More and more seniors are struggling with property tax increases eroding away their often paltry disposable incomes year after year.
Cambridge has seen property tax default rates rise 30% from 2021 through 2023. In 2024, Cambridge property taxes will rise by 7.17%. That’s 2.4 times the percentage increase in the incomes of most seniors.
Below is an email received by the Property Taxpayers Alliance from a lady in Kitchener. The name has been removed for confidentiality. With taxes rising faster than inflation each year, and CPP and OAS rising at or below the inflation rate, more and more seniors will be faced with the tough decision of having to move out of their homes.
Letter to Property Taxpayers Alliance
Hello,
My name is XXXXXX,
I am speaking on behalf of low-income seniors.
My husband and I were on ODSP. The moment I turned 65, both my husband and I cut off the income for ODSP and put on OAS and CPP for me, and OAS for my husband who is 2 and a half years younger than I am.
We have been significantly affected by the increase of property taxes.
Fortunately, my home is a house, which I have paid for, and now I own. I had some kind of premonition about the pandemic before it occurred, so ever dime I had, went to my mortgage at that time in 2020.
Now I pay $450 a month in property tax.
My husband has had to have me pay for his trillium plan and his dental, which is very high, even though mine is covered by the Seniors Dental Plan. He still needs hearing aids and glasses. Unfortunately his teeth have been yanked out. All the extra costs have to come out of my bank account, including property tax, which has sky-rocketed.
We eat minimum, because of this, do not drive, don’t own a cell phone, cannot buy a bus pass and the affordability is so difficult for us, because of our ailments. He has bipolar and borderline personality disorder, bad arthritis, and is now in a rotator cuff sling due to falling on the decrepit road in front of our house. I have complained to the City about the sidewalks and they have done nothing, except send an insurance adjuster to our home.
The uneven sidewalks in our area have been neglected, and as walkers. I have experienced a broken clavicle, as well as another one, a broken hand.
I do not know what to do about rising costs anymore. It is time to give low-income seniors a break from these increasing costs!
Sincerely,
XXXXXX
Kitchener, Ontario
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