“Homelessness & Affordability Crisis”

A new report from Food Banks Canada says the number of Canadians struggling with food insecurity continues to grow, as food bank visits hit a new record of more than 2.3 million in March.

The non-profit organization’s latest HungerCount report, released Wednesday, says the cost-of-living crisis and economic pressures are weighing heavily on nearly 10 million Canadians experiencing food insecurity.

Jane Jacobs was wrong. So suggests the drift in government housing policy toward community-killing high-rises. The urbanist who fought for low-rise living in townhouses and apartment blocks didn’t believe livable communities existed high in the sky. Today’s decision-makers beg to differ.

Passé are eyes on the street, as is economically mixed and human-scaled density, defined by street-centric neighbourhoods where residents easily walk to local shops, entertainment, transit and civic spaces.

Housing costs are making Canadians rethink homeownership , with many already giving up on the idea of ever owning a home.

More than half or 56 per cent of Canadians who don’t own a home say they don’t expect to ever own one, according to a survey by housing non-profit Habitat for Humanity.

The Carney government says it wants housing starts in Canada to double to 500,000 per year within the next several years.

At first glance, it’s an odd goal for the government to embrace. More than four-fifths of the existing residential housing stock in Canada consists of “market housing” — units constructed by developers and homebuilders guided by market-based signals. These signals include housing demand and business objectives such as making a profit, keeping the firm’s workers employed, etc.

Across the GTA, organizations that support people struggling to pay rent say demand for assistance is reaching unprecedented levels, as rising housing costs and stagnant incomes leave more households behind.

Data from Ontario’s Landlord and Tenant Board shows applications to evict tenants for non-payment of rent (L1s) have been steadily increasing, rising from 37,690 L1 applications in 2022-23 to 41,386 in 2023-24 and 45,435 in 2024-25 — an increase of about 20 per cent in three years.

These eviction for non-payment filings now account for roughly half of all applications received by the board.

The GTA voted Liberal last election.

Toronto went from the strongest real estate market in the world to one of the weakest in a span of four years, with a new report finding housing prices in the city have fallen by around 30 per cent since peaking in 2022.

UBS, a global wealth management firm, published its annual Global Real Estate Bubble Index on Monday, tracking residential prices across 23 cities worldwide, like Amsterdam, Dubai, New York City, and Tokyo.

The report delved into housing price trends, what kind of housing bubble risk these cities are facing, how long it takes to buy a 650-square-foot apartment on an average income, and how the cost of homeownership compares to rent for comparable homes.

OTTAWA — Despite being touted as a key affordability measure by the Mark Carney Liberals, a program offering tax relief for Canadians’ first home is leaving applicants waiting — often for months — with a good chance of having their application refused.

Housing affordability just worsened for a growing share of Canadians, new data from Statistics Canada shows.

Nearly one in four (23.2 per cent) Canadian households were living in unaffordable housing in 2024, compared to 22 per cent in 2022, Statistics Canada said in a report on Monday.

Statistics Canada defined households living in “unaffordable” housing as those that spent 30 per cent or more of their income on shelter costs