Housing & homelessness

Imbalance in residential tenancy rights enforcement in BC

Oct 25, 2012
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Yesterday some media outlets reported that the Residential Tenancy Branch has conditionally waived the first (and to my knowledge only) administrative penalty it has issued. BC’s Residential Tenancy Act was amended in 2006 to allow the Branch to issue administrative penalties, essentially monetary fines, against landlords or tenants that contravene the Act or repeatedly ignore… View Article

How to Destroy a Good Poverty Line

Feb 17, 2012
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[The following piece was authored by Michael Goldberg, Steve Kerstetter and Seth Klein] More than a decade ago, the federal and provincial governments started work on a new poverty line – the Market Basket Measure (MBM). After decades of distracting and divisive debates about poverty lines, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada crafted a methodology… View Article

Fighting energy poverty

Sep 28, 2011
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Today we released a new Climate Justice Project report, Fighting Energy Poverty in the Transition to Zero-Emission Housing: A Framework for BC, by yours truly, Eugene Kung (a lawyer with the BC Public Interest Advocacy Centre and a steering committee member of the CJP) and Jason Owen (who worked on this project as a student at UBC, now with… View Article

Social Determinants of Health

Jun 7, 2011
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It is now clear that economic, and social variables – more than individual behaviour – are the most salient factors in determining people’s well-being. Working and living conditions, the distribution of wealth, and where we live are some of , “the primary factors that shape the health of Canadians” (CCPA Monitor, June 2010). Almost everything… View Article

A Paradigm Shift is Happening

Nov 21, 2010
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A “paradigm shift” was the theme of Dr. Marti Glenn, one of the keynote speakers at the 2010 International Congress of The Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology & Health, which took place from November 11-14 at Asilomar, California. Dr. Glenn, who is the Dean of the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, began by saying that,… View Article

Poverty Reduction: Even Alberta?

Sep 27, 2010
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Currently, six provinces have official poverty reduction strategies either in place or (in the case of Manitoba) in development. BC, despite having the highest poverty rates, remains stubbornly in the minority of provinces without a plan (along with Alberta, Saskatchewan and PEI). But now comes news earlier this month that an all-party committee of the… View Article

Our priorities for BC Budget 2011

Sep 17, 2010
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On September 15, I presented CCPA-BC’s recommendations for BC Budget 2011 at the Vancouver BC Budget Consultation public hearing. Take a look at my presentation slides for a brief overview of our take on BC’s current budget situation and economic outlook, and our advice for leading the province’s recovery…. View Article

Vancouver’s poverty rate leads country

Apr 5, 2010
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Thanks to Jean Swanson for drawing to my attention a new report from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities called Mending Canada’s frayed social safety net: The role of municipal governments. The report looks at key social indicators in 24 Canadian municipalities, and contains some stark findings for Vancouver. Jean summarizes these in a blog post… View Article

BC’s Urban Housing (Un)affordability

Jan 25, 2010
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A new study published today by the Frontier Institute for Public Policy finds that Vancouver has the most unaffordable urban housing market not just in Canada, but in all of Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. This conclusion is based on a very simple, yet effective measure of housing affordability:… View Article