[This post has also appeared on the Tyee here.] One of the more contentious issues regarding the BC government’s record concerns the issue of social housing. To hear Minister Rich Coleman tell it, BC’s record has been above and beyond. For the last few years, barely a week has gone by without a government news [...]
Entries Tagged as 'homelessness'
Social Housing Reality Check: Government’s own numbers reveal modest investment in new social housing
March 31st, 2013 · Seth Klein · Comments Off · Housing & homelessness, Poverty, inequality & welfare
Tags: budget·homelessness·housing
An inadequate appeal process for tenants means a bumpy ride for everyone
January 24th, 2013 · Kendra Milne · 1 Comment · Housing & homelessness, Law & legal issues
(Co-authored by Kendra Milne and Jess Hadley, staff lawyers at the Community Legal Assistance Society) Earlier this week, we read with interest Kathy Tomlinson’s January 21st CBC Go Public story, “Landlords ‘powerless’ as tenants get free ride”, which investigates one family of tenants who have apparently taken advantage of several successive landlords. In her article, [...]
Tags: homelessness·housing
Housing Solutions
January 2nd, 2010 · Seth Klein · Comments Off · Housing & homelessness
Just wanted to give our blog readers a plug for an excellent collection on housing solutions. Some of you have likely been following the Tyee’s excellent series of articles on housing and homelessness, written by Monte Paulsen. Now the Tyee has put that whole series together in a single pdf collection. You can find it [...]
Tags: homelessness·housing
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words
March 27th, 2009 · Shannon Daub · Comments Off · Children & youth, Housing & homelessness, Poverty, inequality & welfare
Or twenty thousand as the case may be. The CCPA published a number of major studies in recent years about BC’s unacceptably high levels of poverty and homelessness, as well as provincial welfare policies that contribute to hardship and homelessness. These issues are brought to life in a series of narrated slideshows created for the [...]
Tags: homelessness·poverty·welfare
Well, now that Alberta is doing it …
March 17th, 2009 · Marc Lee · 2 Comments · Housing & homelessness, Poverty, inequality & welfare
You could say that BC is more than a little sweet on Alberta. We love their individualistic, tax-cutting, tar-sanding grit. Can’t get enough of it. We even signed a silly economic agreement called TILMA (the BC-Alberta Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement) so we could be more like them. If Alberta went and ran massive [...]
Tags: homelessness·housing·poverty·TILMA
UN raps our housing record
March 11th, 2009 · Seth Klein · Comments Off · Housing & homelessness, Poverty, inequality & welfare
In mid February, a report was released that received very little attention, but should have: The report of the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing’s Mission to Canada (hat tip to Jean Swanson for drawing the final report to my attention; it can be found here; just scroll down to the “Mission to Canada”.) The [...]
Tags: Aboriginal·Downtown Eastside·homelessness·housing·Olympics·poverty·UN
Nailing down homeless targets
March 9th, 2009 · Seth Klein · Comments Off · Housing & homelessness, Poverty, inequality & welfare
Kudos to BC’s Auditor General for his report on homelessness last week. John Doyle’s report raised numerous concerns, including that the provincial government lacks solid numbers on how many homeless people there are in BC, who they are, and most importantly, he found that the province does not have a clear and comprehensive action plan, [...]
Tags: homelessness·housing·poverty
Talk of addressing homelessness in Throne Speech remains just that
February 17th, 2009 · Iglika Ivanova · Comments Off · Housing & homelessness, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Provincial budget & finance
Yesterday’s Throne Speech got me excited with its promise of finally addressing homelessness in BC. Like everyone else, I expected the economy to be the main focus of the document and was not surprised to hear that the government is planning to create jobs through ramping up infrastructure spending. But then I got to page [...]
