The official communiqué from the federal provincial and territorial housing ministers is little more than a collective pat on the back. The Ministers met Friday, December 4, in Gatineau for their first national housing summit since 2005. With a record 1.5 million Canadian households in core housing need, and another two million living in substandard […]
Housing
Ontario set to make welcome changes to ROOF rent supplements: Star
The Ontario government is making important and positive changes to one of its housing supplement programs for low-income renters, according Laurie Monsebraaten in The Toronto Star. Previously, the province’s ROOF (rent supplement) program was only available to families with children and only offered a maximum of $100 monthly – restrictions that drew criticisms from many housing experts. […]
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Affordable Housing In Canada: A Year In Review
Will 2011 be the year that Canada finally rejoins other leading nations of the world by implementing a comprehensive and fully-funded national housing plan? Affordable Housing in Canada includes a look back at key moments in housing and homelessness in 2010, and looks forward to key issues on the policy horizon with plenty of links to […]
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MP Marie-Claude Morin introduces Bill C-400, National Housing Act legislation, in Commons
A detailed plan to create a long-overdue national housing plan for Canada was introduced in the House of Commons on Thursday. The Wellesley Institute’s Michael Shapcott joined other national housing leaders, along with MPs Marie-Claude Morin and Andrew Cash, for the introduction of the draft legislation, which is called Bill C-400, An Act to Secure […]
Ending homelessness in Calgary, and across Canada
Calgary is making important steps towards its 10-year goal of ending homelessness. The success comes from a number of factors – smart and capable leaders from the community and business sectors, a pragmatic 10-year-plan to end homelessness, effective engagement with municipal and provincial governments, strong partnerships with neighbouring municipalities, good practices borrowed from other parts […]
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Premiers make strong, new commitment to housing for all Canadians
The Premiers of Canada’s provinces have made a strong commitment to negotiating a comprehensive, long-term national housing plan with the federal government. The new commitment came on the final day of the Council of the Federation meeting in Niagara-on-the-Lake on July 26. The millions of Canadians living in more than 1.5 million households that are […]
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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 […]
New TO tax is fair, efficient, simple… and it could get new homes built!
Toronto City Councils Executive Committee will consider a recommendation for a new land transfer tax at its June 25, 2007, meeting. An extract from the exec agenda, with more information, is attached. This is an important new source of funding for urgently-needed housing funding that, combined with fully-funded national and provincial housing plans, would allow […]
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Canada's home ownership markets plummet…
Home ownership in Canada is at its most unaffordable level since the “housing recession” of 1990. That’s the grim news today from RBC Economics and its latest quarterly housing affordability report. Outside of Alberta, housing affordability has deteriorated in every market and for every type of housing. Most low, moderate and many middle-income Canadians live […]
Canadian home-owners get multi-billion dollar subsidy
Canada’s homeowners – who are about twice as rich as the country’s renter households – pocketed a tax subsidy of $11.5 billion in 2007. That’s more than more than five and one-half times greater than the annual federal investment in affordable housing programs for low and moderate-income households. On Friday, January 2, 2009, federal Finance […]
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