“Homelessness & Affordability Crisis”

Roughly 60 per cent of Canadian mortgage holders will face higher monthly payments when their loans come up for renewal in 2025 and 2026, according to a new Bank of Canada report.

In the latest staff analytical note, the bank says that although mortgage interest rates are expected to gradually decline, most borrowers will still see payment increases relative to their current contracts — many of which were signed during periods of lower interest rates.

The report estimates that in 2025, homeowners renewing their mortgages will see an average increase of 10 per cent in their monthly payments compared to December 2024 levels.

Brent Secondiak served as a front-line cop in the southern Alberta city of Medicine Hat for 25 years, and understands the futility of dismantling homeless encampments and otherwise dislodging itinerants who decide to bunk down in public spaces.

“We used to call it leaf-blowing … you just scatter the leaves, and the leaves end up somewhere else,” he says.

Toronto real estate is finding out it’s not invincible, after all. New Equifax data reveals Toronto CMA’s mortgage delinquency rate surged in Q1 2025. While rising delinquencies are a national story, this is very different from the normalization seen in other Canadian markets. Over the past few years, Toronto’s delinquency rate has more than tripled and reached a multi-decade high.

But Toronto’s a 3rd World Dumpster surely that counts for something!

The next federal census will ask Canadians for the first time if they have experienced homelessness, which Statistics Canada says will “shed light on people who may face significant social and housing challenges.”

Statistics Canada will conduct the next Census of Population in May 2026, and has released its questionnaire ahead of time. The new questions contained in the census will “provide important data to measure Canada’s diversity and support communities across the country,” according to the agency, which was first covered by Blacklock’s Reporter.

Across Canada, you could hear the eyes of Gen Zers rolling. The headline in The Globe said it all: “CMHC gives up on comparing housing affordability to 2004 levels.”

Where a previous headline-making report by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the federal agency whose stated purpose is to make housing affordable, had set out a series of policies aimed at returning housing costs, relative to income, to 2004 levels – by 2030 – the new report dismisses this as “no longer realistic.”

Toronto wants to put homeless shelters in its suburbs. Neighbours say not so fast

On a Tuesday evening in April, south Etobicoke residents gathered around their laptops to spar over the issue that had been roiling their community for months — a city plan to build a homeless shelter at the end of a residential street.

Even through the sterile format of an online town hall, the intensity of each speaker was palpable. One man warned a shelter at 66 Third St., currently a parking lot at the end of a row of modest homes and a few newer builds, would bring homeless people into their New Toronto neighbourhood from elsewhere in the city. He feared occupants using street substances in public areas, such as the nearby lakeside park.

I’m going full communist on this issue, make the rich enjoy the vibrancy that homeless shelters bring!

There is no point giving a substance abusing addict shelter unless they have first received treatment for their addiction and proven themselves capable of supervised reintegration with society. Housing First as a strategy is the expressway to failure. Mandatory treatment is the solution.

Young Canadians aged 30 and under are failing to make payments on their mortgages at a rate seven times higher than the rest of the population, according to the latest data from the credit agency TransUnion.

The report, which analyzed credit trends for young consumers in the first quarter of 2025, found 29-year-olds and 30-year-olds had the worst mortgage delinquency rates at 1 per cent and 1.1 per cent, respectively -nearly 10 times the average national rate of 0.12 per cent. The average delinquency rate of mortgage holders between 18 and 30 was 0.84 per cent.