Cline Dion wants our hearts to go on; Where can you afford to rent?: CBC's Marketplace cheat sheet

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Where can you afford to rent in Canada?

Canada is in a rental housing crisis, with affordable homes disappearing at an alarming rate across the country. According to a CBC News analysis of over 1,000 neighbourhoods across Canada's largest cities, less than one per cent of rentals are both vacant and affordable for the majority of Canadian renters.

To gauge the extent of the issue, CBC News combined 2021 census data with the most recent findings from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's rental market survey, conducted in October 2023.

Rental costs have surged across Canada in recent years. Since 2018, the average rent for a two-bedroom home has increased 70 per cent faster than wages.

For low-income Canadians, this means fewer housing options. In October 2023, across the 35 metropolitan areas CBC News analyzed, only 1,400 bachelor or one-bedroom homes were vacant and located in neighbourhoods that full-time minimum-wage workers could afford. This is 0.09 per cent of all bachelor or one-bedroom rentals.

Rentals with multiple bedrooms are as scarce as they are costly. Only 14,000 units with two bedrooms or more were potentially vacant and affordable for the median income of families living in a rented place. For single-parent families, the number drops to just 7,200. This is 0.5 per cent and 0.3 per cent of all rentals with two bedrooms or more. Again, these numbers are the total for all metropolitan areas where more than 30 million Canadians live.

If you needed to find a home to rent, could you? CBC launched a tool to help calculate what you could afford and where.You can access it here.

A sudden $600K repair bill stuns Ontario condo owners

Residents of a condominium complex in Kanata, Ont.'s Katimavik neighbourhood are facing a giant repair bill that some say caught them off guard.

In March, the 40 condo owners on Stratas Court near Eagleson Road learned repairs to railings and leaking glass solariums at the 40-year-old complex would cost them a total of $600,000.

Though warned last September that a special assessment was coming, the owners said they only learned the amount three months ago, and now have less than three weeks to pay their share.

"I was in complete shock to be honest with you. There was tears," said retiree Lynn Braun, who bought her condominium just one year ago.

Braun said she'd only lived there nine months when she received the letter from Carleton Condominium Corporation 281 informing her that her share of the special assessment was $13,000, over and above her usual mortgage and condo fees.

Braun said she's now struggling to come up with the money, and was so unsettled by the unexpected charge that she's weighing another move.

"I can't live with the fear that they can do this. That's not retirement living for me," she said.

Residents have been warned that neither deferral nor instalments will be offered as payment options. One resident was told that if he didn't pay his share of about $11,000 by the June 30 deadline, the condo corporation will immediately move to place a lien on his property.

"I understand it's a difficult situation," said Noah Johnston at Sentinel Management."Health and safety has to come first."Read more

Are you missing Cline Dion? She's missing her fans, too

Cline Dion says I will sing again

3 months ago

Duration 1:12

Cline Dion is determined to sing again. In a Canadian English-language exclusive, she told CBC chief correspondent Adrienne Arsenault about battling the disease slowly eroding her voice and the fans who fuel her drive to someday return to the stage.

"I was 12 years old when I met them. I probably miss them more than singing itself," Canadian singer Cline Dion told CBC's Adrienne Arsenault in an exclusive interview, about her fans.

"People need to know that I'm alive I want to go back on stage. I need to know if I can. They need to know that I love them, and I miss them."

Theinterview is part of theMy Heart Will Go Onsinger's return both ahead of a June 25 documentary, I Am: Cline Dion, which that details her life and health struggles, and as an overdue explanation and apology she feels she owes her fans.

Because while she publicly announced that she had been diagnosed with stiff person syndrome less than two years ago, Dion revealed to CBC her own realization that her voice was beginning to falter happened years earlier.

"At the beginning it was totallysomething light," she says, describing the 2008 Taking Chances world tour where she first started to lose control of the pitch of her voice the tone at times shooting up in a way she compared to yodelling.

Those performances went alright: a mild issue written off as possibly a cold. Butthings quickly started to spiral.

"With the weeks and the months and the years, things started to get more, more often every day, worse," she explains. "The body started to get rigid, not flexible, more spasm, more cramping."

She says the outlook is brighter now. There is constant rehabilitation, tweaks to the medication that has increasingly helped her manage her illness and the mantra helping her along: "I'll sing again. That's for sure."

This interview and the upcoming documentary are, she says, her way of declaring that. Not only to herself, but to the fans she invitesto sing along with her.Read more

What else is going on?

Canada and the U.K. launched a joint privacy probe into the 23andMe data breach
Nearly sevenmillion customers were impacted by the data breach last year.

A ransomware attack on England's heath system highlighted how life-threatening cybercrime can be
Hospitals have been locked out of computer systems that help them match patients to their correct blood types, which forced them to cancel cancer surgeries and blood transfusions.

WestJet is ending flights from Hamilton to Atlantic Canada, and reducing service to Florida
The airline says passengers will get refunds for pre-booked flights.

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