Latest news with #publichousing
CBC
15 hours ago
- Business
- CBC
Plan to build 3,000 homes in Nunavut still a success even if it falls short, housing corp. presidents says
Nunavut's premier and housing corporation president are defending the government's record on public housing following the release of a new Auditor General's report, which said Nunavummiut aren't being provided fair access. The report also stated there has been a lack of communication and misinformation about the targets outlined in the Nunavut 3,000 strategy — which aims to build 3,000 new homes by 2030. "We've been open and transparent in terms of showcasing what levels — they're all in different stages in terms of the construction phases," Premier P.J. Akeeagok said in the Nunavut Legislative Assembly this week. Nunavut Housing Corporation president and CEO Eiryn Devereaux said even if that target of 3,000 homes missed, the strategy will still be a success. "If we had kept doing everything the same, building a hundred units a year over nine years, we would have seen 1,000 units come into the territory," Devereaux said. "So we're talking about doubling and trying to triple the supply of much-needed housing." Devereaux said the 3,000 figure relates to units under construction since 2021, not since the launch of the strategy in 2022. "The 3,000 was always a target and it was always a target to drive change, drive the system, to say we have to do better, we have to do things differently because the status quo is just not working," he said. Devereaux said there are currently 440 units at "various stages of construction." "What's more important than people counting the numbers? It's the transformative change," he said. The Nunavut Housing Corporation accepted all of the report's 10 recommendations. More than 60 per cent of Nunavummiut rely on public housing, 45 per cent of which is overcrowded, according to Nunavut Housing Corporation data included in the auditor's report. The audit also found the housing corporation did not know whether publicly funded units were being allocated to applicants who needed them the most. Devereaux said they have a new maintenance management software system for local housing authorities, which should start rolling out later this year. "That'll help to centralize and to get data across all (local housing authorities) instead of them sort of doing it on their own in-house," he said. He said the housing corporation also plans to launch a new tenant relations and portfolio management system to take that burden off housing authorities too.
Fox News
17 hours ago
- General
- Fox News
Infant found dead with dog bites was not killed by puppy: officials
A 1-month-old girl found dead with dog bites on her face in New York City Tuesday did not die from those injuries, the city's chief medical officer said in a perplexing new development. Initial reports suggested the family's pit bull–German shepherd mix was responsible for the infant's death, but the city's chief medical officer has now ruled out that theory, and the true cause of death has yet to be determined. "The cause and manner of death are pending further study and will require additional testing, but the medical examiner has been able to determine this is not a fatal dog mauling," the city's medical examiner told Fox News Digital. The young victim, Kiyanna Winfield, was sleeping with her mother and stepfather inside an apartment at the Queensbridge Houses public housing complex in Queens, police said. When the pair woke up at around 6:40 a.m., they found the child unresponsive with bite marks on her face. Neighbors said screams from the mother rattled the building, according to reports. The dog bit off a "substantial portion" of the face of the baby, the New York Post reported, citing sources. The outlet reported that the infant was born April 13, and the dog was 6 weeks old. A friend of the mother said she had spoken to the distraught parent. "She told me she woke up, and the dog was eating the baby, chewing on the baby's face," the friend told the outlet. The child was pronounced dead by responding EMS workers. Police said the case is still under investigation, and no arrests have been made. Winfield's mother and stepfather were not identified by police. The city's Animal Care Centers of NYC was called to take the puppy and another dog out of the apartment. The organization provided photos of the puppy being handled by a worker and inside a cage. The infant's grandmother told the Daily News she had previously offered to take the newborn in while the mom, who was living in a shelter at the time, secured better housing. "I learned that she was pregnant maybe a couple days before she gave birth," the grandmother told the outlet. "After she gave birth, she loved the baby. I asked her if she had any problems and if she wanted to give me the baby. She said no, she'd take care of her. She would manage." The grandmother said she had not yet gotten to meet her new granddaughter when she learned of her death Tuesday. "How could they have a dog with a baby?" she asked. "The dog shouldn't be in the house."
