“Homelessness & Affordability Crisis”

Hamilton is studying ways to provide sanctioned outdoor housing in the Southern Ontario city to alleviate a worsening homeless crisis that has surpassed the capacity of its shelter system, potentially through legal encampments or by building small cabins or tiny homes.

The city created a protocol last year allowing encampments of limited size on public property, with a rule of five tents per encampment and a minimum distance from places such as highways, schools and daycares, as well as any private property. But Mayor Andrea Horwath said she wants the city to go further.

I question the implied success rate of transitions from “Tiny Homes” to regular housing given the rental rate crisis in Canada and the shortage of public housing.

“Housing First” has not been the hoped for success in the US it was hoped to be.

A drug addict is still an addict whether in a tent or tiny home.

It is a sight sadly all too familiar for bleary-eyed New Yorkers braving their morning commute.

Homeless drug addicts lie strewn across subway staircases and platforms, many barely conscious from their breakfast hits.

But it is also one that New York Mayor Eric Adams promised to be rid of as part of a drive to clean up the city’s filthy subways two years ago.

I dunno seems pretty Toronto.

As rent prices have risen in Toronto, instances of tenants withholding rent in protest have become more common.

It’s called a “rent strike” and it is a practice that has gained widespread attention in the city in recent years, as the cost of a one-bedroom apartment surged to nearly $2.500.

In some cases, tenants use rent strikes to bring attention to poor conditions in their buildings. But for most, it’s a tool used to protest larger rent increases.

A neighborhood in Portland has spiraled into chaos as the locals clash with those living in a homeless encampment.

Residents in the city’s southeast say the area has become like a ‘war zone’ as tensions continue to rise between locals and the homeless who have lined the streets with tarps and tents.

Lacey, a woman living in the encampment, told KGW8 that someone hit her dog with a car, leaving him with a broken leg and an open gash.

The leaders of Ontario’s largest cities are calling on the provincial government to appoint a cabinet minister to manage a provincewide response to a growing trend of homelessness and a number of encampments they say have reached crisis levels.

Launching a new campaign at Queen’s Park on Thursday, Ontario’s Big City Mayors said local governments were at a breaking point trying to tackle homelessness, opioid addiction and a series of tent encampments that have appeared and stayed in the heart of the province’s towns and cities.

Rents are still rising in Canada but the year-over-year pace of growth has slowed, according to a new report.

The data from Rentals.ca and Urbanation says asking rents for all residential property types averaged $2,201 in July, up 5.9 per cent from last year.

The year-over-year increase is the slowest rise since early 2022, while more recently, growth has often topped 10 per cent, the report said.

A vacant-homes tax may boost housing availability but it hasn’t improved affordability, says a new study on the policy’s impact in Vancouver.

The C.D. Howe Institute study looked at how Vancouver’s Empty Homes Tax has affected the housing crisis since 2017. The tax was introduced amid concerns about high rents, expensive homes, and homelessness happening at the same time as homes were sitting empty, according to the study.

Statistics Canada’s report last week, “Short-term Rentals in the Canadian Housing Market,” reveals that 107,266 housing units were converted to commercial short-term rental (STR) use in 2023, rendering them unavailable for long-term occupancy. Comparing this number to Canada’s current total housing stock of 15,495,361 units, Statscan suggests that a seemingly minor 0.69 per cent of the total housing stock is utilized as commercial STRs.

Smack down of StatsCan’s assumptions.

Alison Rogers and Doug Sykes remember the days when their young children frolicked in the playground at Gage Park.

Having the expansive green space as an extension of their backyard was handy.

“We used to have birthday parties in the park,” Rogers reminisces.

Back then, their biggest concern was that excited, unleashed dogs bounding into the park might pounce on their children, the empty-nesters recall.

Two years and multiple housing laws since the Ford government promised to build 1.5 million new homes in a decade to solve Ontario’s housing crisis, key indicators suggest home construction is grinding to a trickle.

The number of housing starts in the first half of 2024 has lagged behind the previous year, while June saw a 44-per cent drop year-on-year. At the same time, new home sales — which can predict future home construction — are also falling.

And we’re on track to bring in even more foreign students than last year.