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Weekend Newsstand: July 18, 2015
It's going to be a scorcher out this weekend, kids. Play nice when your sister wants a turn in front of the fan. In the news this morning: condo and rental prices are still soaring (of course), the city's report on switching from LRT to subway in Scarborough was "not fulsome," and a class-action lawsuit launched in Ontario alleges the federal government is improperly caring for mentally ill inmates.
Condos are still selling like hotcakes in Toronto: they make up 70 per cent of real estate sales in the GTA, and the average price for your own little box in the sky is now just shy of $417,000. The Toronto Real Estate Board’s recently issued report found a 17 per cent jump in condo sales from the second quarter of this year to the same period in 2014. “Much of the new condominium apartment inventory that has been brought to bear on the market in the recent past has been absorbed,” said TREB President Mark McLean. Meanwhile, average rental prices are also up: the average one-bedroom apartment rents for $1,600, and the average two-bedroom goes for roughly $2,200.
Chief city planner Jennifer Keesmaat recently told the Star that the report planners gave to city council about the decision to switch from an LRT in Scarborough to a subway was “problematic.” “We didn’t go through a fulsome process,” she said. “We were not given the opportunity to go through a fulsome process. We were not expected to go through a fulsome process because it was a politically driven process.” City manager Joe Pennachetti and TTC CEO Andy Byford signed off on the problematic report, though, and it was presented to councillors with ridership number predictions that may have been too high.
A class-action lawsuit has been launched in an Ontario court against the federal government, alleging the government doesn’t do enough to care for mentally ill prisoners, and that solitary confinement is used as a way to deal with them in prisons. Christopher Brazeau is the representative defendant; he’s 34 and has post traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. Brazeau is serving a 12-year sentence in an Edmonton correctional facility “for robbery-related crimes,” according to CTV, and has been in solitary confinement for 12 consecutive months without his required medication.