Page 38 - 05_June-2025

MELISSA
BOURGEOIS’
GREAT RESET
STARTED
BEFORE THE
PANDEMIC.
In 2019, the family lawyer was in a long-
term relationship, successful in her career
with her own practice, and getting ready
to settle down. The next step, according
to traditional logic, was to buy the home.
Renting in a downtown apartment,
Bourgeois and her partner were looking at
options for sale in central Edmonton,
hoping to maintain their convenient urban
lifestyle. They considered downtown —
which, thanks to a cooling condominium
market, had never been more affordable
to buy in — but feared it could be a bad
investment for that same reason. Instead,
they prepared to pay more for a house.
But life started throwing curveballs her
way. First, the relationship came to an
end, and with it, the likelihood that she
could buy a centrally located home. Then,
after moving into her own apartment,
COVID-19 put further stress on her life
by bringing the world to a standstill and
keeping her cooped up in her 495-square-
foot unit. She had to take a moment to
pause and reconsider.
“I didn’t know where I was going to go,
or what was next for me,” says Bourgeois.
“It was a free fall.”
She called the small 29th-floor apart-
ment her sky palace — a liminal space
where she could reconsider every aspect
of her life, from relationships to the limits
of her practice. She had mixed feelings
about the traditional confines of family
law, which came with long hours and less
38 EDify. JUNE.25
positive results. She could no longer
stomach it.
She’d already been travelling to London
to learn from a unique legal model that
allowed a single lawyer to represent both
parties in an amicable divorce. Once
travel restrictions loosened, she was able
to continue travelling back and forth
between continents before asking the law
society for permission to pilot this novel
law practice in Canada — the first of its
kind in the country. Through all of this,
it was not lost on her that this flexibility
would be unattainable had she been tied
to homeownership. Her idea of “settling
down” completely transformed — and
she’s not alone.
THE ELASTIC LIFE
As home prices skyrocket across Canada,
Edmonton’s market has remained com-
paratively stable, earning it a reputation
as one of the most affordable of Canada’s
largest urban centres, according to a
Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corpora-
tion report. Thanks to a seemingly endless
amount of space (and political will) to
expand its boundaries, homeownership
has long been the norm, not the exception,
for much of the middle class.
And yet, more Edmontonians who could
absolutely afford homeownership are
saying no, preferring instead the benefits
of a flexible lifestyle with set monthly
expenses. “The rental market is becoming
more important,” says Damian Collins,
housing expert and human geographer
at the University of Alberta. “It also may
question some of our cultural understand-
ings of what it means to be a successful
household.”
Whereas we used to spend more of our
lives in one career path, in one city, and
in just a handful of homes, change is now
the norm. We’re also increasingly open to
shifting careers, according to an Express
Employment Professionals–Harris Poll
study. What’s more, fewer Canadians are
having children. According to Statistics
Canada, the fertility rate has been on the
decline for 15 years, hitting a new all-time
low in 2023, reducing the need for more
living space and, by extension, the need to
buy a house. The result is fewer pressures
keeping the average person locked into
a home, and the choice to move cities,
upgrade, or downsize has never been
easier.
“It could be argued that we’re moving
to more flexible lifestyles, for better and
for worse, perhaps,” Collins says. “We
don’t necessarily have the same job
security. We don’t have the same security
of homeownership that we used to. But we
do have greater flexibility that can come
with that.”
Collins also says that as renting
becomes more popular, and more Cana-
dians become renters, there needs to be
more protections in place. In Edmonton,
the high demand for rentals increased
the cost by 20 per cent between 2021 and
2024. Unlike other provinces, where there
are more protections for renters, there
is no limit to how much landlords can
increase rent in Alberta (although they
can only do it once a year). Collins says
that putting a cap on the yearly rent hike
is necessary for renters rights.
Developers are also responding to this
shift. Katie Schneider, a development
manager for Autograph — one of the city’s
most active downtown developers — says
that as lifestyles change, so does their
business. Affordability is one factor, but
the great shift to working from home has
had huge impacts on rental design.
“Now we’re thinking about units that
actually function for being able to spend
all day inside your unit,” says Schneider.
Before the pandemic, the idea of being
within walking distance of everything
meant you didn’t need as much in your
unit. But that’s changed. “If you, in the
pandemic, were stuck with a cohort that
didn’t serve you, it was kind of miserable,
right? So what we’re finding is that in our
buildings, we aim to foster a sense of
community,” she adds.
But anticipating renters’ needs isn’t
easy in an unstable environment. “The
volatility and uncertainty of the world
is impacting how people are making
decisions,” Schneider says. “Think about
where we’ve come from 2020 till now and
knowing that if we built a building in 2020
it’s surely going to be different in 2026.”
Speaking personally, Schneider, who’s
spent six years with the company, says