A new commentary on Canada’s support system for low-income households says many of the programs perpetuate dependency and don’t help people do what is needed to get out of poverty.
In Dan Carter, whom I profiled this week, Oshawa, Ontario, has a mayor with an unusual background. But the city faces a situation that is confronting many, perhaps most, Canadian municipalities: a growing population of homeless people, many with addiction and mental health issues.
The federal government was prepared to offer the City of Toronto two locations as temporary shelters, and operational funding for a third location but the city declined the offer late last week, Global News has learned.
At its November meeting, City Council passed a motion requesting Ottawa “take urgent action to address the refugee crisis including funding and operationalizing emergency accommodation at federal sites, including federal armouries, and funding and operationalizing a regional refugee reception centre.” At that same meeting, all 25 councillors and Mayor Olivia Chow signed a letter addressed to the Ministers of National Defence and Emergency Preparedness, reiterating the requests and urgency.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s fall economic statement acknowledges that the biggest worry keeping Canadians up at night – and, ahem, the biggest obstacle to Liberal re-election – is housing.
Introducing the mini budget, she said that Canada was always “a place where if you worked hard … there would be a home that you could afford. For generations, that promise was kept.”
But “for a generation that ranges from new high school graduates to couples in their thirties making six-figure salaries, it is a promise that is under threat.”
An affordability crisis is putting the Canadian dream at risk for immigrants, according to a new Leger poll done exclusively for OMNI News.
The survey finds two-in-five (42 per cent) immigrant households are struggling to make ends meet, with the number increasing to 54 per cent when surveying those who moved to Canada within the last five years.
For immigrants? What about Canadians? Mass immigration has fueled the housing and affordability crisis.
Opinion: Opponents of NIMBYs talk a lot about “legalizing housing” and “inclusive” zoning. But how progressive are self-proclaimed YIMBYs?
Canada’s new minister of housing, Sean Fraser, likes to use the jargon of the urban-growth movement known as YIMBY (yes in my backyard).
In Kelowna, he recently proclaimed his commitment to “legalizing housing.” Highlighting supposedly liberal-left values, the former minister of immigration also talks about fighting for “inclusive” zoning and “equitable” housing.
Kristin Thurber thought she had it pretty good.
She was making $41 an hour working in the film industry, and for five years lived in a small rental house in Burnaby where she and her close-knit neighbours grew hostas and vegetables together.
But in July 2022 she was given an eviction notice — for no good reason, she says — triggering a series of events that led to her losing her job and becoming homeless.
Canada Invests $444m With Company That Says Millennials Don’t Want A Home
Canada keeps repeating it’s spending billions on new housing, but with who, and how does it help? Earlier this week, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland announced $1.2 billion worth of investments to build rentals in Toronto. It turns out over a third of those funds are going into one project—373 Front St East, which are rentals planned years ago. Toronto-based Tricon Capital is one of the owners of the 855 unit project. They are best-known for buying and owning tens of thousands of single-family homes in a short time.
Tricon is a successful firm well positioned to profit from Trudeau’s mass immigration driven perpetual housing shortage.
I wonder if Liberal Party connections exist.
… Asked by the Times Colonist whether he would increase federal involvement in affordable-housing construction, Poilievre — still dressed in a construction hat and a high-visibility vest — said governments should get out of the home-building business and sell off federal buildings and land to developers. “We need to get the government out of the way and have the fastest building permits in the world.”
Poilievre said his plan requires that cities permit 15 per cent more “housing completions” per year or lose federal funding.
A new report says the average asking price for a rental unit in Canada reached $2,178 last month, a 9.9 per cent year-over-year increase and continuing a trend that has seen asking rents hit new highs for six months in a row.
The data released by Rentals.ca and Urbanation, which analyzes monthly listings from the former’s network, shows that while October’s annual rate of rent growth in Canada was down from the 11.1 per cent jump in September, it still marked the second fastest annual increase of the past seven months.
Majority of voters now want to undo a pioneering change as public drug use has become rampant
EUGENE, Ore.—Soon after Oregon became the first state to decriminalize all drugs in 2020, Officer Jose Alvarez stopped arresting people for possession and began giving out tickets with the number for a rehab helpline.
Most of the people smoking fentanyl or meth on this city’s streets balled them up and tossed them onto the ground.
“Those tickets frankly seemed like a waste of time,” said Alvarez, who stopped issuing them a few months after the law went into effect.
Canada’s housing agency is warning of a looming “shock” for borrowers renewing their mortgages as a new analysis shows the pain of higher interest rates is starting to put pressure on some homeowners.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) released its biannual report on the country’s residential mortgage market on Thursday.
As Newfoundland and Labrador struggles with affordable housing and shelter shortages, one developer in Stephenville believes he has the solution that can turn the tide.
Sean Hickey is all in on tiny homes — smaller, purpose-built dwellings that have a smaller footprint, are more affordable and can be built much faster than a normal house or apartment building, depending on the size of the construction crew.
Hickey and two employees have built 12 tiny homes in Stephenville since 2018, without government grants or subsidies. He owns the land and the units and rents them to a range of tenants, including seniors and young professionals.
Toronto’s homeless shelters are bursting at the seams.
Even before the arrival of winter, when the cold historically strains the system hardest and leaves people scrambling for places to warm up, Toronto is in a bind. Through an unusually warm September, shelters were already turning away an average of 278 people per day for lack of space — with municipal officials appealing repeatedly to higher governments for aid.
Elliot Kelly is “rent poor,” stuck spending more than he wants to rent a semi-detached home in Toronto’s midtown because he can’t find an affordable three-bedroom condo.
The father of four says his family made the move from the Ajax home they own to shorten commute times and give them more walkability in a community they love. But even if they sold their townhome worth nearly $1 million, they can’t foot the bill.
For many months, Kelly says all the suitable condo listings he’s seen in Toronto’s midtown neighbourhood are more than $200,000 above what the family can afford. As a result, he says the family is “living paycheck to paycheck” paying rent.