CTV News
2 days ago
- Business
- CTV News
No Quick Fix: $110M gap to bring LMCH public housing up to ‘good' condition
A recently completed Asset Management Plan (AMP) has determined that bringing public housing operated by London Middlesex Community Housing (LMCH) up to a 'good' condition would require up to $110 million over the next decade. A condition assessment of 31 residential properties generated an overall grade of 'poor', with none evaluated as being in 'good' or 'very good' condition. According to the report, seven were in 'fair' condition, 18 in 'poor' condition, and six in 'very poor' condition. 'These assets are a different type of asset because there's a human factor here-- people live in these units,' Councillor Sam Trosow told colleagues on the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee. Councillor Hadleigh McAlister, who also sits on the LMCH Board, explained, 'Many of these properties were built in the 1960s and 1970s. So, all of these properties are falling into the same trap, which is aging infrastructure.' Escaping that financial trap will be costly. The AMP determined it will cost $6.4 million to simply maintain the overall 'poor' condition and not slip into 'very poor' over the next 10 years. Making improvements to achieve an overall 'fair' condition would boost the 10-year cost to $34.6 million. An estimated $110.3 million would need to be spent over the next decade to improve to an overall 'good' condition. 'These are discussions that have to happen through the multi-year budget, because they have ramifications in terms of the financial impacts,' said McAlister. Mayor Josh Morgan suggested there is no quick fix. 'There is not going to be a plan that is going to bring that gap to zero in a short period of time,' Morgan told colleagues on SPPC. 'It would require significant investment from other levels of government, and those other levels of government know that this is a challenge many municipalities have.' The mayor cited financial investments made in the 2020-2023 budget as an indication that there's a commitment to address the problem. 'Work through 2025 will have over $60 million in capital repair investments into our community—so that work has begun,' said Paul Chisholm, CEO of LMCH after the meeting. 'The data tells us there's more work (and) that we need to up the level of maintenance and capital work we do.' City staff will provide LMCH with support, assisting LMCH in developing action plans to implement recommendations in the short, medium, and long-term. The committee voted to receive the report.
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Radical fringe party vows to haunt Anthony Albanese as it unveils ambitious plan
Victoria's leading socialist party will expand nationwide in hopes of reviving the country's political left and holding Prime Minister Anthony Albanese accountable. Founded in 2018, the Victorian Socialists decided at a recent meeting of the party's executive to rebrand as a nationwide party - starting with a proposal to shorten its name to 'The Socialists'. The party will aim to achieve registration across all states and territories - joining only the two major parties, the Greens and the Animal Justice Party in doing so. Given the opportunity, the party claimed it would abandon tax breaks for Australia's wealthiest individuals and businesses and redistribute wealth to the working class. It would establish a public builder to construct one million new units of public housing over ten years, a renationalised Commonwealth Bank, a publicly-owned power grid and a wealth tax on billionaires. Recent VS senate candidate and squatter's right's activist Jordan van den Lamb told Daily Mail Australia the party hopes to hold the Labor leader accountable. 'In the 19th century Marx talked about how communism was a "spectre haunting Europe",' he said. 'We hope to be a spectre haunting Albanese - both by arguing for a socialist vision of society that's better and fairer than anything Labor is offering, and by reminding him of the ideals that he, as someone who historically stood on the left wing of the Labor Party, once held and which he has failed to live up to as Prime Minister.' Former senior Howard government advisor and political consultant Terry Barnes said Mr van den Lamb appeared to be suffering 'delusions of grandeur'. 'Marxism has turned out to be a discredited ideology so, if they want to stick on the fringe and have delusions of grandeur, good luck to them but they're not going to change Australian politics one iota,' he said. Andrew Carswell, who served as press secretary to former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, agreed, adding the party would struggle to rival existing minor parties. 'It's very difficult to emerge from being a fringe protest party to a legitimate national minor party. Very few groups have managed to do that,' he said. 'They've either done it through longevity, like One Nation, or they've done it through money like Clive Palmer.' He said the rebranded party would be lucky to secure a one-and-a-half per cent share of primary votes in a federal election in three years' time. Mr Barnes was only slightly more optimistic. He claimed a victory for the rebranded party might resemble a five per cent primary vote in a federal or state election in coming years. VS spokesperson James Plested said the expanded party hoped to deliver the changes Labor was unwilling to make. 'We were happy to see Dutton and his Liberal Party smashed, but we know Labor isn't going to deliver the kind of change Australia desperately needs,' he said. 'There's a class war going on in this country, and both Labor and the Coalition have, over many years, been waging it against workers and the poor on behalf of the capitalist class and the rich,' he said. Earlier this month, the Victorian Socialists secured swings in a number of lower house seats including in the north Melbourne seats of Cooper (4.9 per cent) and Scullin (3.7 per cent). In a number of booths in both electorates, the party secured primary vote shares of between 15 and 20 per cent - a significant improvement on year's past. But Mr Carswell and Mr Barnes said the seven-year-old far-left party will face an uphill battle building on gains in their home state, let alone extending the results nationwide. 'If they're struggling to pick up a good trend towards them in Victoria, then they're going to struggle elsewhere,' Mr Carswell said. 'You would imagine there would be a higher proportion of people that are sympathetic to their political views in Victoria than there will be elsewhere.' Both agreed socialism was a hard sell in Australia. Mr Carswell said the first thing the party should do is drop the word 'socialists' from its name. 'If they're using that name at the national level and they're getting one to one-and-a-half per cent, I think that's what they should be potentially shooting for,' he said. Asked how the initiative should be judged three years from now, Mr Plested said: 'Our strength is in our volunteers.' 'For us, that is the key metric: how many people have contributed to our campaign? How many of them remain active in between elections?' But, as Mr Plested insisted, the Victorian Socialists is more than a protest party and, certainly, more than an organiser. If all goes according to plan, votes will follow.
