While multiple factors play a role in falling divorce rates, the costs of separation make going it alone a daunting prospect for many Canadians.
While multiple factors play a role in falling divorce rates, the costs of separation make going it alone a daunting prospect for many Canadians.
The problem is now that you risk living in a tent in a park, or in your 50s with roommates in a sketchy rooming house. It’s not just “poor” anymore, it’s that divorce can mean homelessness.
I don’t think people realize how badly out of control the housing market is. In much of the country, it’s not a matter of not being able to buy a home, it’s not even being able to rent one.
In the area where I live I can count four or five young couples and/or single parents who are raising kids in rooming houses. Other than one spectacular instance of substance abuse, they’re not “bad people”, and ten years ago they’d at least have been able to rent a space of their own to raise their kids, while thirty years ago they’d have been able to buy a starter home. Now? Now they’re raising children in rooming houses.
That’s not a good thing, but hey, at least landlords are doing well and Galen Weston’s making more money this year than last.
Too many people have no concept of how great the change is. We got married in the late 1970s. My wife’s high school education and receptionist job was enough to get us into a decent 2-bedroom apartment, buy her a brand new motorcycle, and pay for my schooling in a trade. My trade was enough to upgrade our apartment, pay for my hotrodding hobby, let her quit to stay home with our son, buy a camper for weekend trips around the province and vacation trips around Canada and USA, all while saving enough for a down payment on a house with double-digit mortgage rates.
A few financial setbacks (extended layoffs mostly) meant starting almost from scratch (we kept our home but lost all savings and investments) in the early 90s and completely from scratch (lost our home, too) in the early 2000s. It took both of us to barely afford the same apartment of our youth. We finally gave up in 2011, changed careers and moved into a 1968 mobile home on a leased lot in the middle of nowhere. We’re back to being able to afford leisure, although on a much, much smaller scale than in our youth.
We’re still in that 1968 mobile home on a leased lot. It has apparently quadrupled in value since 2011, so if we were forced to start over again, it would be out of reach. We’d be homeless.
Divorce? Fortunately, that has never been on the table, but it’s been at least 2 decades since we’d have been able to contemplate single life from a financial perspective.