Are High Housing Prices Contributing To COVID?

The burden of COVID-19 illness has fallen particularly hard on people with very low incomes and on visible minorities. Now, research from Toronto suggests that spiralling housing costs could be a contributing factor.

In the Toronto area, housing prices (rental and ownership) have grown much faster than incomes. In the 2006 to 2016 period, there is a marked increase in the number of working age adults who are doubling up, referred to as being part of “mutually dependent adult households.” The group includes working age single adults as well as couples without children who are living with relatives (e.g. siblings or family), or with non-relatives or a mix. It does not include students.

Mutually dependent adult households are more concentrated in specific neighbourhoods. These are the same neighbourhoods that have experienced higher numbers of COVID infection and higher rates of infection (cases per 100,000 population) in Toronto. This pattern is replicated in neighbouring municipalities.

As the researchers note, mutually dependent adult households on their own do not wholly explain the extra instances of illness, but should be considered as a factor. For example, nursing homes in the Toronto area have had very high rates of COVID infection and death. This research suggests that health workers living in mutually dependent households might have two sources for illness: their home and their workplace. A recent report from the provincial auditor about COVID in Nursing Homes describes employment conditions that suggest personal care workers are prime candidates for mutually dependent households¹.

This research, which fingers high housing costs, adds another level of insight to the prevalence of COVID infection among visible minorities and in areas of high poverty. Read more at Open Policy Ontario: Covid-19 & People Living in Mutual Dependence in the Toronto Metropolitan Area

Commenting on the study, a health professional calls for changes to building standards to improve safety at home, based on what we now know about the spread of COVID-19. Read in the Toronto Star²: Scarborough researchers found the link between multi-generational households and COVID-19. What it could change about housing in years to come

1. Try: Ontario’s Disastrous COVID Care Home Response: For-Profit Did It Worse
2. For locals, the Toronto Star is paywalled. For occasional readers from further afield, 2 free articles a month are allowed.