Victoria is the capital city of the Canadian province of British Columbia,on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of 91,867,and the Greater Victoria area has a population of 397,237. The city of Victoria is the seventh most densely populated city in Canada with 4,406 inhabitants per square kilometre (11,410/sq mi).
The Downtown Eastside (DTES) is a neighbourhood in Vancouver,British Columbia,Canada. One of the city's oldest neighbourhoods,the DTES is the site of a complex set of social issues,including disproportionately high levels of drug use,homelessness,poverty,crime,mental illness and sex work. It is also known for its strong community resilience,history of social activism,and artistic contributions.
Homelessness in Canada was not a social problem until the 1980s. The Canadian government housing policies and programs in place throughout the 1970s were based on a concept of shelter as a basic need or requirement for survival and of the obligation of government and society to provide adequate housing for everyone. Public policies shifted away from rehousing in the 1980s in wealthy Western countries like Canada,which led to a de-housing of households that had previously been housed. By 1987,when the United Nations established the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless (IYSH),homelessness had become a serious social problem in Canada. The report of the major 1987 IYSH conference held in Ottawa said that housing was not a high priority for government,and this was a significant contributor to the homelessness problem. While there was a demand for adequate and affordable housing for low income Canadian families,government funding was not available. In the 1980s a "wider segment of the population" began to experience homelessness for the first time –evident through their use of emergency shelters and soup kitchens. Shelters began to experience overcrowding,and demand for services for the homeless was constantly increasing. A series of cuts were made to national housing programs by the federal government through the mid-1980s and in the 1990s. While Canada's economy was robust,the cuts continued and in some cases accelerated in the 1990s,including cuts to the 1973 national affordable housing program. The government solution for homelessness was to create more homeless shelters and to increase emergency services. In the larger metropolitan areas like Toronto the use of homeless shelters increased by 75% from 1988 to 1998. Urban centres such as Montreal,Laval,Vancouver,Edmonton,and Calgary all experienced increasing homelessness.
Arthur Christ Agnos is an American politician. He served as the 39th mayor of San Francisco,California from 1988 to 1992 and as the Regional Head of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1993 to 2001.
Affordable housing is housing which is deemed affordable to those with a household income at or below the median as rated by the national government or a local government by a recognized housing affordability index. Most of the literature on affordable housing refers to mortgages and a number of forms that exist along a continuum –from emergency homeless shelters,to transitional housing,to non-market rental,to formal and informal rental,indigenous housing,and ending with affordable home ownership.
The Victoria Regional Transit System provides public transportation in the Greater Victoria region of British Columbia,Canada. Its operations are governed by the Victoria Regional Transit Commission in association with BC Transit. There were more than 16.8 million riders in 2021.
Gregor Angus Bethune Robertson is a Canadian businessman and a progressive politician,who served as the 39th mayor of Vancouver,British Columbia,from 2008 to 2018. As the longest consecutive serving Mayor in Vancouver's history,Robertson and his team led the creation and implementation of the Greenest City 2020 Action Plan and spearheaded the city's first comprehensive Economic Action Strategy.
Cycling in Canada is experienced in various ways across a geographically huge,economically and socially diverse country. Among the reasons for cycling in Canada are for practical reasons such as commuting to work or school,for sports such as road racing,BMX,mountain bike racing,freestyle BMX,as well as for pure recreation. The amount and quality of bicycle infrastructure varies widely across the country as do the laws pertaining to cyclists such as bicycle helmet laws which can differ by province.
Affordable housing in Canada refers to living spaces that are deemed financially accessible to households with a median household income. Housing affordability is generally measured based on a shelter-cost-to-income ratio (STIR) of 30% by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC),the national housing agency of Canada. It encompasses a continuum ranging from market-based options like affordable rental housing and affordable home ownership,to non-market alternatives such as government-subsidized housing. Canada ranks among the lowest of the most developed countries for housing affordability.
The Greenpoint Renaissance Enterprise Corporation (GREC) is a consortium of neighborhood organizations in North Brooklyn that serves to facilitate and advocate the activities for city initiatives,as well as coordinate community involvement in the neighborhood of the former Greenpoint Hospital Complex.
