Latest news with #housingrights
CTV News
01-07-2025
- Business
- CTV News
‘Every year is worse': Housing crisis reaches boiling point ahead of Quebec's moving day
A sign advertising an apartment for rent is shown on moving day in Montreal, Monday, July 1, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes As Montreal prepares for its traditional moving day, the housing crunch reached alarming new heights — with hundreds of households still searching for a roof over their heads and advocates calling for urgent action. 'We see a lot of people who are low income and very vulnerable tenants struggling to figure out how to pay rents,' said Gary Saxe, executive director of Project Genesis, a housing rights organization based in Côte-des-Neiges. 'And every year is getting worse as rents go higher and higher.' Saxe said rents have gone up 'astronomically' over the last few years — and it's not just a problem on July 1, but all year round. According to the City of Montreal, about 270 households remain without housing secured, including 35 who are expected to need emergency shelter on Tuesday. Saxe said the current crisis is a result of multiple factors that have compounded over several years, including consistent above-average rent hikes approved by Quebec's housing tribunal (TAL) and significantly low vacancy rates — especially in more affordable units. 'It's a structural problem, and it's forcing people to hold onto whatever apartment they can, because they know they won't find anything else they can afford,' he said. A recent report from Statistics Canada showed asking rents in Montreal have risen nearly 71 per cent since 2019. The city's vacancy rate in 2024 sat at just 1.5 per cent, and competition for lower-priced apartments remains fierce. For Montrealer Egor Matveev, the search for housing came at the worst possible time. Matveev and his girlfriend had just moved into a one-bedroom apartment in St-Henri in early June, after three years of long-distance dating. The move marked the beginning of a new chapter: he was moving into his first apartment, she had relocated from Ontario, they'd packed a U-Haul, and their move-in date fell just before their anniversary on Fête nationale. But on the weekend of June 14, while they were out of town, they got a call from a friend: their apartment building had caught fire. 'When we saw videos of the fire, my girlfriend started crying, and I was really emotional too,' Matveev said. 'It was terrible to see just how big the fire was.' The roof of the building's top floor — where their apartment was — had collapsed. 'Everything we had in there was effectively gone,' Matveev told CTV News. Still, he considered himself 'one of the lucky ones,' with a stable job, temporary housing arrangement at his mother's home, and insurance that helped cover the cost of an Airbnb. Finding a new place, he said, was nonetheless gruelling. The couple visited around 30 apartments before finally signing a lease just days ago for a unit in Verdun. He said several listings were snatched up quickly, but what struck him most was the lack of support from the city. 'It's a tragedy the way our cities — all over the country — deal with housing,' Matveev said. 'The kind of rules they set up, the way land is allocated, and the way housing is built — there are so many barriers, and they cave to pressure not to build what's needed like social housing like social ones.' In response to the growing housing crisis, the City of Montreal has urged anyone in need to call 311 to be connected with available resources. Projet Montréal promises new measures At a press conference Monday, Luc Rabouin, leader of Projet Montréal said the party is proposing a $100-million guarantee fund aimed at helping non-profits purchase rental buildings and preserve affordability. 'We will guarantee from 10 to 15 per cent of the amount of the banking loan to be sure [these organizations] receive the money they need,' he said. Rabouin estimates this could protect up to 5,000 affordable housing units from rent hikes. The party also wants the Office municipal d'habitation de Montréal (OMHM) to intervene more quickly in eviction cases and proactively reach out to displaced tenants. But housing advocates like Saxe warned that those efforts, while welcome, are not enough. 'What's really needed — the real solution — is investment in social housing,' he said. 'It's the only way to give people who can't afford market rents a chance to live in dignity and in decent conditions.' For now, he added, the situation is likely to keep getting worse unless bold action is taken. 'We're going to see that continue unless two things happen: Quebec changes the way that the TAL calculates rent increases,' Saxe said. 'And, again, that more social housing comes.'
CTV News
05-06-2025
- Politics
- CTV News
Motion to bring back Vancouver renter office defeated in tie vote
Vancouver City Hall is seen in Vancouver, on Saturday, Jan. 9, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck A Vancouver city councillor's push to restore the city's tenant advocacy office — and crack down on bad-faith landlords — was voted down by council Wednesday afternoon. Coun. Lucy Maloney, who was elected in April's byelection on a platform focused on housing rights, brought forward the motion, arguing the city must do more to support renters — particularly those displaced by redevelopment tied to the Broadway Plan. 'Renters don't feel like the city has their backs,' said Maloney. 'They don't feel like they're being listened to.' The tenant advocacy office was a city-run service that provided support and resources to renters. It was shut down in 2023 by the ABC-majority council. Coun. Peter Meiszner defended the decision to close the office, citing low usage. 'They were receiving less than one call a day,' he said. 'So what we decided to do at the time, was to transition the funding for that city renters office to a non-profit that can handle those inquiries more effectively.' Funding was redirected to the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre, and Meiszner also pointed to the provincial Residential Tenancy Branch as the appropriate channel for dealing with landlord-tenant disputes. Maloney argued the city should provide additional protections beyond the province's scope, particularly in areas impacted by the Broadway Plan, where many renters are expected to be displaced through the city's Temporary Relocation and Protection Policy. 'We're going to have increasing volumes of people being moved out of their homes as the Broadway Plan progresses,' said Maloney. 'We need to make sure that we're focused, that we've got the resourcing and staff needed.' Meiszner responded that existing city staff are already working to support renters through these transitions. 'So we're building thousands of new rental units in the Broadway corridor, and there are some tenant relocations that need to happen,' he said. 'But we have staff already within the city working on that.' In addition to reinstating the advocacy office, Maloney's motion also called for exploring stronger penalties for landlords and developers who act in bad faith. Ultimately, the motion was narrowly defeated in a tie vote, with the four present ABC councillors voting against the motion. After the vote, Maloney said she will continue to fight for Vancouver renters, vowing to one day bring the tenant advocacy office back to city hall. A separate motion by Coun. Sean Orr — declaring housing as a human right — was passed unanimously.
