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TDRC Media Releases |
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Media
advisory
November 26, 2004
More money – more homes!
NDP Leader Jack Layton, Bloc
housing critic Christian Simard join advocates to build straw bale house GATINEAU (Quebec): Hundreds of homeless people, low-income tenants and housing advocates will arrive in buses from Toronto, Montreal, Sherbrooke, Chateauguay and other locations for a rally for social housing at the federal-provincial-territorial housing ministers’ national summit at the Chateau Cartier Hotel at 1170 Aylmer Road in Gatineau starting at 1.30 p.m. They will be joined by supporters from Ottawa and Gatineau. The group will build a straw bale house to symbolize the need for a new national social housing strategy. The National Housing and Homelessness Network, one of the sponsors of the event, will release its latest national housing report card on Monday. “The good news is that more than 10,000 new homes have been built since the Affordable Housing Framework Agreement was signed in November of 2001,” says Michael Shapcott, co-chair of the NHHN. “The bad news is that progress is painfully slow and the nation-wide affordable housing crisis continues to grow worse.” The NHHN is joining with other national housing groups, including the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Canadian Housing and Renewal Association, Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, National Aboriginal Housing Association and the National Working Group on Women and Housing to call on the federal government to immediately commit to its promise (made during the last election campaign) to provide an additional $1.5 billion for new affordable housing.
Speakers at the rally will
include NDP leader Jack Layton, Bloc Quebecois housing critic
Christian Simard and representatives of leading national housing
groups. For more information, contact TDRC at tdrc@tdrc.net -30- |