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'I will never own a home': Moncton artist highlights barriers to housing
Moncton artist Natt Cann would like to own a home, but at the age of 35, he's come to the conclusion that will probably never happen.
His latest work, a series of nearly 300 prints of beautiful doors, was inspired by that realization. Cann was walking in downtown Fredericton one day, and noticed "pretty doors everywhere."
His next thought was, "I'll never afford any of this."
The doors may be beautiful, but for Cann, they symbolize more.
"The door is sort of like a barrier," he said. "You're not coming in."
Not all of the doors Cann prints are picture-perfect. Some are boarded up or have eviction notices on them.
"I want people to understand that beneath this collection of doors, there's ... a whole lot of anger and annoyance."
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He calls his exhibit, Knock Knock! - I will never own a home, and describes it as his "frustration with the Canadian housing markets and predatory investment."
"It's mostly born from just being priced out of houses and priced out of basically everything — and I was like, 'Well at least I can own a door.'"
According to the Bank of Canada, the average price of a home in the province rose from just under $180,000 in 2019 to $297,520 in 2023, driven in part by record international and interprovincial migration after the pandemic.
There has also been an increase in the number of homes purchased by investors, and a decline in first-time buyers. Investor purchases climbed from 20 per cent of all mortgaged homes in Canada in 2014, to 30 per cent in the first quarter of 2023.
Cann wonders why government policy doesn't prevent investment firms from buying housing.
"Why is that allowed to exist in Canada?" he said. "A group of people can put their money together and buy a home as an investment and not as a thing of shelter…it prices out individuals from having shelter in this day and age."
According to Statistics Canada, more than one in five Canadian households live in unaffordable housing — meaning they spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing.
One-of-a-kind prints
Cann grew up drawing on his bedroom walls, but now he uses more sophisticated techniques in his studio to create his art.
His collection of prints starts with taking pictures of the doors and includes doors from Fredericton, Saint John and Charlottetown.
Once he has the pictures, he digitally crops out the house.
"Then they get printed on a laser printer with a very specific toner and a very specific additive in that toner," Cann said. "Then you can use adhesive remover to transfer them onto a different piece of paper with some pretty aggressive application."
"The prints are one-of-a-kind and that texture that he gets is unique," said Kathryn Basham, who owns the Bright & Brine Fine Art Gallery.
She recently displayed Cann's exhibit in her Moncton gallery for three months, and is now working with him to get the prints made into a book.
"It'll be a conversation about not just his process, but his original idea behind the series," Basham said.
On the exhibit's opening night, Basham said about 50 to 60 people attended.
"The messaging behind Knock Knock! is extremely important," Basham said. "We are losing this housing here locally and we are losing a lot of what, not just architecturally we've had, but the opportunities for housing."
The project started in spring of 2023, but Cann is still adding doors to his collection.
