Renters with kids face uphill battle

After her marriage broke down in 2013, Kelly Farley needed to find a home to rent for her and her two teen daughters. She wanted to stay close to the northwest Calgary neighbourhood where the girls had grown up and to keep them in the same schools.

Eventually she found the main floor of a house; another tenant lived in the basement. It wasn't the best situation, but things got worse before they were better.

The basement tenant moved out and the landlord decided to sell the house. Then, just weeks after Farley moved out, the landlord relisted the main-floor unit — for more money than Farley had been paying, and more than she could afford.

"It was a grim search and I became desperate," said Farley of her house-hunting search. "When you have kids and you're going through a family breakdown, as a renter, all you want to know is that you have a safe, stable place to land."

The Calgary Foundation has released its annual Vital Signs report. The yearly check-up measures Calgarians' quality of life across six categories, with this year's report revealing the 1,819 Calgarians polled for the report were on average less happy than they were in 2014.

Along with Calgarians being a tad more melancholy, CREB®Now explores some of the other findings in this year's report.

Living Standards: Receiving an overall grade of C+ in this year's report, the top housing concern listed by Calgarians was improving the affordability of rental housing, with 26 per cent of respondents citing it as their primary worry.

Finding housing in Calgary's postflood rental market is proving a difficult task for an organization that helps locate housing for those involved in the criminal justice system.

Bryan Sali, housing locator for the Calgary John Howard Society, is one of those who sifts through the city's dwindling numbers of vacancies in an attempt to find suitable housing for his clients.

Calgary's housing vacancy rate is a priority Mayor Naheed Nenshi told reporters at the July 25 release of the Civic Census.

"We really need to prioritize (the vacancy rate)," Nenshi said. "We have needed for some time to prioritize housing that matches the needs of the market and we need to continue to do that."