“That article.”

It’s all you really need to be told, and chances are, many of you will already assume which one it is.

“Did you read that article from yesterday?” one of the guys on my team asked me last week.  He then realized the error of his ways – asking an extremely vague question which could refer to a thousand different articles, and he attempted to further explain, “…sorry, I mean the one with..” but I cut him off and filled in the gap he left: “The one with the millennial locker-girl?”  Yeah, I read it I told him.

“That article” was more than enough to help me understand which one he was talking about.

I read it.  The article came up on my newsfeed one night when I was waiting for my daughter to fall asleep, and I was lured in by the headline alone:

“I’m A Millennial With Good Income. In Toronto’s Housing Market All I Can Afford Is A Parking Space Or Storage Locker”

The headline alone is like leaving oily rags next to a lit match.

And as Toronto goes in 2021, you just knew this thing was going to catch fire.

Perhaps that’s what the Toronto Star wanted.  Or perhaps this is just a reporter making a name for herself.

The article is so utterly ridiculous, that part of me thought this wasn’t actually meant to be real news.  I mean, when you scroll down halfway and see that the reporter actually traveled to a condo, went down into P1, and posed inside a locker, you’re going to realize that this is inventive news.

But as I said, I wasn’t going to write about this.  I didn’t want to touch it.

I don’t like “takedown pieces.”  I spent Friday in the comments section talking to a couple of readers about how Leafs fans hate the Canadiens, and vice versa, because misery loves company.  It’s that idea that some people would rather tear down others than build themselves up, and I’m not a fan of that.  So do I want to discuss an article that’s personal to the author, written in first-person, and about the author’s struggles?

Not really.

But after eight, yes eight people emailed me about this article (actually five emails, two text messages, and a message on social media which I probably never would have found on my own), I couldn’t just let it slide.

I subscribe to the Toronto Star, Toronto Sun, Globe & Mail, and National Post.  It’s a write-off, so why not?  But I realize that not all of you do, and this article is behind a paywall.  I don’t know the current rules regarding the distribution of copyrighted material behind a paywall, but I’m pretty sure I can’t simply copy-and-paste the article below, despite the number of others that are doing this out there today.

So how about a few choice excerpts?

The objective:

I spend a lot of time scrolling through real estate listings and fantasizing. The criteria are modest: More than one bedroom with ample sunlight, ideally more than 500-square-feet and, critically, to purchase, not to rent.

The meat-and-potatoes of her search:

“You’re probably going to laugh,” she said, telling me I may be able to obtain approval for around $150,000 — a mere 23 per cent of the average cost of a condo in Toronto’s market, according to the Toronto Real Estate Board’s April 2021 condo report.

“You might get a garage.”

I can barely even find a garage.

Within Toronto city limits, 21 listings appear on realtor.ca for my $150,000 approval. Several are listed at $1, a marketing tactic that aims to start bidding wars and solicit offers on properties. I assume that if I have to ask what the true value is, I can’t afford it.

Removing the $1 listings, eight others remain — and each of them is a parking space or storage locker. They range in price from $5,500 to $45,000. While they fall into my price range, the options lack one thing high on my list of criteria: walls.

The joke of it all:

In a second version of this test, Joya makes a bold assumption: that I have $25,000 available for a down payment. This brings my mortgage up to $320,000, an amount that finally offers a few options of apartments in Scarborough and the city’s northwest corner.

The reality is a down payment of $25,000 is, for me, a pipe dream. I have a modest savings account, but rent alone eats up nearly 50 per cent of my monthly income, making saving a difficult task on top of other necessary expenses. Even if I proceed with my $150,000 approval, there would be no money left to purchase furniture for my new place, let alone a car if I needed one. Effectively, buying a home right now would render me house poor.

You probably know what I want to say.

After all, I’ve said it before.  But this article is something new altogether.  You know that “bar” that we have?  The one for common sense in 2021?  That bar has officially been lowered beneath the earth itself.  It’s at a new low – one that’s got a negative symbol in front of it.

I have so much to say.  I literally don’t know where to start.

But you know what?  You’ve heard it from me before!

So why not hear from a few of the eight people that reached out to me in the past six days?

Sure, let’s let them do the work for me…

(emailed to me by a blog reader)

Hi David,

I am sending you a topic for the blog. This one particularly irks me because it’s about a young lady who is crying poor over not being able to afford a house or condo in Toronto while my daughter just bought a pre-sale townhouse in Durham Region because that’s all she could afford (sorry we didn’t use you for this but one of my best gals is a realtor). Heres the article

(link goes to Instagram story)

Did you see this yet? It’s awful journalism. I can’t imagine what Heather Mallick and Rosie DiManno are thinking when they have to cross paths with her.

I remember several years ago when you wrote these blog posts about financial literacy and you talked about people signing up for credit cards at Canadian Tire to get a free newspaper. Some of your readers had a go at you because not every can be financially savvy. But an article like this in a major Canadian newspaper will just encourage young people to put their hand out and keep it there. This woman doesn’t have any savings and expects to buy a condo. It’s unimaginable.

My daughter just turned thirty and is a single mother and scraped and clawed her way to home ownership. Her goal was to own by thirty and she sort of met that threshold but her townhouse will be ready next summer. I’m not pleased with this star article. It’s presumtouous and entitled. The woman comes off as a hysterical and comical little brat.

Enjoy your weekend David. Please take some time off to spend with the family.

