Barbed wire appearing downtown
Some downtown businesses are adding barbed wire to their back entrances to keep homeless people off their property. The mayor says that they are within their rights to do so; Ensemble, stymied by being challenged to say that she’s wrong, falls back on blaming Projet for homelessness and its problems.
su 08:24 on 2024-09-20 Permalink
This homelessness crisis really kicked into high gear when housing development (ie Griffintown, Lachine Canal, St Henri) took off, post 2008 derivatives crisis.
Why is it that the more habitat is built the more people are homeless?
Why is it that developing public owned lands- ie Lachine Canal ( Canada Lands) has resulted in an increase in homelessness and barbed wire barricades?
walkerp 09:20 on 2024-09-20 Permalink
I think the homelessness and the development are both symptoms/outcomes of a system that strongly favours capital and is designed to move wealth from public to private hands. And then specifically, decades of low-interest rates and the evolution of real estate from home and domestic equity builder to global investment vehicle. Developers build housing to meet the demands of the international market and the moneyed classes while airbnb eats away at rental and low-income stock.
So the increase in homelessness is not a result of the growth of habitat. They are happening side by side.
su 10:33 on 2024-09-20 Permalink
Thanks Walkerp
Those ultra low interest rates have wreaked havoc in so many bubbly ways all over the planet.
walkerp 11:14 on 2024-09-20 Permalink
They really have. I am not sure we have Elon Musk without them. Behind a lot of so-called business genius in the 21st century is nothing more than capital and low-interest rates.
Marc 15:05 on 2024-09-20 Permalink
Mass immigration is fuelling the housing crisis, which fuels the homelessness crisis. Thanks Justin.
Kate 15:11 on 2024-09-20 Permalink
↑ This Marc is not MarcG who often comments here, which ought to be obvious from the view he espouses, but I wanted to make sure it was clear.
Ian 15:17 on 2024-09-20 Permalink
Don’t worry, we know MarcG isn’t a xenophobic cryptofascist.
Gentrification and unregulated new development is why we have a housing and homelessness crisis, Marc.