White Rock senior fears losing her home amid high interest rates

Soaring interest rates have put a lot of strain on homeowners across Canada. With no relief in sight, a day of reckoning is coming for some people.

Jan Miller, who is 73 years old, tells CityNews she fears she could lose the White Rock home she’s lived in for 50 years.

She says her interest payment was $1,000 a month before rates started rising. Now, Miller explains her payments have risen to $2,500 a month — “more than twice my pension.”

“As it is now, I can’t even make the first payment, or the second payment,” she explained in an interview with CityNews.

“By rolling it into a mortgage just to protect myself from any more increases, I now can’t make payments, because it is now principle and interest.”

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Miller says she’s been a single mother of three for 36 years. Given her single income over the decades, she tells CityNews she could never qualify for what many others can, meaning she hasn’t been able to pay off her mortgage like many others have.

Her single income through her years has also meant she’s left with a single pension.

“That’s the doom of every single parent. You will have a single pension,” she explained.

“I’m 73 now, I’ve been in the house for 50 years. I started about seven years ago to make ends meet. I started an Airbnb in my house, so I have to live in the basement without a kitchen. That was to supplement my pension — I’m a low-income pension. I don’t think everyone realizes the fate they have when they’re on a single income all their life, struggling, and working. Because when it gets to retirement, there’s no dental, there’s no nothing anymore.”

Miller’s home is located near the beach in White Rock. She says her family bought the 400-square-foot cottage-style home at a time when “nobody wanted them.”

“We lived in it while we built it by ourselves to raise our family, to raise the kids, which took a lot and lot of borrowing,” the senior explained.

“I wanted to die in this house,” Miller continued, adding her adult children also share “a feeling of hopelessness” amid the housing crisis in Metro Vancouver.

Still faced with monthly mortgage payments, and her likely inability to pay this month or next, Miller says it’s only a matter of time before she’ll be forced to sell or even face foreclosure.

“And where do I go? I’ve looked at trailer parks, modular homes, and even there, even if you buy the home, you have to pay a $1,100 lot fee a month. That’s still more than half a pension,” she said.

“Selling the house, I will have a bit of equity, pay off all my loans, and go live in a van,” Miller continued. “It’s gone into hopelessness where I just feel like getting an old van and disappearing. And I can live in a van. I mean, that’s what we’re all going to have to live in eventually, I guess.”

The stressful situation hasn’t just hit Miller’s finances — she says it’s also taken a toll on her health.

“I’ve always been extremely healthy and keeping up, and kids were in everything, scouts, everything. A year ago, I had a nervous breakdown and was in the hospital three times, but I had never had any health problems whatsoever,” she said.

On Sept. 6, the Bank of Canada decided against another rate hike, holding its key interest rate at five per cent.

However, it is keeping the door open to more rate hikes, noting that its governing council is still concerned about inflationary pressures and “is ready to raise interest rates further if needed.”

Altogether, the central bank has raised its key interest rate 10 times since March 2022, bringing it from near zero to the highest level since 2001.