(Name)

(emailed to me by a blog reader)

David,

Been a long time since I emailed you once or twice, but I follow your blog, and had to write you on this one.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2021/06/08/im-a-millennial-with-a-good-income-in-torontos-housing-market-all-i-can-afford-is-a-parking-space-or-storage-locker.html

So here’s a 26-27 year old it seems, 3 years out of university (was in 4th year university in Dec 2017 according to another story she wrote here: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2017/12/08/i-didnt-know-tess-richey-but-ive-walked-in-her-footsteps.html), who apparently has a “good income”, but has $0 saved, and wants us to feel sorry for them that they can’t afford to buy anything in Toronto on their own.

Let’s dig into this one a bit, shall we?

After paragraphs complaining she can barely find a garage or locker for her $150k mortgage qualification, she explains that on the second version of the analysis, the mortgage broker made the “a bold assumption” that she had $25k for a down payment, and turns out there that she qualifies for mortgage up to $320k in that scenario, and has some options.

So hold on….her sob story was based on having NO down-payment at all? And despite having a “good income”, she hasn’t saved even $25k, but thinks she should be buying a home in Toronto before 30?

Cry me a river!

But then she continues to say how saving $25k is a “pipe dream” for her. Her rent is so expensive after all and eats up almost 50% of her income.

So, she can’t save any money at all, but poor her, she can’t buy a home in the city. Oh my.

Allow me to be so bold as to suggest a way she could proceed:

1. Move in with 2-3 friends, dropping your rent significantly
2. Spend the next 3-4 years saving money. You’re only in your 20’s.
3. Then start looking for a place, which perhaps has a room you can rent to a friend to help support your costs for the initial years. Yes, you will likely have to sacrifice something, location, size, convenience, how new it is, etc, but hey, that’s how things are when you start.

Is it just me, or is this nuts?

(Name)
(Phone number)

(text message from client)

Please o please tell me you read that BS article in the star and have a friday rant in the hopper?  Looking for 150K properties in Toronto why is this a story and what is the agenda here???

(excerpt from an email from a client)

Also, hoping to see you write a blog this week about that Toronto Star article in which the reporter said she makes a good living but can only afford to buy a parking spot or locker.  So much wrong with that article!  Really interesting discussion on Reddit about the article too:).

Thanks David!

(Name)

That last email was sent on Sunday afternoon just as I was sitting down to tackle Monday’s blog.

It’s from a long-time client who is about as mild-mannered and easy-going as they come.  So if she thinks “there’s so much wrong with that article,” then where in the world are the people that read this article and agree with the content?

I don’t need to say any more about the author and her plight.

What I will ask is this: what is her point?

What is she trying to accomplish about this article?  Is she championing low-income housing?  Does she think interest rates are too high?  Does she believe in guaranteed income, or in this case, some sort of guaranteed savings?

One my clients said “What is the agenda here?”  That’s my point.  What is her point?

Simply put: why was this article written?

I actually searched for the Reddit feeds on this story and I read the comments.  There are thousands of comments.  I read about twenty and, no word of a lie, I didn’t see a single one in support of this story and/or its contents.  That must be a first.  We can’t get ten people out there in society today to agree on what day it is, but most people who read this story agree that it’s absurd?

People are getting heated about this and for a variety of reasons.

Some believe this reeks of entitlement.

Others believe it glorifies stupidity.

Beyond entitlement, there’s this odd expectation at play.  It’s beyond and separate from entitlement.

There’s certainly an argument that financial literacy is lacking and that there’s zero expectation that one should possess such life-skills.

I really don’t want to address one’s opinion on a “good income,” since I think that’s getting way too personal (although the article is written in first-person), but Reddit did that, in case you’re interested.

What bothered me about the article was that it made a fool’s errand seem like a logical, serious, legitimate task; one that was detailed step-by-step, in the same way that you could write about making a peanut butter and jam sandwich with your feet and then trying to feed it to the tree in the front yard.

A 10-year-old could write five-hundred words about attempting time travel, and it would come off exactly the same as this “story.”

Do you know what I mean?  Does that make sense?

Ah, and here I said I wouldn’t get into the weeds because I had everybody else to do it for me.

I guess I really, truly just couldn’t hold back.

I’m 40-years-old and privileged.  I know that.  I was born to a middle-class family and my parents paid for my university education.  I think about that every day, and I explain it to my daughter every night.

But I knew how to save money from the time I was born.  I salted away every dollar from allowances, birthdays, lemonade stands, P.A. Day hockey tournaments (I was called “a young Alan Eagleson” by my Grade-7 teacher).  I bought my first Ontario Savings Bond in 1991 at age eleven.  I had my first job at 13-years-old.  I worked in the meat department at Bruno’s, the fish department at Dominion, I pumped gas at Sunoco, I waited tables at East Side Mario’s, I bartended at Shark City, and I took a full year off university to do a 16-month internship at Celestica.

I lost my life savings at 21-years-old in the stock market.  You’ve heard me talk about this again and again, but it built adversity and it was a lesson that was worth every penny.

I’m puzzled by 26-year-olds who work in notoriously low-paying fields, who have zero savings, and expect to buy real estate in a renowned and world-class city.

There are zero 26-year-olds working at Le Monde in Paris posing for photos while laying in a parking space in P2 of a downtown Paris condominium, lamenting that their “good income” can’t even buy them a flat in Saint-Denis.

So why us?

Why Toronto?

What is it about our city, our population, and our people that have borne this incredible combination of entitlement and lack of awareness?

There have been a lot of newspaper articles, op-eds, opinion pieces, and social media stories about the lack of housing affordability in Toronto, and equally as often as not, people identify with the information and agree with it.

But there’s something about “that article” from last week that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.  And I know when people are rubbed the wrong way, since I’ve been rubbing people the wrong way since June of 2007.

This housing-for-all movement hit a snag with this one.

If you have any doubt, do something I’ve never told you to do before: go to Reddit…