn't a good time to sell my condo, but I had the ability to get another property and I did so. That's sort of how I accidentally became a landlord.
Speaker 2:And then I think I started kind of like just seeing like how, like you know, for me, like I think I had a conversation with a realtor before I rented my place out and he gave me a lot of advice and he actually gave me this booklet, like so how to actually treat your tenant, and it was like gold, because it was very much like you're going to give your key to the tenant and it's their home now it's not your home and you're going to treat them that way. You're not going to, like you know, bother them or give them a rough time and you're going to treat it as if you would want to be treated Right. So if they have a problem, you fix it. And it was just like all these really nice things in terms of how you interact with your tenant. It was almost like this guidebook, but it was a very compassionate one.
Speaker 1:It'd be nice if everyone had that kind of thing, because there's a lot of stories out there of people, as you said, investing in properties and not really knowing the rules, don't don't understand, like they think that they can kick them out at any time, like I hear horror stories all the time and so they thought that they had. There's like something out there that someone can use to learn the rules is like that. Everyone should look into that.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that was sort of like eye opening for me, but it was also very good because I was able to, you know, treat my tenant respectfully and just do everything like by the rules and how you're supposed to do it. And it kind of like just taught me, like how important it is to have that relationship with your, with your tenant, like you have to have a good relationship, although I do think, like being a landlord and landlording is a business you do have to treat people properly and just like people do in certain businesses, right, like when you're offering customer service or you're doing something for someone, you don't treat them horribly. And I think, like a lot of problems that I got at the landlord tenant bureau could probably be solved if people were following the rules right, like if people were doing things properly.
Speaker 1:You were able to understand, like the landlord side, but it also seemed to really understand the tenant side of it. What could you, what would you suggest that could change in order to get those two sides to kind of understand each other more and get along better to try to avoid the landlord tenant board?
Speaker 2:Well, I think both sides require education. Like I do think that the tenants as well. Like I mean, I don't I think the tenants are definitely like way more educated than the landlords Some of them, I will give them that like, like they have that. But I do think that there's some misunderstanding there too with, like what the rules are and the understanding that they have and and like you know how to communicate and stuff like that. Like that does, like you know, I see it sometimes on the the tenant, like you know, forums and stuff like that, where someone will come and ask a question and I think, because people dislike landlords so much, the answer is just stay there forever. It doesn't matter, the LTB is delayed, but that's even like staying there for the wrong reasons, like when you know that it's not right or just don't pay your rent. Like just don't pay it, and I don't think that's really the proper solution. Right, like yes, you could get away with not paying rent for years, but that's not the right way to handle a problem. That's, you know, come up just because you know you're mad at the landlord and you're not going to pay your rent, although I don't think that that's like a like the way that it's made, like the way that some landlords make it sound like it's awful and tenants are not paying their rent. That's a very small minority that are not.
Speaker 2:I do think landlords require more education, like I almost feel like they should have some sort of a course and I don't know if it could be like a mandatory course, because I don't like the idea of that, because I don't think people necessarily like pay attention to that.
Speaker 2:But I do think, like realtors are a point of contact for a lot of you know landlords, where they can even have that role in terms of educating people, because sometimes it's even the person has said that you know, the realtor didn't tell me it's a rent controlled unit and I think that's important to have as a conversation.
Speaker 2:And some realtors have that conversation. They say look, if you're going to buy in this building, it's rent controlled. You cannot put up the rent unless it's by, like you know, the standard guidelines or whatever. You're not putting it up for more than that. So I feel like that's sort of a point of contact where things could be better as well, and I think sometimes in the real estate business what happens is that they also get so carried away with just selling the property that they forget to mention a lot of important details, right? I mean even in terms of people that, like sell a tenant to property, right, like that comes with certain rules in terms of how you are going to evict that tenant. So I think there's just a lot of misunderstanding, where some education would do a lot of people a lot of good.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of people who kind of get really hurt when they sell their property that's tenanted, because I think there's people who don't realize that they can't just account on the tenant leaving before the before the closing date and they also people buy it and don't realize it's going to be a while before they can kick out the tenant if they buy it tenanted. Like it's a risk when you're buying a tenant property and I guess that typically should be reflected in the price, but people don't want to admit that, it seems. I always think that the landlord tenant board, though like it would be, there are so many bad actors on the tenant and on the landlord side and just a functioning system would work, Like if they could just all follow the rules and if there could be like some enforcement of the rules that already exist, like do we need to change the rules or just enforce the ones that are currently there?
