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).
Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County,California,United States,part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains,the population was 82,376 at the 2020 census.
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.
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.
Fred Bass is a former city councillor,environmentalist and a preventive medicine physician in Vancouver,British Columbia,Canada. As an epidemiologist and physician,he focused on reducing tobacco smoking. He served on Vancouver City Council from 1999 to 2005.
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.
Kirk Preston Watson is an American attorney and politician who has served as the 59th mayor of Austin,Texas since 2023,previously holding the office as the 54th mayor from 1997 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party,he ran unsuccessfully for Texas Attorney General in the 2002 election,when he was defeated by Republican Greg Abbott,later governor of Texas. In 2006,Watson was elected to the Texas Senate from District 14.
Gregor Angus Bethune Robertson is a Canadian entrepreneur 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.
Don Lane is an American community organizer,university instructor,former elected official,and former nonprofit organization administrator in Santa Cruz,California. Lane spent many years working and managing the Saturn Cafe after graduating from the University of California,Santa Cruz in 1978. While operating the Saturn Cafe,Lane served the community in multiple capacities in the City of Santa Cruz and community groups;leading to his serving as Santa Cruz Mayor in 1992 and again in 2012 and 2015.
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 Joséfrom 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 an extreme 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.
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.
