Stories like this make me the most mad at the Landlords/NIMBY's (sometimes the same people).
An $80,000 "investment" into a one person startup should take you much much much farther than this, but it is completely gobbled up by literal rent-seekers.
BAcK iN mY dAy a room in a house would cost $400-$500/mo in most places in the Montreal-Waterloo corridor. Now runways have basically been halved (0.3x'd?) as an extra allowance to the landed gentry.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of the recent tech boom happen to be the owners of land and buildings in and around the cities that tech companies prefer to be around.
Also a strong argument for remote-first companies.
Impossible to estimate the amount of damage the runaway real estate market has done to competitiveness, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the interest of funnelling more free money to entitled landlords sitting on their asses cashing rent checks
