Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow recently threatened to increase property taxes by two per cent to cover the increasing costs associated with housing asylum claimants in the city’s shelter system, if she doesn’t first get the funds from the federal government. This would be over and above whatever tax rate increase she was already planning.
This isn’t the right way to go about solving the crisis of so many asylum claimants residing in our shelters, motels and streets. It’s not the taxpayers’ fault.
A young St. Marys, Ont., woman has been handed the keys to independence and stability thanks to a charity that’s planning to open the first of many tiny homes for people at risk of homelessness.
The home is 490 square feet, but for Paige Noel, 20, it’s a big step toward getting established, all while staying close to her family. The tiny home was erected in her mother’s yard, as the nearby house is already at capacity.
“I never imagined I’d be able to have my own place like this,” Noel said.
Her Mom wouldn’t take her in?
If increased supply is the solution to the housing crisis, Canada is making no progress.
The city of Toronto is on pace to build fewer new homes this year than at any time in the past 30 years.
“If you think we don’t have enough homes, fast forward two or three years, and it’s going to be an absolute catastrophe,” Marlon Bray, executive vice-president of Clark Construction Management, a Mississauga-based builder, said at an online summit this month of residential builders.
Olivia Chow warns Toronto faces tax increase — or people on the streets — due to shelter funding cuts
The city of Toronto is now facing cuts to its shelter funding from the province, threatening another one of the municipality’s key funding sources to house homeless people.
According to a letter from Mayor Olivia Chow published Friday, the province recently informed the municipality it is reducing allocated funding for next year to almost $8 million, compared to $19.75 million the city received this year and $38 million it got in 2024.
No homeless means no money to funnel to her commie pals for pet projects employing fellow toxic commies.
How many of the Liberal party’s “asylum seekers” use shelters in TO – nearly 30% of the total.
It’s extortion.
OTTAWA — At just 32, Eddie has a six-figure salary from a major financial institution, stocks, and no debt, including his rental property that nets him more than $5,000 a month. He lives frugally and invests as much as he can.
Eddie wants to buy a house in Ottawa, as close as possible to his downtown job, and is willing to spend up to about $900,000.
His wish list seems pretty basic: a decent neighbourhood, a back yard, and at least three bedrooms to accommodate what he hopes will one day be a growing family.
This week, Food Banks Canada graded the federal government a “D” for its efforts at addressing skyrocketing food insecurity and poverty among Canadians amidst a weakening economy. The 2025 Poverty Report Card indicates a growing number of employed Canadians are impoverished, and provides data that further suggests Canada may be veering into a recession, or already experiencing one.
Mark Carney’s $13 billion housing initiative highlights everything that’s wrong with the Canadian system and why things won’t be improving under the Carney government.
To begin with, it proves Carney’s claims that he will streamline the government and reduce the bureaucracy to be hollow. The Trudeau government nearly doubled the civil service over 10 years. Carney has implied the growth was unsustainable and that he will get the bloat under control. Then he announces a new agency which will employ hundreds if not thousands of new civil servants. Not one of which will swing a hammer to help build a home.
Last weekend, Ana Bailão, a longtime member of Toronto city council, took up her job as the first CEO of Build Canada Homes (BCH), the Carney government’s new bureaucracy tasked with doubling the number of homes built annually across the country.
Put aside for a minute the wisdom of appointing a longtime councillor from the city with the second-highest housing prices in the country, and forget for a second that Bailão chaired Toronto city council’s affordable housing committee during the years in which Toronto witnessed some of its worst inflation in housing prices.
Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Sunday afternoon the launch of Build Canada Homes, the federal government’s new agency that will oversee federal housing programs.
The agency was part of the Liberals’ election promise to double housing construction.
The government is touting Build Canada Homes as a centralized agency to oversee new affordable housing programs initiated at the federal level.
Pretty soon Barrie’s homeless are going to be finding themselves … homeless.
Or at least city-less.
I bet they end up in Toronto
Toronto’s homebuilding activity in the first half of 2025 was the lowest on a per-capita basis since 1996, according to a new report from Canada’s national housing agency.
The drop was driven by a 60 per cent year-over-year decrease in condo starts, the new “Housing Supply Report” by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) found.
”A pullback in investor demand during the first half of 2025 reduced project feasibility, leading to cancellations, delays, and a sharp drop in construction,” the report said, adding that many industry actors are calling for reduced construction costs and development charges.
Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall says enough is enough.
On Tuesday morning, the mayor declared a state of emergency aimed at addressing encampments across the city, pointing to growing safety concerns, damage to municipal property, and the ongoing toll of the opioid crisis.
“Barrie residents have had enough,” Nuttall stated, adding the city would support those seeking help but would not allow encampments to continue on public property. The mayor said the City would “reclaim” its streets, park and public spaces.
The rot is so deep, so widespread that no corner of our world is left untouched.
h/t Mauser
OTTAWA — Government inaction on housing is leading Canada towards an unprecedented crisis, Canada’s Opposition leader warns.
Speaking Tuesday from a residential construction site in Brampton, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said inaction by the Mark Carney Liberals on homebuilding is sparking an unrecoverable cycle of layoffs, unemployment and withering-away of skilled trades — leaving Canada with a devastating shortage of skilled workers.
A new report is sounding the alarm on unaffordable rent in Toronto, pointing out that despite a softening of prices in the rental market, one- and two-bedroom apartments remain out of reach for many workers.
The report, Making Rent: The CCPA’s rental wage update 2024, was released Thursday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. It looks at the “rental wage”—the hourly wage needed to afford rent while working a standard 40-hour week and spending 30 per cent of income on housing—for one- and two-bedroom units in 62 Canadian cities.
It found that Toronto and Vancouver top the list when it comes to unaffordable rental housing.
Someone working full time would need to make almost $38 an hour in order to afford a one-bedroom apartment in those cities. That works out to an annual salary of around $78,000.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says President Trump is considering declaring a national housing emergency to address the growing affordability crisis that is keeping home ownership out of reach for millions of Americans.