South China Morning Post
25-05-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Hundreds of poor Hongkongers face cutbacks in essentials when handout ends: poll
Hundreds of underprivileged Hong Kong families fear they will need to cut back on essentials, including academic support for their children, when the government ends a trial handout scheme next month for those awaiting public housing, a survey has found. Advertisement The Society for Community Organisation (SoCO) said on Sunday that half of the 330 poor households it polled in May received or were applying for the money to help pay for essentials, as it urged authorities to again extend the scheme. 'The cash allowance is no doubt a benevolent measure,' said Sze Lai-shan, deputy director of SoCO. 'It works alongside a series of policies such as light public housing, tenancy control and the basic housing unit regulatory regime to safeguard the housing rights of the low-income group.' The handout of HK$1,300 (US$166) to HK$3,900 a month to families waiting for public rental flats for more than three years ends on June 30. Advertisement 'The longer a household has received the allowance, the stronger the impacts … if the government ends it suddenly, it will for sure deal a blow to their livelihoods,' Sze said.
CNA
15-05-2025
- General
- CNA
CNA938 Rewind - Can I get evicted from my parents' house?
CNA938 Rewind A woman who had lived under her parents' roof for 27 years was evicted by her elderly mother in 2021. She then sued her mother, claiming that the eviction was unlawful. The judge dismissed her claim of right to stay indefinitely. Andrea Heng and Hairianto Diman find out more about the laws surrounding one's rights to living in a house and house evictions with Glora James Civetta, Head Lawyer, GJC Law
Daily Mail
11-05-2025
- Daily Mail
Squatting activist shares staggering 'Aboriginal Australia' justification for his antics - as he publishes DIY guide of how to take over someone else's house
A controversial squatter's rights activist has sparked fresh uproar after he published a DIY guide for his followers on how to detect whether a house is fit for squatting. Jordan van den Lamb, 29, collects addresses for abandoned or empty homes and provides them to Australians in need of emergency housing. In a recent TikTok video posted under his moniker Purplepingers, he shared what to look out for in identifying an empty home - from checking the fuse box and gas meter to researching online real estate listings. While the video received mostly positive reactions, a number of viewers were furious at the idea of having to justify their right to homeownership. In an interview with Daily Mail Australia, Mr van den Lamb claimed property owners had a responsibility to make productive use of their land. Where it was clearly demonstrated they had failed to do so by leaving it empty or abandoned - usually for at least two years - he claimed it was justified for a squatter to move in. He said the idea is embedded in Australia's cultural history. 'It's how we colonised the country. It was like: "this land was owned by no one", which is obviously flawed right. And therefore, the land rights were granted to colonial squatters,' he said. 'The song Waltzing Matilda is literally about that... read the lyrics, it's about a squatter evicting a swagman from their property.' Each state and territory in Australia has its own version of adverse possession laws allowing squatters to claim ownership over land they've openly and continuously possessed for a defined period of time. In most jurisdictions, possession must be held for 12 to 15 years. For his part, Mr van den Lamb believes this is excessively long. 'Twelve to 15 years is a ridiculous amount of time for a house to be empty, especially noting these houses are empty for much longer periods prior to them being squatted [in],' he told Daily Mail Australia. 'If someone's living in a house you've literally not bothered to check on for like two years.... You have a responsibility to use it productively'. Mr van den Lamb draws justification for encouraging Aussies to take ownership of empty homes in part from the vacant residential land tax in Victoria, which requires homeowners to pay a tax on properties left unoccupied for one year. He claimed many residents were committing fraud by failing to pay the tax, while others took advantage of the enforcement limitations. 'The data used to enforce [residential land taxes] is predominantly water usage. We've seen people go around every couple of months and just turn the taps on for a day and then leave the house empty,' he said. Mr van den Lamb has consistently warned his followers against breaking into the properties he assigns them, claiming it was unnecessary. 'I've been doing this for a while and, most of the time, they just have either an open back door or an open window,' he said. 'I've never encouraged anyone to break in to a property and I still would never encourage that. That's not what this is about. 'This is about the thousands of empty properties that we have around this country and the far fewer people who don't have roofs over their head every night.' Mr van den Lamb said it was his understanding that trespassing required forced entry to a property, for example, breaking a window or kicking down a door. But legal experts told Daily Mail Australia otherwise. Andre Ong, principal at Sharrock Pitman lawyers, said Mr van den Lamb had 'misconstrued' the criminal and tortious elements of trespassing. 'In a civil society, you are supposed to respect other people's property rights. What is relevant is that you were there without consent or other lawful entitlement to be there,' he said. Special counsel in commercial litigation at Attwood Marshall Lawyers Jade Carlson agreed, adding the legal question is whether Mr van den Lamb himself could be held liable for any trespasses he may help to facilitate. Ms Carlson said only the registered owner could raise a trespassing claim, meaning if a home were truly abandoned the likelihood of legal action would be 'remote'. She added, however, the program raises 'inherent risks' that could raise 'significant' legal consequences. Mr Ong said a court may look beyond the activist's insistence against forcing entry to a property to any reasonably foreseeable misconduct arising from the trespass. Asked by Daily Mail Australia whether he feared any legal repercussions, Mr van den Lamb said: 'Not particularly, no. People are dying. Me having a fight with a cop isn't gonna change much. 'At the end of the day, I'm a young white man who's tertiary educated in this country, so I'm going to be fine compared to someone who's not from my demographic and is sleeping rough on the street.'
