“Homelessness & Affordability Crisis”

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.

The way my friend Al Guart saw it, the theft itself was a little thing.

For years, Al covered the Mafia for the New York Post, where I worked with him. A job that was not without some level of danger. You would think that would have inoculated him to the petty crime that had creeped into every crevice of the Big Apple.

A developer lobby group is renewing calls to introduce tax cuts for new projects as housing starts continue to slow, warning that if something doesn’t change, tens of thousands of jobs could be at risk.

On Monday, the Building Industry and Land Development Association released a brief calculation considering how far new home construction could fall and how many jobs could be lost if the sale of new homes remains low.

Exploiting a crisis?

Canadian renters are still grappling with affordability issues even though rent prices have decreased this year, while those contemplating the move to home ownership are adopting a wait-and-see approach, a new report suggests.