CBC
3 days ago
- Business
- CBC
Almost 70% of London's public housing is in disrepair, and the price tag to fix it is $110M
Social Sharing Update: London councillors voted 12-to-1 in favour of accepting the plan that recommends $110 million in spending to bring the average LMCH property status to "good". Now that it's made it through the committee stage, the report will go to council for final approval on June 3. London's stock of affordable public housing is largely in disrepair, according to a report penned by city bureaucrats that calls on councillors to spend millions to solve the problem. The staff assessment found that 63 per cent of the housing in London and Middlesex Community Housing's (LMCH) inventory is in "poor" condition, and five per cent is in "very poor" condition. The report coming to a committee meeting Tuesday says it will cost $110 million over 10 years for the average across all public housing to be brought up to a "good" condition. "I have lots of complaints," said Michaela Garlick, a public housing resident who has lived in LMCH's Limberlost community for four and a half years, and says the report's findings are no surprise. Garlick is one of several residents at Limberlost who told CBC news they have become accustomed to waiting more than a year to have basic maintenance requests filled. She's personally been waiting months to have a peeling and unusable bathtub fixed, and waited over a year to have a broken staircase fixed. "[It's] absolutely horrible. It's not fair to us and it's not fair to my kids, to live in poor conditions," Garlick said. Still, she said, emergency requests like leaks are often promptly solved. LMCH says it provides 3,258 housing units for more than 5,000 people across 32 properties. At its Southdale housing complex, where Misty Murphy has lived for 20 years, similar repair concerns exist. "When I moved [into a new unit in the complex], we had to bang down screws that were sticking up out of the floor. My outside water tap still doesn't work [three years later]," Murphy said. "It's not an emergency issue, so I guess it's just kind of put on the backburner." The extent of the repair issues at LMCH, and how they're triaged, is something LMCH is not proud of, but it's something that's currently necessary, said Paul Chisholm, the organization's CEO. "It's not acceptable," Chisholm said. "Unfortunately, it's not a surprise to us. We do know we have an asset that's over 50 years old, and many of the the elements of the buildings and sites we operate have a life expectancy of less than 50 years." Chisholm said LMCH continues to maintain its most critical infrastructure, and is making progress in catching up, especially since it no longer has the "very limited" capital budget it had prior to 2020. "We want to get to a fair and then a good state of repair across our portfolio," Chisholm said. According to Chisholm, a portion of the maintenance needs would require significant work, like replacing 50-year old plumbing, and completely rewiring aging electrical infrastructure. He said LMCH is on track to repair what it can with its current level of funding, but more money is needed to do it in a more reasonable timeframe. He suggests more money could come from other levels of government. Ward 6 Councillor Sam Trosow agrees. "They need more money, and ultimately, I think the province is going to have to step in here because in fairness, there's only so much the municipality can do," Trosow said. "We can't break the municipal budget over there." Trosow said he doesn't believe LMCH has budgeted well with the money it has, and that will play a role in his vote on the proposed course of action. "I'm not seeing any improvement. I am constantly getting complaints from tenants that live in their buildings," he said. Trosow and other councillors will consider the report during Tuesday's meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee.
