Many families are choosing to leave Toronto as the city grapples with prohibitively high real estate prices and escalating concerns about street drug use, which are diminishing its appeal as an ideal place for family life. The exodus is driven by families seeking more affordable and secure living conditions in other parts of Canada. Frustrated by the realization that even substantial incomes do not guarantee a comfortable lifestyle, these families are opting for a change. Andrea Griffith, 43, shared with CTV News her disbelief upon discovering that an annual income of $200,000 was insufficient for purchasing a home in Toronto. She had dreamed of raising her daughter in a modest home with her partner, only to confront the harsh reality that such an aspiration would plunge them into significant debt.

Although they qualified for a mortgage, the couple felt it was a financial trap. “With a $200,000 income, we could only qualify for $750,000,” Griffith explained. “I didn’t think $750,000 was reasonable for us. I knew we would be house-poor.” The situation worsened when Griffith was forced out of a rental property in Scarborough shortly after her daughter was born. Faced with the decision to stay in Toronto and struggle financially or relocate, they chose the latter.

“We decided we no longer wanted to live according to someone else’s needs,” Griffith told the outlet. Consequently, the family moved nearly 200 miles away to Chatham, Ontario, where they now reside in a detached home. While this move has allowed them to achieve financial stability and realize their dream of owning a standalone house, it has also taken an emotional toll on the family.

‘We’ve been struggling to make friends,’ Griffith told the outlet. ‘I started crying because [my daughter’s] not going to have anyone at her second birthday. We don’t know anyone here.’ While she wanted to stay in Toronto, she knew it wasn’t a feasible reality. ‘If renting in Toronto had been more secure or affordable.. we definitely would have stayed longer,’ she said. Home prices reached an average of $1.27 million in 2022, feeling the after effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic. But those prices only decreased to $1 million this year, the Toronto Sun reported.

While rates saw a decline, many families still feel priced out and rentals aren’t offering much relief. Additionally, despite the price decline failing to restore affordability, it has also caused development contractors to be more cautious. Combined with government costs and restrictions on housing, many developers are much less keen to keep building the city new and desperately needed homes. Yet, Toronto has been shaking families out for more than financial reasons.

Dustin Titus, 43, found that it wasn’t just money that forced him out but also major safety concerns for his family. With a young son, Titus found that living in South Etobicoke’s Long Branch Neighborhood, around 30 minutes from Toronto city center, was no longer safe. It was on one afternoon when his son veered toward traffic on his strider bike that Titus knew it was time to go. ‘That moment really shook me,’ he told the outlet. ‘You feel very unprotected in Toronto these days.’

Titus found that the city’s bustling traffic and gridlocked roads, as well as frequent encounters with open drug use, were enough for him to leave. For Titus, he and his family moved to Horseshoe Valley in Oro-Medonte, around an hour and a half from the city. ‘In the first three days we had moved in, every single neighbor stopped to introduce themselves,’ he said. ‘That’s when we realized we were in the right place.’ Toronto’s supervised consumption sites for drug users faced a wave of troubles following several closures. The Toronto Drop-In Network told CBC that there was a near 300 percent increase in overdoses at 10 of its locations since closures in the spring.

Residents in Parkdale told the outlet that their concerns are being ignored, and their local center’s security isn’t working to keep the ‘chaos and disorder’ in the area to a minimum. ‘The center failed to state how it would address neighborhood safety concerns with concrete, effective measures to end hard drug intoxication causing the criminal and anti-social conduct on and around the outdoor portion of this site,’ residents wrote to Angela Robertson, the executive director of Parkdale Queen West Community Health Center. Robertson, however, argued that such a task was ‘not our role.’ ‘If we see something illegal, we will engage the neighborhood community policing team. But it is a significant challenge.’

While the government argued that closures of the centers would reduce crime around them, the City of Toronto’s board of health revealed noticeable effects on Toronto’s streets. The city’s safety network said there was a visible increase in ‘visible substance use on the street,’ and Parkdale raised concerns over a similar increase in open drug use in public spaces, Global News reported. Between April and September, calls for the city to clear up used syringes increased by five percent, with 766 calls. For Morley Abbott, 39, and his wife, it was Toronto’s school system that had their family asking, ‘Why are we staying here?’ ‘It feels like the school system just doesn’t care for families like ours,’ Abbott told CTV News.

Abbott’s family own a three-bedroom condo just opposite a prestigious elementary school, but after the school changed its catchment area they were faced with having to send their daughter to school across town instead. Abbott continued: ‘We love our neighborhood but suddenly we sort of have a catalyst. Our daughter starts kindergarten next year, and we’re asking, “Why are we staying here?”‘ Now, their family has plans to move to London, Ontario, for their daughter to go to school with cousins, the outlet reported. The school system has been a battle that many parents in the city have had to face or continue to battle, as Matti Siemiatycki said the struggle had been a ‘long-standing trend.’ ‘You look at how much it costs or how hard it is to find daycare… you have the schools… it’s been one controversy after another depending on where in the region you are,’ Siemiatycki said.

‘People are looking at other alternatives, and they’re making choices of where they want to see themselves.’ In a statement to CTV News, Mayor Olivia Chow’s office said that the city is working on more housing supply, cutting costs for families and strengthening protections for renters to work toward better affordability. ‘The Mayor believes that those who work and study in Toronto should be able to live in and afford the city,’ a spokesperson told the outlet. ‘She is putting shovels in the ground on 25,000 new homes this year and next, many of them deeply affordable. This year, 77 per cent of all housing starts are city-led or city-supported project.’ The Daily Mail reached out to Mayor Chow’s office for comment.