Single mom's rental search highlights Calgary's vacancy crunch

A Calgary single mother of three says despite submitting hundreds of applications, it took her four months to find a place for her family to live in the city.

Sharon Stevenson had been looking since April, even checking Kijiji ads by the hour, trying to find a bigger home for the growing family her 16-year-old daughter just had a baby.

"I didn't know if I had a home for them. I was scared, like, the next option is I send my 16-year-old daughter to go live on her own because the system will take care of her, and then I can find a smaller home for me and my boys. And to me that's not okay, she said.

Even though she has a good job in the oil and gas sector, the biggest challenge was convincing people she wasn't a problem tenant, Stevenson said.

"They want to know dynamics of my home. I have to say I'm a single mom, they want to know my wages. Getting a response almost immediately is almost impossible," she said.

Last week Stevenson finally found the main floor of a house to rent in Forest Lawn. She said she'll continue to look for a full house to rent.

According to a rental market survey released last month by the CanadaMortgageandHousingCorporation(CMHC), Calgarys vacancy rate is tied with Edmonton as the lowest among major centres at 1.4 per cent.

Bryan Sali, a housing locator with the John Howard Society, said he knows how hard it is to find a safe and affordable place in Calgary right now.

I've seen it on several occasions where you go into a viewing and there's a long lineup of people looking at a place and some of those people have cheques in hand for more than the asking price, he said.

Sali said his agency and many others just can't compete with that.