Based in the Toronto area, Dream Maker Realty, Inc. pursues property asset management strategies and is part of a broader enterprise that develops sought-after properties region-wide. Led by Isaac Olowolafe Jr., Dream Maker Realty, Inc. aims to make homeownership more accessible to people from diverse backgrounds.
In November 2020, Toronto Star article “Black families were being left out of homeownership,” Mr. Olowolafe focused on how owning a home plays a crucial role in the prosperity of generations of black Canadians. Formed after World War II, the National Housing Act assisted returning soldiers and their families, as well as those who followed, from all backgrounds, for generations.
Unfortunately, while nearly 70 percent of Canadians own homes, prices have skyrocketed. For example, in the course of a single generation, the cost of a family-sized residence in Toronto has risen from four times to 15 times the average family income. This has created a racial gap, with higher-income neighborhoods where homeownership is prevalent, being three-quarters white. By contrast, lower-income neighborhoods, where renting is more common, have 69 percent minority residents.
Many of the latter residents, including hard-working black families, cannot pass down equity in the form of property, with the only inheritance the children receive being “rising costs.” Mr. Olowolafe proposes that Canadian voters look seriously at systemic ways in which the middle class can be expanded, rather than whittled down, and stability and prosperity preserved for people of all cultural backgrounds.
