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Open your eyes, Premier Doug Ford. There is real suffering unfolding in Ontario under your government’s watch.
Rents are skyrocketing and more and more people are being forced into homelessness. Once someone loses their home it becomes hard to keep families together and it becomes difficult to keep your job.
The food banks of Ontario are under tremendous stress as unprecedented numbers of people call on their services to put food on their tables – in part because they are forced to choose between paying rent or eating. Hunger may lead to family breakdown, poor health and depression.
This is becoming a deep-seated, long-term social crisis unfolding in real time before our eyes. Yet there does not seem to be any substantial action or policies from the Ford government that seems to recognize the depth and extent of problems confronting low-income families.
Your misnamed “affordable housing” bill only promises more urban sprawl and more “McMansions” that the working poor and food bank dependent can never afford. What is really needed is supports for building more rental properties that are geared to income.
The government must take action to limit “renovation evictions” and immediately protect tenants from extreme rental increases. Only a lazy government would wait, hope and expect that the private-sector developers will solve these problems — after all, they participated in creating them.
It is time for strong government intervention to help with the affordable rental problem.
David Howell
Orillia
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