One-person households represented nearly a third of all homes in the territory
Latest census data for the Yukon (covering the whole of 2016) revealed that one-person households accounted for 32.2 per cent of homes in the territory.
The data released last week showed that the proportion of lone ownership in the territory is second only to Quebec, which posted 32.3 per cent. Nationally, this figure stood at an average of 28.2 per cent.
According to Gary Brown, senior information officer at the Yukon Bureau of Statistics, this is not a new development as Quebec and the Yukon have consistently posted the greatest proportion of single-person households in Canada since 1981. He attributed this to various economic factors.
“One is that some of our workforce is fairly transient: people coming up for a job and just living by themselves,” Brown told the Whitehorse Daily Star. “Another is there’s high income levels here and so people are able to live alone.”
Karol Campbell, president of the Yukon Real Estate Association, backed up these observations.
“I’ve had a number of clients that have been on their own, of all age groups,” Campbell said. “I can speak personally, people I know, that it was a wiser option to go into home ownership and pay your mortgage than to deal with some of the rents that are out there, because they’re pretty steep.”
Campbell added that younger first-time buyers tend to rent out their basements or unused rooms in their properties to help out with mortgage payments and other expenses.
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