“Homelessness & Affordability Crisis”

Some cities facing homelessness crisis applaud US Supreme Court decision, while others push back

SEATTLE (AP) — A decision by the U.S. Supreme Court allowing cities to enforce bans on sleeping outside in public spaces will allow San Francisco to begin clearing homeless encampments that have plagued the city, the mayor said Friday as she applauded the ruling.

The case is the most significant on the issue to come before the high court in decades and comes as cities across the country have wrestled with the politically complicated issue of how to deal with a rising number of people without a permanent place to live and public frustration over related health and safety issues.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis", USA

Trudeau’s Canada: He can’t afford to rent an apartment. So this man secretly sleeps in an office

A man in St. John’s rents office space, but he doesn’t have an office job.

He’s an electrician, driving from gig to gig all day. The office is where he sleeps at night, secretly, because he couldn’t afford to rent an apartment anywhere in the city. For two months during the frigid Newfoundland and Labrador winter, he lived in his truck. Then, in February, he found an office listed for $450 per month.

“I’m 100 per cent doing this clandestinely,” the 37-year-old told CBC News. “I basically have given up on finding anything else.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis", Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government

Trudeau’s Canada: Woman pays 100% of her income on rent

Living with your parents. Living with your ex. Giving up basic needs like food and clothing.

These are just some of the sacrifices Canadians say they’ve been making to pay rent amid the surging prices and decreased availability marking Canada’s rental housing crisis.

Demand for rentals is outpacing supply across the country. A recent CBC News analysis of more than 1,000 neighbourhoods across Canada’s largest cities found that less than one per cent of rentals are both vacant and affordable for the majority of Canadian renters.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis", "Mass Immigration - Follow the money", "Societally Destructive Immigration Policy", Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government

Toronto’s Hunger Games Housing Crisis: 12,000 mid-income households entered a city lottery to get a break on rent

More than 12,000 mid-income households entered a city lottery to get a break on rent. Their chance of winning: 1 per cent

When Toronto city hall and the developer of a gleaming new high-rise launched a lottery for apartments at reduced rents this spring, hopeful households turned out in droves — nearly 12,500 of them, each seeking refuge from a worsening housing affordability crisis.

The first phase of the west-end Galleria on the Park development was offering brand-new, city-supported homes aimed at mid-income earners, which cost hundreds of dollars less than market rates.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis", "Mass Immigration - Follow the money", "Societally Destructive Immigration Policy", "Toronto - Canada's version of a Democrat run city", WTF?

Unhoused family paying for campground site in Peterborough, Ont. ordered to leave

A family living at a campground in Peterborough, Ont., says they’re being ordered to leave — despite paying for their campsite since arriving.

Shanna Miller, her husband and three children have been staying at Beavermead Campground since May 10. Miller claims severe medical conditions have kept her and her husband from regular work. In February she says “unsafe conditions” at a rental home forced the family to leave.

Unable to find affordable housing or shelter spaces in the city for her family, Miller says they pitched their tents in the campground and have paid for their extended stay.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis", Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government

Amid the Stanley Cup Excitement, Edmonton’s Downtown Struggles

Edmonton’s mayor says that the issues behind homelessness, opioid overdoses and mental health crises cannot be fixed by cities.

While I was in Edmonton recently to write about the city’s deeply ingrained nostalgia for the Oilers’ glory days and the excitement around the team’s trip to the Stanley Cup finals this year, I met with Amarjeet Sohi, who became the city’s mayor in 2021.

Mr. Sohi has an unusually varied background. When he returned to his native India from Edmonton in the late 1980s — the wonder time for the Oilers — he was imprisoned for 21 months and endured torture after being arrested on what the Canadian government, and ultimately an Indian court, deemed to be false terrorism allegations. He has been a taxi driver and a bus driver, a federal member of Parliament and a minister in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis", "Mass Immigration - Follow the money", Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government

Dissecting what is behind the GTA’s persistently high house prices – and what governments should do about it

As we approach the second half of 2024, the housing landscape and new home prices in the Greater Toronto Area (and Canada broadly) continue to be surprisingly resilient in the face of economic headwinds. Despite historical trends suggesting a downturn in housing prices following periods of high inflation and interest rates, recent prices have moderated somewhat but have largely defied the expected convention. Here are some of the factors behind it.

Explains the hidden back end development costs well.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis"

Skyrocketing rent: Some Canadians saying goodbye to half their paycheque

A significant number of Canadian renters are spending more than half their paycheque putting a roof over their head, according to a new Royal LePage report.