Speaker 2:So I feel like there's certain things that should be more enforced. Like I mean, there's been a number of cases in some pretty like high profile ones, where they've had a what they call a professional tenant right who basically rents out a property and then will get into that property. Sometimes they do it with five properties at a time, like multiple properties. They re-rent it, they sublet it to multiple people and some of these people that have been the professional tenants have actually been very bad actors where they've re-rented it to very vulnerable populations and basically created very crowded, unsafe conditions for these people and they're taking the rent from those tenants that they've rented it out to, but they're not paying the landlord either. So it's like you're making all this profit on all these homes and there's been multiple cases of people doing this and taking over landlords properties and I do think that that for bad actors like that, like when you're acting that badly and you're doing it repeatedly, the landlord tribunal needs to step in sooner. Right, like it can't be hundreds of thousands of dollars of damages to these families that just wanted a rental property and it's not able to want that as part of their like investment plan in their life, but then to say, well, it's a risk, you know the landlords deserve it, but that is somebody who's doing something wrong. Okay, like they're basically doing this to multiple homes, taking them over, and there's no recourse. Like they still have to wait for their LTB date, which could be one, one and a half years down the road. Meanwhile, the landlord is losing their money every month fine, but then they're also having to pay for all these damages in the home and it's still taking a long time.
Speaker 2:I mean that there was one case where this guy repeatedly did this for years, and I do think that that a person who does that, there has to be deeper consequences, because, in my perspective, what it's doing is it's making the entire environment more difficult for tenants, because when they're looking for a property, right that the landlord is so picky, why need to see this? I need to see your bank statements. They're asking for all kinds of stuff that you're even like, why are you asking for it? But the reason they're asking is because they are so protective and if they could trust a system, like if they could say you know what, I'm going to get a date in the LTB within, like, let's say, even six months, they'd be happy and I think that's reasonable. Within six months you get a date over there and some resolution happens within six months. They would be more willing to rent their property to more people.
Speaker 1:I've always heard that tenants wait a lot longer than landlords wait. So any bad actors that are in the landlord side of it, like it can take a lot longer to resolve, if at all, and lots of tenants. I know so many people personally, so it's anecdotal, but I know this is a thing where you know they know that they're being kicked out of their apartment in bad faith. However, they're like I don't want to fight, I don't want to deal with it by living in an apartment where I know that the landlord wants to kick me out, Like I just want to move on with my life and not have this stress. And it's hard because when, obviously, the cost of moving when you're in a rent control apartment is just like astronomical. You also have watched the international student conversation and what are, like some of the things that have happened to international students that you don't think have been getting enough attention.
Speaker 2:Sure. So I mean I think like a lot of focus is on the numbers, right, Like there's a lot of focus, like oh my God, there's this many international students that are here, and it's true there are a lot, and they can cap the numbers and, like you know, maybe that is the solution to cap the numbers, but I don't think it fixes the problem, Like I don't think that you know saying like, okay, we're only going to let this many in, but there's so many problems behind that industry, I mean the entire international student, like recruitment process itself. I mean Canada has never signed off on the London Agreement for the ethical, you know, recruitment of these international students.
Speaker 1:What is?
Speaker 2:that.
