Image of the day: household spending in Berlin around 1800
Housing: about 14% of income. Food: about 73%.
Fun graph I just found. In the 19th century, a Berlin working father could find housing for his family of five for just 14% of his income. However, he also had to spent another 44% on bread alone and 73% for food overall.
From Fernand Braudel’s The Structures of Everyday Life.
the housing "crisis" problem in Canada is that greedy corrupt politicians encourage reckless real estate speculation driving up home prices and consequently rent prices by any means hook-or-by-crook. Whether it was the Federal Immigrant Investor Program or allowing banks to finance Canadian speculators to bid up and buying up residential properties the end result is that a large population of people non-productively live off the backs of wage earners by forcing higher mortgage and rent payments. So it doesn't take a genius to realize wage earners pay a larger proportion of their income towards housing needs. Real estate speculation is one of Canadian's firm almost religious investment themes but in the end it fundamentally screws wage earners to the point today where homes are vastly unaffordable compared to the 1970s.
Until about the 1970s putting food on the table exceeded rent throughout all of human history.