Homelessness is a social crisis that has been rapidly accelerating in the Canadian city of Vancouver,British Columbia,over the last decade. According to the United Nations,homelessness can either be relative or absolute. Absolute homelessness describes people living in absence of proper physical shelter. Relative homelessness describes people living in poor conditions of health or security,including an absence of both personal safety and steady income despite having physical shelter to reside in. As of 2023,roughly 2,420 people in Vancouver are subject to one of these types of homelessness,or are transitioning between them.
Multifaith Housing Initiative (MHI) is a charitable organization based in Ottawa,Canada. MHI's mission is to provide and promote affordable housing,to encourage harmonious relations amongst tenants of diverse backgrounds,and to mobilize the resources of faith communities and others for these purposes. This membership-based organization represents a working model of interfaith peace and collaboration at the local level in the effort to fight homelessness. MHI's goal is to provide secure and affordable housing because through this individuals as well as the community benefit from improved health outcomes,educational achievement,social inclusion,and economic opportunities.
Jennifer Keesmaat is a Canadian real estate developer and urban planner who served as Chief City Planner of Toronto from 2012 to 2017 and the runner-up in the 2018 Toronto mayoral election to Mayor John Tory,where she won 23.6% of the vote and lost to Tory in each of Toronto's 25 wards.
Samuel Theodore Liccardo is an American politician from California who served as the 65th mayor of San Jose from 2015 to 2023. A member of the Democratic Party,Liccardo was elected mayor in November 2014. He was reelected in 2018 with 75.8% of the vote. As the leader of the California Big City Mayors Coalition,Liccardo advocated on statewide issues including homelessness and COVID-19 response.
The San Francisco Bay Area comprises nine northern California counties and contains five of the ten most expensive counties in the United States. Strong economic growth has created hundreds of thousands of new jobs,but coupled with severe restrictions on building new housing units,it has resulted in a statewide housing shortage which has driven rents to extremely high levels. The Sacramento Bee notes that large cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles both attribute their recent increases in homeless people to the housing shortage,with the result that homelessness in California overall has increased by 15% from 2015 to 2017. In September 2019,the Council of Economic Advisers released a report in which they stated that deregulation of the housing markets would reduce homelessness in some of the most constrained markets by estimates of 54% in San Francisco,40 percent in Los Angeles,and 38 percent in San Diego,because rents would fall by 55 percent,41 percent,and 39 percent respectively. In San Francisco,a minimum wage worker would have to work approximately 4.7 full-time jobs to be able to spend less than 30% of their income on renting a two-bedroom apartment.
Lisa Helps is a Canadian politician,formerly the mayor of Victoria,British Columbia,with her inauguration taking place on December 4,2014. She narrowly defeated incumbent mayor Dean Fortin in the 2014 municipal election. She is the second woman,after Gretchen Brewin,to be elected mayor of the city.
According to the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness,as of January 2017,there are an estimated 32,190 homeless individuals in Florida. Of this high number,2,846 are family households,2,019 are unaccompanied young adults,2,817 are veterans,and an estimated 5,615 are individuals experiencing chronic homelessness. According to a January 2020 count,this figure was 27,487 on any given day,a decrease from previous years. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development,as of December 2022,the estimate for homeless individuals has dropped to 25,959,about 5% of the total U.S. population. This is in spite of fears that moratorium's on evictions ending could lead to an increase in the homeless population.
New York City has the highest rents of any city in the United States.. For many decades,the New York metropolitan area has suffered from an increasing shortage of affordable housing,with the majority of renters in the city being rent-burdened.
Silicon Valley,a region located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area,is one of the most expensive regions to live in the United States,and many residents lack access to affordable housing. In 2018,the median home price across the area was $1.18 million,the highest of the 100 largest metro areas in the U.S. The growth of the technology industry in the area,including major companies like Google,Facebook,and Apple,is frequently cited as a major cause of the issue. There have been local efforts to address affordable housing,as well as state measures in response to housing issues across California.
Marianne Alto is a Canadian politician,who has served as mayor of Victoria,British Columbia since November 3,2022.
