The City of Toronto is becoming increasingly divided by income, ethno-cultural characteristics, and socio-economic status, says a new report, The Three Cities within Toronto (in PDF), issued by the Centre for Urban and Community Studies (CUCS) at the University of Toronto. No longer a “city of neighbourhoods,” the study calls modern-day Toronto a “city of disparities.” In fact, Toronto is now so polarized it could be described as three geographically distinct cities made up of 20 percent affluent neighbourhoods, 36 percent poor neighbourhoods, and 43 percent middle-income earner neighbourhoods and that 43 percent is in decline.

The Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women has a new fact sheet, Women’s experiences of social programs for people with low incomes (in PDF). This fact sheet weaves together the voices of women with critical analysis and detailed evidence on how the devolution of social programs has impacted on diverse low-income women’s lives. It provides important evidence as to why and how listening to women’s voices is critical to knowing the real issues in policy making and programming. It combines existing quantitative research with new qualitative research based on the perspectives of policy makers, social service providers, low-income First Nations, immigrant, refugee women and women with disabilities from three Canadian cities.

L’impact des programmes sociaux : des femmes à faible revenu racontent (format pdf)
Ce feuillet d’information mêle divers témoignages de femmes à faible revenu avec une analyse critique et des informations détaillées sur l’impact de la dévolution des programmes sociaux. Il présente des informations concluantes qui soulignent l’importance d’écouter les femmes pour connaître les vrais problèmes auxquels doivent s’attaquer les politiques et les programmes. Il s’inspire du rapport intitulé Integrating the voices of low-income women into policy discussions on Canada Social Transfer (CST), une recherche qualitative menée en 2007 dans trois villes canadiennes avec des décideurs, des organismes de services sociaux et des femmes à faible revenu autochtones, immigrantes, réfugiées et handicapées. Des données quantitatives tirées de recherches antérieures viennent compléter le tableau.

The Center for Pan-African Development in South Florida, have created the Take Back the Land project and have set up the Umajo Village shantytown in protest of the lack of affordable housing. You can watch two videos of the shantytown and the struggle for affordable housing in the US on YouTube - Umoja Village (Video) and Umoja Village 11.20.06 (Video).