Speaker 2:So it's basically an agreement that was signed by a number of countries, except for Canada, and the US are not included, but other countries have signed on. It's basically a promise that you're making that you're going to recruit students in an ethical manner, because right now the way that students are being recruited it's not ethical right, like a lot of people, like kids coming here, they're given false promises. They're told when they come here they're gonna be registered at one school. By the time they come here, the agent is telling them no, they have to register at another school. I mean, imagine, like being new, flying across the world, leaving your entire family being alone in this country, and then being told oh well, you know you're not going to that school. Or you know, there's been a few cases where they ended up coming here and the school said like we don't have any classes. Or You're coming here and all of a sudden they're like oh, you're gonna go to school online. So I think, like that it's it's just a measure of signing an agreement and agreeing, like it just tells something about a Country, to just sign off and say I agree with this, at least I acknowledge there should be an ethical recruitment process. So I think that's one issue.
Speaker 2:Now I also feel like there's a lot of other issues that are not being addressed for these students. So there's been a lot of mental health issues for the students coming and there's a lot of barriers to actually getting support. I mean, from a cultural perspective, there's a lot of stigma with with mental health within Certain cultures right, where it's hard to get help because that's not something that's really normal when they're coming from in terms of getting help for your mental health. So we have seen an increase in suicides with international students where there's a funeral home In the GTA that reports it has repeatedly reported in the media that they're sending back home four to five, you know, dead bodies of international students per month and that's just one home. So there's a lot of issues there where they're saying that they can tell by the condition of the body that it has been a suicide and in some cases it's a drug overdose and it's a concern, right, and what are we going to do to address something like that? Like I do think Canada has to start keeping track of the number of times that's happening.
Speaker 2:I also think that there's a labor market that's really exploiting these students through, you know, lmia frauds. What's that? So it's basically a labor market assessment that employer has to do and they have to basically say that you know there's a need like we've advertised this position this many times and there's a labor market need for this position. It's a thousand dollar payment that the employer makes when they're putting in this application. It's not for a potential employee to have to pay that cost, but those market assessments. Some employers are charging anywhere from 35,000 to 80,000 dollars for them and it is so bad, but people want, you know, to get into Canada, so bad that they're willing to pay that price.
Speaker 2:But what are we actually doing here? Right, like knowing that this exists, the government has acknowledged that it exists, but are we going to change anything? So I'd like to see more changes in how to make an actual, more positive experience for students, because it's something that, like you know, like there's all these issues that are going on within these international students that are not being discussed. Right, it all becomes about we just need to cut the numbers down. Sure, cut the numbers down, but what's gonna happen to the actual lived experiences of these students? Because we don't want people, you know, to end up coming here Spending all this money and being set up to fail. That's not.
Speaker 1:How do you know all this like it? Where are you hearing about the personal experience?
Speaker 2:It's so interesting because so some of it is just international students who have talked to me, but a lot of stories actually come out of the Cultural community so that they actually have their own media sources where they have like to talk channels, and they have YouTube channels and they have radio shows. So what's it? What's been interesting to me about like the whole international student you know, coming into the mainstream media is it's actually something that a lot of those communities have been talking about for years. Like they've been talking about these issues and talking about the living conditions and all these different things and highlighting it Even in some of their reports and stuff like that. But it's just something that hasn't really been a mainstream issue until more recently, like in recent times, right, but it's something that's been heavily discussed within those you know communities and I do wish, like there was more room for engagement with those students and with those communities to just come up with a actual solution, because you know a lot of people are into, like, just like, let's just cap all the students. But there's a problem with that too, right, because domestic students, do domestic students want to pay more and Like, does the government want to provide more funding. Like I think it's gonna be a deeper discussion.
Speaker 2:Something needs to happen, but I think that there's so many layers of that issue and there's so many, you know, there's so much failures that's happened, like with the government, but also with universities and colleges themselves. I mean, I look at, you know, sometimes, like I'll just take a drone picture of like the, the university, for example, like a university, and you see how much land they have and like buildings that are very low density, like I don't see any reason why they can't up-zone that and Build student housing. What would they need to make that happen? Right? Like what would incentivize them to build more housing and take more responsibility? Because there are schools like Kate Brighton University that have the, like you know, 70% of their student population now is international students, but they don't have the housing right and and they basically say that, like previous to this cap, they said they wanted to take more international students.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if Mike was here, he would say he always wants to remind people that it's the international students who are being hurt the most by this. Like, yes, it's distorting the housing market, yes, it's a big problem, and on a macro level for sure, but the people who are the worst victims of this are the international students themselves, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 2:And that's where I think that, like, there has to be more, you know, attention paid and to create that positive experience and to not Make it about like, oh, there, the, there, the problem, and to blame, like, because that's where I think the conversation sometimes ends up going and it's very problematic because, you know, I see that sometimes when I post a story and I get all these hateful comments towards these students who did nothing more than wanted to come to a different country to have a better life.
