Day four (Thursday) of the World Urban Forum in Vancouver was the day to bring it all home ” literally. I joined Jean Swanson, a long-time housing and anti-poverty activist in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, for a community tour. The Downtown Eastside is one of those many impoverished areas in Canada that Canadian Prime […]
That's hot!!!!!!
Toronto, and many other communities, are suffering extreme – and record-breaking – heat. This is not merely unpleasant, it is deadly. Extreme heat affects the most vulnerable (elderly, young, people with compromised health, people taking certain medications) leading to increased illness and early death, but everyone is affected. There is a “dose-response” relationship with the […]
Round one goes to community!
It was a surprising late summer storm: News began to emerge, first from London, that the federal government was cutting fiscal 2006 funding for its national homelessness program (called the Supporting Community Partnerships Initiative). The program has been on death-watch for almost 18 months. It was due to die last year, but the federal government […]
Another housing announcement
The federal andOntario government made their latest announcement about new affordable housing allocations on Friday. This brings to ten the number of major federal-provincial announcements on this program, which was launched in November of 2001. Among the announcements: – the feds and Ontario have signed not one, but two housingagreementsto get money flowing and homes […]
Housing "downturn" could be next U.S. disaster
Exactly one year ago, Hurricane Katrina tore a devastating strip out of the U.S. economy, and revealed the failure of successive administrations – Democratic and Republican – to deal with poverty, housingand racism. The bigger lesson from Katrina has been that the steady dismantling of progressive social policy has a deadly impact on the lives […]
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Is there a bubble? Will it burst?
The brave economists at the TD Bank are gamely attempting to accomplish several impossible tasks at once. Their latest “housing bubble watch” begins with the warning: – no one knows if there is a housing bubble in Canada, and “it is, by definition, impossible to identify a bubble before it bursts”. Okay, one question mark […]
Homeless numbers easing downward in NYC
Columnist Gary Mason was right when he wrote in the Sept. 5, 2006,Globe and Mail that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s housing campaign is producing results, but thenumbers are not quite so dramatic as he reports. The number of homeless people in NYC shelters reached an all-time high in 2003 of 38,310 women, men […]
The Blueprint To End Homelessness In Toronto
Builders use a detailed blueprint to guide them from a good idea to a finished structure. That’s the idea behind the Blueprint to End Homelessness in Toronto.Our blueprint starts with the foundation of more than 30 years of detailed research and reports on housing and homelessness in Toronto by governments, academics and community groups. It […]
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Framework For The Blueprint To End Homelessness In Toronto
Builders use a detailed blueprint to guide them from a good idea to a finished structure. That’s the idea behind the Blueprint to End Homelessness in Toronto.Our blueprint starts with the foundation of more than 30 years of detailed research and reports on housing and homelessness in Toronto by governments, academics and community groups. It […]
Continue ReadingFramework For The Blueprint To End Homelessness In Toronto Download PublicationFramework For The Blueprint To End Homelessness In Toronto
Standing room only at Wellesley municipal election housing event
It was standing room only at The Wellesley Institute on Tuesday evening for a special meeting to brief municipal election candidates on housing issues. Most of the time, during election campaigns, it’s the politicians that do the talking, but at the community housing meeting, it was the experts ” including street nurse Cathy Crowe, Toronto […]
Continue ReadingStanding room only at Wellesley municipal election housing event