MISSISSAUGA MAYOR-ELECT WANTS TO WORK WITH FORD GOVERNMENT ON URGENT HOUSING NEEDS
The mayor-elect of Mississauga says she wants to work with Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government to build more homes and plans to strike a panel to speed up the building approval process in her city. Carolyn Parrish, a former long-time Liberal MP, was elected Monday in a competitive mayoral by-election that centred around the city’s housing needs – which she says are urgent. “It’s got to be done fast, because we’re losing people every day,” she said in an interview Tuesday. Mississauga, which...
read moreCOURT RULING PREVENTS DARTMOUTH LANDLORDS FROM MOVING FAMILY OUT TO MOVE DAUGHTER IN
Property owners in Dartmouth, N.S., can’t move a family out of the duplex it has rented for 13 years in order to move their daughter in. A small claims court adjudicator said it would be inappropriate to disrupt the living arrangements for the family of six. In his decision last month, Darrel Pink noted factors including how long the tenants have lived there and the shortage of housing alternatives. A lawyer who represents tenants said the decision sets a precedent and sends a strong...
read moreONTARIO SECURES $357 MILLION BOOST FROM OTTAWA IN AFFORDABLE HOUSING AGREEMENT
On Tuesday, in what might be considered a breakthrough moment in Ontario’s housing crisis, the federal and provincial governments announced a $357-million agreement under Canada’s national housing strategy. The funding, which comes after months of intense negotiations, will help address critical housing shortages across the province. Initially announced In 2018 as part of the National Housing Strategy’s bilateral agreement, the proposed funding was contingent on Ontario building 19,660 new...
read moreLAST DAYS OF THE NIMBY: HOW OTTAWA’S HOUSING PUSH IS REWRITING THE RULES OF DEVELOPMENT
Last month, city councillors in Calgary settled in for what would turn out to be the city’s longest-ever public hearing. Over the course of 12 days, more than 700 residents and stakeholders paraded through council chambers at city hall to share their views ahead of a vote on sweeping changes to the city’s zoning rules. The question was whether to implement blanket rezoning that would pave the way for more housing density in the 60 per cent of the city allocated to single-family dwellings. An...
read moreBROAD SUPPORT FOR SASKATOON’S AFFORDABLE HOUSING PLAN, BUT LANDLORD GROUP OFFERS WARNING
An affordable housing program with faults is better than no program at all, a city hall committee heard while discussing how Saskatoon will distribute $41.3 million from Ottawa’s housing accelerator fund. “No funding formula is perfect. We’ll take what we can get,” said Angela Bishop, board chair of the Camponi Housing Corporation, a Métis-led non-profit. Bishop told the committee Camponi has a shovel-ready project waiting for funding and more than 300 families on the...
read moreLANDLORDS SIGN ON TO HALIFAX’S NEW RENTAL REGISTRY, TENS OF THOUSANDS OF UNITS LISTED
The deadline for landlords in the Halifax Regional Municipality to register their rental properties has come and gone, with tens of thousands of units now catalogued under a long-awaited new bylaw. The municipality said 10,360 registrations have been received so far, representing 66,590 rental units. Since the April 1 deadline, no landlords have been fined for failing to comply with the mandatory registry. Brynn Budden, a spokesperson for HRM, said staff are using an education-based approach...
read moreCANADA’S HOUSING PLAN ‘BUMPING UP AGAINST’ CAPACITY RESTRAINTS, INTEREST RATES: ECONOMIST
A new report from TD Economics says the federal government’s ambitious housing plan faces supply-side capacity constraints and demand measures that are not expected to have a significant impact. In a report Monday, TD Bank Economist Rishi Sondhi evaluated the federal government’s plan to address housing affordability. Canada’s Housing Plan, released last month, includes several measures intended to impact demand, supply and productivity. By 2031 the plan sets out to build 3.87 million...
read moreTHESE TWO FIXES FOR THE HOUSING CRISIS HAVE A BIGGER IMPACT THAN OTTAWA’S POLICIES
Governments at all levels are finally treating the housing affordability crisis with the urgency it deserves. The latest federal budget produced the most aggressive array of housing policies in generations. The decision to tackle the demand side of the equation by capping the number of non-permanent residents is a giant step in the right direction. Governments are also showing more openness to dramatically changing the role of rental activity in the country’s housing mix. Simply put, the...
read moreCANADA’S NEW HOUISING PROGRAM WON’T HELP, BUT SLOWING IMMIGRATION WILL: BMO
Canada just announced billions in new measures to correct the housing issues it created. Last night the Government of Canada (GoC) released its latest budget, including billions in spending on new housing stimulus. BMO provided a list of the recent changes, noting they’ll have a limited impact, given most of the measures are demand stimulus. However, they do see affordability improving soon—due to new limits on immigration. They reiterated that Canada doesn’t have a problem building, it has a...
read moreRBC URGES CANADA TO PRIORITIZE CONSTRUCTION SKILLS TO IMMIGRANTS TO TACKLE HOUSING CRISIS
Prioritizing construction skills in new immigrants and embracing innovative designs and building techniques top a list of recommendations from economists at Royal Bank of Canada on how best to tackle Canada’s housing crisis. “Canada could need more than 500,000 additional construction workers on average to build all homes needed between now and 2030 — and even more than that in the short term to meet peak growth in demand,” the economists said in a report released Monday. To address the...
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