Lauren Blumas is featured in a CBC news article highlighting “creative solutions to unattainable house prices.” The article highlights: the trend of co-buying homes; a couple who’ve elected to stay renters in the city while buying income property outside of the city; and non-profit condo developer (and Iler Campbell client) Options for Homes.
Lauren is quoted on the need for “co-purchasers sign a legally binding document called a co-ownership or co-tenancy agreement prior to buying the home.”
If you’re involved in a non‑profit organization that was incorporated under the Canada Corporations Act and your organization has not completed the transition to the Canada Not‑for‑profit Corporations Act, then you have until July 31, 2017 to do so. Corporations Canada has issued a notice that if the transition is not completed by July 31st, the corporation will be dissolved. In other words, the corporation will cease to exist, legally, and if it’s a registered charity, it could lose its charitable registration.
To obtain more details about what’s involved in completing the transition, you can check out the “Transition Guide” on Corporations Canada’s website.
If you have any questions about the transition process, you can also contact one of our lawyers.
In 2015, the Ontario legislature passed legislation called the Forfeited Corporate Property Act, 2015 (the FCPA). The FCPA came into effect on December 10, 2016.
One of the things that the FCPA does is to amend the Corporations Act (Ontario), the Business Corporations Act (Ontario), and the Not‑for‑Profit Corporations Act, 2010 (Ontario) to require corporations that are subject to these statutes to keep a register at their registered office of their ownership interests in land located in Ontario.
Given that the amendments were enacted in the FCPA, it seems that the provincial government intends for this to be a convenient mechanism to enable it to locate land that reverts to the Crown if a corporation is dissolved while still owning land.
Continue reading “Corporations that Own an Interest in Land: New Record Keeping Requirements”
On Saturday, March 4, 2017, we will host our first IC Education event in Durham Region. And we’d love to see you there! Our housing provider clients regularly inquire about human rights issues – how to distinguish a human right from a personal preference and how far the housing provider’s duty to accommodate extends. If you’d like to join us for our Human Rights Refresher at Otter Creek Co‑op in Whitby on Saturday, March 4, 2017, please register. We have a few spaces left.
This article was first published on rabble.ca
On December 6, 2016, the Ontario legislature passed the Promoting Affordable Housing Act, 2016, expanding the powers of Ontario municipalities to implement “inclusionary zoning,” a requirement for developers to build affordable units when constructing new market‑rate housing. The Act changes the provincial Planning Act, RSO 1990, c.P.13, by obliging some municipalities, while making it optional for others, to adopt inclusionary zoning policies. A discussion on the adoption of the Act and debates surrounding its inclusionary zoning provisions can be found on our firm’s blog.
These legislative changes come years after rising housing prices, lagging income levels and dwindling federal and provincial funding have created an increasing need for new affordable housing in Ontario. Significantly, according to the 2017 Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey, over the past 13 years Toronto’s house prices have nearly doubled compared to household incomes, thus making market-rate housing unaffordable for an increasingly larger portion of the population. The same study also notes that nearby areas such as Hamilton and Oshawa are becoming unaffordable for middle‑income residents.
What inclusionary zoning will look like on the ground remains unanswered. By extension, it is difficult to predict whether the changes will have a significant impact on the need for affordable housing in Ontario. For example, it is unclear what an “affordable unit” means under the new changes and how affordable units will have to be priced. However, the province is slated to release regulations in early 2017 that will hopefully give some meat to its approach and allow municipalities to develop their policies and bylaws. Continue reading “How inclusionary zoning stands to grow affordable housing in Ontario”
Are you on a housing co‑op board that is struggling about how to respond to complaints that second hand smoke is causing a child’s allergies to get worse? Are you a housing co‑op manager concerned that the capital budget is going to take a hit as more members need accessibility retrofits in their units? Are you a bit unclear about what things are covered by the Human Rights Code and what are not?
As a lawyer serving housing co‑ops, I’m asked these kinds of questions all the time. It also seems like there are a few co‑op members out there who want to use the language of human rights to justify the things they’d like to see at the co‑op.
If you’d like to learn a bit more about human rights in housing co‑ops, please join us at a human rights refresher as part of our IC Education series. We heard many of you who don’t like coming to our office in downtown Toronto, so we’re taking this one on the road! Otter Creek Co‑operative Homes has graciously offered to let us use its meeting room at 835 McQuay Boulevard, Unit 30 in Whitby. Sign up early because space is limited.
|
Older Entries |
Subscribe to our RSS feed
Find us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter