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 […]
Housing
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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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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Failing The Homeless: Barriers In The Ontario Disability Support Program For Homeless People With Disabilities
Principal Organization: Street Health Community Nursing Foundation Principal Investigator: Laura Cowan The Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) is intended to assist low-income people with disabilities, but many disabled homeless people are unable to access this program. In an effort to address this problem, Street Health decided to conduct a research project to identify the barriers […]
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Bringing it home (Day 4 of WUFIII)
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 […]
World Urban Forum (Vancouver) – day three
The contradictions are becoming much more dramatic on day three of the World Urban Forum III in Vancouver. The forum, sponsored by UN Habitat – the United Nations’ Centre for Housing and Human Settlements – has drawn thousands of delegates from government and non-governmental organizations to Canada’s west coast for an intense week of housing […]
World Urban Forum (Vancouver) – day two
It’s day two at World Urban Forum III in Vancouver. As the Wellesley Institute’s representative, I’m meeting colleagues working on housing, health and other urban issues from around the world. Some of the stories are sobering, some are inspiring. WUFIII is hosted by UN Habitat, the housing and human settlements agency of the United Nations. […]
Powerful energy at WUFIII
There was a powerful energy on day one (June 19) of World Urban Forum III. Joining with literally thousands of people from around the world is exciting, but the energy gets kicked up several notches when lots of delegates are on the front lines in some critical housing struggles. Our world is rapidly urbanizing. In […]