In Vancouver, 27 per cent of renters are spending more than half their net income on paying the rent. In Toronto, 19 per cent are forking over more than half of their paycheque and one in 10 Montrealers are in the same position. The national average is 16 per cent.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis", Canada, Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government

Trudeau’s Canada: Global Study Deems Vancouver & Toronto Housing “Impossibly Unaffordable.”

Global study ranks two Canadian cities high on list of most expensive places to buy a home

As Canadians continue to struggle with the extremely high cost of buying a home in some of the country’s major urban centres, a new global report is underscoring just how expensive some of those markets are.

A study by Demographia, which examines international housing affordability, has deemed Vancouver and Toronto as “impossibly unaffordable.”

David MacDonald, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, says the findings of the study aren’t surprising.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis", "Societally Destructive Immigration Policy", Canada, Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government

The rise of California’s vanlords: A new class of landlord is exploiting the homeless

For outsiders experiencing it on YouTube, homelessness in San Francisco has a sort of up-close profile — overdoses and open drug deals, vacant and filthy faces, bodies sprawled on dirty concrete or, sometimes, just standing, bent incredibly in half, forehead between knees, in the telltale posture of someone who shot up fentanyl and forgot to sit.

Where I live, across San Francisco Bay in Oakland, the homelessness has also become a favourite subject for YouTube video sleuths. But instead of capturing it at ground level, from the juddering view of a camera held by a pedestrian, or through the window of a car moving along a curb in voyeuristic slowness, these videographers often do their thing while moving at the speed of traffic, panning hungrily along a blighted street, or they send up a drone to gather a vast scene in an aerial sweep. San Francisco homelessness is defined by depressing human detail. Oakland homelessness is captured in aggregate terms, by visual reference to its physical scale.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis"

Trudeau government swamps nation with so many alleged refugees that Canada moves into top 5 countries accepting claims

Despite its geographic isolation from the rest of the world save for the United States, Canada was the fifth largest recipient country of asylum seekers last year.

According to the latest global trends report released Thursday by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (also known as the United Nations Refugee Agency), Canada received 146,800 new claims in 2023, up from 94,000 the year before. Only four countries were ahead: the U.S. (1.2 million), Germany (329,100), Egypt (183,100) and Spain (163,200).

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis", "Mass Immigration - Follow the money", Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government

New housing starts mean $100,000 per home needed to fund infrastructure: report

As Canada aims to build homes faster, both the public and private sectors will need to boost spending on municipal infrastructure, a new report from the Canadian Urban Institute says.

The report, funded by the Canada Infrastructure Bank, estimated the average cost of infrastructure needed to support housing likely exceeds $100,000 for each newly built home. That includes funding for resources such as public transit, roads, water lines, schools, fire halls or recreational facilities

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis", Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government

Most Canadians Say Home Ownership Unattainable Despite Rate Cut: Poll

Despite the Bank of Canada’s decision to drop interest rates, it’s not enough for most Canadians to get into the housing market, according to a recent poll.

On June 4 the Bank of Canada dropped its key interest rate by 0.25 percent from five percent to 4.75 percent. It was the first cut in four years.

However, in a June 11 survey by polling firm Ipsos, eight in 10 (82 percent) of respondents said that even if interest rates drop further, homeownership will still be unattainable for them. Sixty-two percent said they’ve given up on ever owning a home.

Imagine if someone dropped a Nuke on Ottawa! Would I ever be not sad!

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis", "Mass Immigration - Follow the money", "Societally Destructive Immigration Policy", Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government

Douglas Todd: Disease spreads by overcrowding, made worse by housing unaffordability

As if there are not enough problems with the exorbitant cost of housing, now we must face up to how it contributes to poor health.

Overcrowding within houses and apartments helps spread disease, according to studies in the U.S., Britain and Australia.

Overcrowding, which is calculated on the number of people living together per square foot, could be at its worst in almost a century in English-speaking countries.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis", "Mass Immigration - Follow the money", "Societally Destructive Immigration Policy", Canada, Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government

Small ownership landlords in Ontario call for rental housing market reform

A group of housing providers in the province are calling out the Ford government, saying reform is needed to help small-ownership landlords and good tenants.

Small Ownership Landlords of Ontario (SOLO) held a rally outside Queen’s Park on Saturday, calling on the province to provide better ways to protect small ownership landlords from tenants who refuse to pay.

“My tenant stopped paying rent to the tune of $26,000, and then he eventually burned my house down,” said Kevin Costain, SOLO board member.

The situation is so bad for renters that when they do fall into arrears it’s easy to just say F*ck it and screw the system.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis"