The central conceit of government is that the people working in it have the intelligence and expertise to solve complex problems. And yet, evidence of these high-level problem-solving skills is difficult to find.
Take the housing crisis, an issue felt most acutely in Ontario, which has the country’s fastest population growth and its greatest housing supply shortage. Fixing the problem is largely up to the government of Premier Doug Ford and the province’s 414 municipalities. Feeling confident?
The City of Ottawa says there are about 300 families or 1,039 people staying in hotels, motels, and post-secondary residences waiting for permanent housing because emergency shelters are over-capacity.
Jamieson Ferguson and her family were once one of them. The 26-year-old mother of three, expecting her fourth, stayed in a motel for just over two years.
“Let me tell you, that is not a place for children,” she said.
The homeless crisis in America is set to come to a head with a Supreme Court ruling as early as this spring, in the case of Johnson v. City of Grants Pass, Oregon.
The Supreme Court could—depending on what it decides—force changes in city ordinances and homeless policies across the country.
The decision is one of the most anticipated in years for San Francisco and other cities facing legal challenges from homeless people and advocacy groups.
Even as housing markets cool in some areas, housing affordability in Canada is the worst in over four decades due, in part, to sustained post-pandemic inflation and comparatively higher interest rates.
According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation — the federal Crown corporation responsible for administering Canada’s National Housing Act — affordability is defined as mortgage or rent payments that do not exceed more than 30 per cent of a household’s gross monthly income.
If a family makes $50,000 per year before taxes, for instance, anything more than $15,000 per year (or $1,250 per month) spent on rent would put them in an unaffordable situation.
In late July, Lindsay Dworkin, a senior project manager at a medical tech company, received a text message from her downstairs neighbour. Their landlord, the neighbour said, was putting the home Dworkin lived in with her husband and two-year-old daughter up for sale. Her family would have to find a new place to live.
In a normal city, at a normal time, that wouldn’t have been a big deal. But in the Toronto of 2023 it was devastating. “I couldn’t function,” Dworkin said. “I had to get my parents to come over and take over child care duties.”
The Star’s solution is to turn Toronto into a giant slum! Well it’s already on its way there.
A migrant family has been camping in broad daylight outside the Midtown headquarters of billionaire George Soros’ lefty advocacy group Open Society Foundations — which poured tens of millions of dollars into pushing loose immigration policies, shocking video footage shows.
The video, posted Wednesday on X by activist and political consultant Jason Curtis Anderson, shows a mother he claims is a Asian migrant sitting in the freezing cold on a gray blanket spread along the sidewalk outside of Soros’ grant-making network’s offices on West 57th Street near Broadway.
A Hamilton councillor’s recent experience witnessing a baby born in an encampment in the city demonstrates the “unacceptable” housing crisis residents face and “eye opening” situations paramedics and police officers are currently responding to, he says.
Coun. Matt Francis (Ward 5) told CBC Hamilton he was doing a ride along with police on a cold morning in late November when they were called to a medical emergency at an encampment tucked away in an industrial area in the east end.
Canadians never imagined that a man so criminally stupid, so self righteously indifferent to the genuine suffering of citizens as Justin Trudeau could ever be elected PM.
The Supreme Court may soon overturn Ninth Circuit rulings that have aggravated the crisis on the West Coast.
The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear the case of City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, dealing with whether the homeless have a constitutional right to camp on public property. As a result, the Court may soon overturn rulings by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that have greatly contributed to the West Coast’s homelessness crisis.
Six years ago, the Ninth Circuit first decided Martin v. City of Boise, ruling that, unless sufficient shelter beds were available, imposing criminal penalties on people for sleeping and camping in public violated the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. In 2022, the Ninth Circuit strengthened this precedent in the Grants Pass case, stating that even civil citations and citations for putting down bedding were forbidden.
B.C. and Ontario are vowing to crack down on private post-secondary institutions that are accused of exploiting international students, after the federal government announced Monday it will cap the number of student permits issued in the next two years.
Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced the government will reduce the number of student visas by 35 per cent for 2024, stating the goal is in part to target private institutions he described as “the diploma equivalent of puppy mills.”
I don’t believe this for a minute.
A very good explanation of the housing crisis and why the Liberals can’t fix it doing what they’re doing.
Most housing economists at that time concluded that Canada’s booming population wasn’t the key driver of rising home prices.
The key driver of rapidly rising home prices, they argued, was a “lack of supply” driven mainly by municipal inefficiencies and zoning restrictions 2/
— John Pasalis (@JohnPasalis) January 22, 2024
I’m standing outside the Central Police Precinct in downtown Portland, Oregon. Officer Eli Arnold and I have bicycled over to meet two of his colleagues, returned from a drug bust. We examine the proceeds of the crime on the hood of a squad car. The officers weigh the fentanyl powder on a small scale, record the amounts, and take out a few bags of pills to show me. A pill falls to the ground; one of the officers rushes to return it to the bag.
Vacant property occupations are on the rise, and it’s not just the jobless who are making the desperate move
Polo is no ordinary squatter. The builder, 32, enters empty properties and changes the locks, but then he pays the utility bills, renovates and even installs solar panels.
Once the preserve of society’s poorest, now even those holding down jobs are turning to squatting amid skyrocketing rents and high property prices.
The number of people turning to squatting and “unconventional accommodation” has risen by 25pc in the past decade, according to homelessness charity Crisis.
Link fixed
New data from the world’s largest central bank serves a reminder of just how batsh*t crazy Canada’s real estate bubble is. Housing bubble experts from the US Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas (Dallas Fed) released its latest update of global home prices in Q3 2023. Most G7 countries moved in a similar fashion, rising with 2020 rate cuts and have shown recent moderation. However, zooming out reveals Canada’s real estate bubble is nothing like any other G7 country. It puts the peaks seen in US and Japanese bubbles to shame, predating its recent population boom narrative.
Canada’s wildly high rates of immigration that have made it practically impossible to raise a family in Canada unless you’re rich
One of the most vexing questions that inevitably arises in any close scrutiny of the factors contributing to the dramatically worsening standard of living in Canada is whether the causes are a function of decisions the Trudeau Liberals made deliberately, or whether it’s all been a series of catastrophic mistakes.
Either way, this can’t go on.
Trudeau and or his handlers using Junior as a front deliberately inflicted this horror on Canadians. Prove me wrong.
The GTA saw a slight increase in housing starts, driven largely by condos, but only because of a lag in the impact of interest rates locally, according to the latest figures from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).
“We’re just not seeing the supply built that we need,” said economist Mike Moffatt, blaming higher interest rates and a weak economy. “And it’s a real problem.”
Actual annual housing starts were down seven per cent across the country in 2023 compared to 2022, to 223,513, but were up five per cent in the GTA to 47,428.
Tired of stepping over needles and human waste, and navigating around half-conscious addicts and homeless encampments? You’re not alone. Most decent, hardworking people want clean sidewalks for getting to work and walking their children to school.
Yet cities are legally barred from cleaning up homeless encampments. Advocates went to court and won rulings, guaranteeing homeless people almost unfettered freedom to set up tents and live in the rough, your health and safety be damned.
