“Homelessness & Affordability Crisis”

The City of Montreal has hired private security guards to patrol parts of Ville-Marie, Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and the Sud-Ouest starting this summer in an effort to improve safety and cohabitation in targeted public areas.

The move comes during a time of rising tensions between residents and people who are unhoused.

But several organizations that work directly with homeless people question the lack of consultation about the patrols and would have preferred the money be distributed to groups that already do outreach and interventions.

Homeless police. Did not see that coming.

Canadian non-profit groups are seeing an increase in the number of older individuals seeking assistance at shelters, and they say it’s changing the way their organizations respond to the rising homeless population.

The Mustard Seed senior director of shelter operations Samantha Lowe says her organization experienced a “consistent” rise in the number of individuals aged 55 and older seeking shelter between 2023 and 2024.

Prime Minster Mark Carney’s solution to the ‘housing crisis’ is the same as was that of former Prime Minster Justin Trudeau’s: throw money at it. Most of Carney’s government people are former Trudeau government people, so it shouldn’t be a surprise their answer is to spend other peoples’ money.

The Carney Liberals’ plan is to build a new bureaucracy to build new homes, called Build Canada Homes, at a cost of $25 billion taxpayer bucks. While in office, Trudeau’s government spent $116 billion on the housing crisis, so Carney has a long way to go to match Trudeau’s pilfering of Canadians’ tax money but of course, he’s just getting started.

VANCOUVER — Seventy-one-year-old Roger Oake sat on a bench outside the Union Gospel Mission shelter in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside after breakfast.

He had been sleeping at the shelter for about a month “this time” and said that after several years of homelessness, walking “the beat” during the day when the shelter isn’t open has become harder as he gets older.

“I really don’t know where to even begin. There’s so many things that could or should change, but I really don’t know,” he said on Wednesday.

Next to inflation, Americans ranked housing as their top financial worry in a Gallup survey last May. It’s only gotten worse. January home sales were down 5% from last year’s dismal numbers. Record numbers of first-time buyers are stuck on the sidelines as housing affordability stands at the lowest level ever recorded, while one in three Americans now spend over 30% of their income on mortgage or rent.