Speaker 2:And I think that if any of us were in the situation that some of them are in in their home countries because that's another Consideration I always have is that they're coming here because they don't have the opportunities that they they want to have in life when they are right now, and we all would have made the same decision if we were them, like we'd say you know what we want, to Go to that country. It seems like we'd have better opportunities. And there's there's also a lot of success stories that come out of, you know, tons of them that come out of international students.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I see it online people talking about how they need to come. They know they're gonna come here when they if they do their research, though, they know they're gonna end up sharing a tiny basement apartment Probably maybe an illegal apartment with six other people or more. I know that there's lots of stories of 12 15 people sharing places, and it's like I guess I often have read that people will see that, as this is just a temporary situation, you'll get there. They'll live like that for a bit. It's gonna be not ideal, but then you're gonna be able to have that diploma Usually diploma or a degree and be able to start a new life somewhere, and it's like it's so sad when it doesn't, when that's not the reality for them. I can't imagine coming here and realizing, like maybe you're not actually enrolled in the school that you thought you were enrolled in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and those are the things that I need, I think, need to change and I think that Schools that are repeatedly bad actors and repeatedly engaging and that should they exist right, like if you're gonna do that multiple times to students, maybe Maybe you shouldn't actually have like a license to operate that school right, because you're obviously not there to to provide a positive experience for those international students.
Speaker 1:I know, and here on the missing middle, we like to ask about solutions, since that's always something that's missing from a lot of other places. So what would be like your top solution if you wanted to try to fix things?
Speaker 2:So my top solution is actually like I think that zoning is still a problem, like I think, despite the fact that there's a lot of changes, you know, with zoning. I think zoning, red tape, just the ability to build housing fast enough, I mean I get it like that there is a shortage of construction workers. I do think that that immigration stream needs to be considered more in terms of how do we make it easier for people to actually be construction workers when they're coming to Canada, because one of the comments I've gotten from multiple people who have come here as newcomers have said it's very difficult for them to even get into the certain trades. How do we make that different and how do we even change that from a Canadian perspective, like in terms of the stigma that people facing in terms of going into the trades, how do we make that more desirable for people? Because people can get very well paid in the trades, but there's that stigma that still exists.
Speaker 2:And I think, like in terms of zoning, like how do we make it possible to get more housing near campuses and on campuses? Like how do we get like my ideal solution is huge towers. I mean people don't always like towers because of the shade and all these different reasons, but I believe that we need to get people out of the basement. I mean, basements serve a purpose, but we can't have 25 people living in one basement. Like it's just not safe, it's a fire trap, there's issues with that.
Speaker 2:So I would say, like, look at actually building housing. And I think it's not just an issue with the international students, right, that's just it across the country, really it's becoming that way, because you know that solution of just move doesn't work, because you can move and you're still going to face the same crisis and we're just, you know, exporting our crisis across Canada at this point. So you know, I think you know, building enough housing and matching that to population growth, which we haven't been doing right, like that's a serious problem and it's the fault lies on the government. And I always tell people like that, tell people this, because I think often people say, oh, it's the immigrants, or, you know, it's this group, or it's foreign buyers. No, it's our government. Our government has failed, the housing policies have failed. We need them to take a proper action to get appropriate levels of housing built, and that's both, like you know, market rate housing and deeply affordable housing.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for joining us and putting a face behind the Twitter avatar. It's really good to be here. Thank you so much and thanks to everyone for watching and listening, and thank you, as always, to our incredible producer, meredith Barton. Please like, subscribe comment. It always is lovely to hear from you and we'll see you next time.
