“Homelessness & Affordability Crisis”

TORONTO – From ultra-low interest rates that led to a huge spike in real estate demand(opens in a new tab) to the speed with which interest rates shot up to levels not seen in a generation, it’s been hard to keep up with the shifting landscape for mortgage holders.

Now, with interest rates increasingly expected to stay higher for longer, many of the homeowners who locked in low rates years ago are likely bracing themselves for financial pain as their mortgage comes up for renewal.

Canadore College President George Burton answered 20 minutes worth of questions Thursday morning from local media in hopes of what he says will set the record straight.

A shortage of affordable housing, the opioid crisis and the lingering effects of the pandemic have contributed to a rise in visible homelessness. Ten Montrealers share their stories.

At the camp where Conrad has spent the last three years of his life, everything has its place. A fuzzy red bath mat, a towel and a couple of sweaters hang on a clothesline outside his tent. A barbecue sits on top of some bookshelves. The earth has been swept with a broom and a small drainage ditch draws a circle around the tent.

“It’s a lot of work,” he says. He tries to keep the tent warm with an insulated tarp. “I’ve got my heater, my Coleman stove. It’s not hot but at least, with the tarp, the cold doesn’t really get in.”

I feel for these people but the media in this country are bound and determined to downplay any link between Trudeau’s callous mass immigration scam and the housing crisis.

With Ontario’s Greenbelt once again off limits to developers, Toronto is ready to welcome denser, taller housing and help solve the affordability crisis that has forced people to flee the city, Mayor Olivia Chow said Friday.

Chow’s comments, after speaking to the Toronto Region Board of Trade, came a day after Premier Doug Ford scrapped a push to pave swaths of protected farmland that had mired his government in scandal over how the sites were selected.

I got a feeling there’s gonna be a spurt of neighborhood destroying shoddy rental towers going up.

The number of homeless encampments nationwide is growing, and so is the case law saying cities can’t remove them.

A landmark court decision in 2009 in British Columbia first established that, in some cases, removing encampments violates the charter right to “life, liberty, and security.” In January 2023, the first Ontario court decision to this effect was handed down in Waterloo.

OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre intends to give bonuses to “high-cost cities” that meet their new housing targets and reallocate $100 million from the Liberals’ Housing Accelerator Fund to reward Canadian municipalities that greatly exceed theirs.

On Wednesday, Poilievre tabled his housing bill, the Building Homes Not Bureaucracy Act, that offers a clearer view of what he hopes to achieve to accelerate construction in the midst of Canada’s housing crisis.

Canadians unable to find housing should contact their respective City Halls for help, according to federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser.

At a press conference on Sept. 18, Mr. Fraser faced questions on what his government will do to address Canada’s housing crisis.

“What are you going to do for people who can’t find housing today?” asked a reporter, as first covered by Blacklock’s Reporter. “A lot of these measures are two years, three years down the road—it takes a long time to build apartment rentals.”

The New Yorker sees a homelessness program rife with drugs and crime as hugely successful.

Last week’s New Yorker featured a 15,000–word exploration of what happens when government gives housing to the homeless. The article profiled a Brooklyn supportive-housing program that provides formerly homeless people with private apartments run in accordance with Housing First principles. Building residents face no behavioral expectations.

Author Jennifer Egan portrays a chaotic scene, overrun with addiction, premature mortality, and crime. Nonetheless, Egan (a novelist by trade) argues that this program succeeds in offering residents “a new lease on life” and should be replicated everywhere homelessness is found. Readers may be reminded of the third chapter of Michael Shellenberger’s book San Fransicko: “The Experiment Was a Success but the Patients Died.”

There is a simple solution to the housing crisis: Voters in municipalities across Canada could elect mayors and councils dedicated to stripping away zoning restrictions, while simplifying and lowering the costs of permissions and permits.

Unfortunately, voters in municipal elections tend to be homeowners who benefit from escalating prices and who want to preserve their neighbourhoods. Councils reflect their will.

Opinion: Most politicians believe, apparently mistakenly, voters will punish them if house prices fell. Their self-interests could also be getting in the way.

Most Canadians, according to polls, are willing to see house prices to drop so people squeezed out of ownership, particularly young adults, can obtain some shelter security.

But, despite politicians’ endless rhetoric about fighting for “affordable” housing, they don’t really want home values to drop. There are several reasons why this is the case.

In the heart of Toronto’s industrial Port Lands, there is a street filled with trailers and motor homes — and a 61-year-old carpenter trying to plan for an unknown future.

He’ll be relying once again on a diesel heater through the dark nights of the approaching winter. It would help to have another solar panel on the roof to provide power.

The California conundrum: Fewer people, more homes, but an acute housing shortage

In the last decade, California home prices and rents have soared, an upswing that’s put homeownership further out of reach and helped drive thousands into homelessness.

This escalation coincided with a unique moment in California history. For much of the last decade, the state’s population growth was historically low.

In the last few years, it ground to halt and then dropped — and all the while developers continued to build.

The iconic Las Vegas strip has seen a surge in homeless people sleeping on the sidewalks and in makeshift tents as the city grapples with an affordable housing crisis.

New images taken by DailyMail.com show people curled up in the sidewalk and outside store fronts – with some keeping their minimal belongings in trolleys and encampments.

At least 6,566 people were counted as homeless in Southern Nevada in late January of this year, according to statistics from the Southern Nevada Homelessness Continuum of Care.