“Homelessness & Affordability Crisis”

Andrew Truelove needs a belt and a pair of socks.

He takes his time getting up from the mattress he slept on the night before in the parking lot behind a Torrance shopping center. He smokes his first Lucky Strike of the day, then takes a Lyft to San Pedro, where he’s heard he may be able to get into a tiny house community.

It’s May 17, Truelove’s 32nd day in California. Shortly after he arrived at LAX from his native Virginia, he hitched a ride to Slab City, an eccentric off-grid community in the Sonoran desert. Then he spent a few weeks in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, pursuing his dream of starting a new social media platform.

Slab City

Seattle vagrants have now constructed a homeless encampment in the trees above the crime-ridden city, prompting one stunned local to liken it to the Ewok Village from Star Wars.

Local journalist Jonathan Choe stumbled across the ramshackle treehouse high in the city’s trees on Friday, and deployed a drone to get a closer look.

The Ewok encampment has a wooden stepladder to let its residents reach the ground below it. Its floor appears to be comprised of foam blocks, with a net supporting the soft material, which likely gives the shelter’s residents a comfortable sleeping experience.

I thought federal Housing Minister Ahmed Hussen’s “just trust the mayors” and “housing isn’t political” screed was a shoe-in for worst housing take of the summer, but it only took one week for NDP leader Jagmeet Singh to outdo even him.

When I moved to London for the second time in my life, in the early 2000s, I was struck by a highly visible change: The street-level misery that had defined the great metropolis in the 1980s had all but vanished. Gone were the bodies huddled under blankets around the edges of Trafalgar Square, the rows of beggars along Oxford Street and the Strand, the encampments beneath the arches of Waterloo Bridge.

It was the first and only time I have seen a serious urban “rough sleeping” problem (as street homelessness is more accurately known in Britain) more or less fully solved, humanely and comprehensively.

Numbers seem to be in dispute … 

This article quotes numbers from a homeless advocacy group so bias is possible, even likely – The London-only Combined Homelessness and Information Network (Chain) figures are considered to be more accurate than the official one-night count. The most recent annual count showed 10,053 rough sleepers were spotted on London’s streets between April 2022 and March 2023. That was down by a fifth on the 8,329 recorded in the previous year.

This is from the BBC – London has had the biggest rise of rough sleepers in England according to government figures, with an increase of 34% across a 12-month period.

There were an estimated 858 people sleeping rough in the capital on a single night in autumn 2022, compared to 640 the year before.

The BBC numbers seem light.

… The jump in Vancouver home prices, combined with higher interest rates and stress tests, means that a buyer would need an annual income of $235,650 to buy a home in Metro Vancouver last month, up from $226,800 in May.

Vancouver’s average home price increase was more than double the rate of the next two cities: Toronto was up $6,900 to an average home price of $1,171,300, and Victoria was up $6,500 to $885,100.

During my recent run to become mayor of Toronto, one line I heard from a lot of people was that they were considering moving out of town if Olivia Chow won the election. The challenges on our streets have become so dire on a number of fronts—crime, affordability, gridlock—that an exodus from the cities is becoming more likely.

We’ll see how many people make good on their threat following Chow’s victory. These sorts of sentiments have become common, such as how American progressive celebrities pledged to move to Canada if Donald Trump won the presidency.

There is so much wrong with America’s cities, it’s hard to see why any contributing member of society would live and/or work in one of them. Some of the issues arise from far-Left local governance while others are generated by more widespread Leftist policy. These are coupled with an organic workforce evolution, as the United States transitions from an industry-based to an information-based economy. The result is urban areas caught in a downward spiral — and, as with any sinking vessel, threatening to suck everyone nearby down with them.

Striking tenants who are refusing to pay big rent increases in several buildings in Toronto’s west end say they’ve been flooded with support from across the country.

York South-Weston Tenant Union organizer Bruno Dobrusin said support for their rent strike has been “overwhelming.” Not only are people paying attention, but he said they’re interested in learning how to organize themselves.

“It’s a hopeful sign that people are rising up and fighting back,” said Dobrusin.

I suspect any such populist movement would be compromised by hardcore communists in about a minute.

Outreach worker helping library grapple with concerning incidents

Since the city hired a community outreach worker for the Orillia Public Library last fall, the number of concerning incidents has dropped dramatically and library staff have a newfound sense of ease carrying out their work, officials say.

The position was approved last year by city council to address ongoing social issues at the library and in the downtown core — whether related to homelessness, mental health, addictions, or other issues — which staff were unequipped to address and often prompted the need to call the OPP.

h/t Sweetpea