Huh. Mild winter so far, so I guess we're doing a little lavender bloom to bring in the New Year?

"Hey buddy, don't you think you've had enough?" I say to the starling pecking at the suet feeder, while working through my third butter cookie of the morning.

The tall evergreens really stand out like Christmas trees against Vancouver's skyline now, with the latest snow blending to sky in the mountains beyond. For its part, Sen̓áḵw (under the crane) continues to look like a present nearly ready to be unwrapped. senakw.com

This was always the right approach. Target the predatory private colleges feeding off international students as part of BROADENING Canada's welcome to those students rather than curtailing it. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

"She says that some people who live on their boats do so because they lost their jobs and couldn't afford to live elsewhere..." but those tossed on the shores were mostly abandoned. Either way, oof. It was a rough night for folks living on their boats. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Just putting this out there... UBC is hiring! research.ubc.ca/federal-rese...

New quarterly population projections are in today, quick update looking at BC. Net interprovincial migration turned positive again, but net overall migration including international migration turned negative for the first time since COVID due to strong net NPR outflows.

I wrote this brief talk on why “augmenting diversity” with LLMs is empirically unsubstantiable, conceptually flawed, and epistemically harmful and a nice surprise to see the organisers have made it public synthetic-data-workshop.github.io/papers/13.pdf

Late to comment on the RMS data release from last week, but wanted to update this graph on turnover and note that increased vacancy rates and easing rents have enabled more people to move (in most markets). Which is good.

POV: you have no idea what time of year it is, only that your sabbatical is almost here. (photo taken today, from much beloved weird little winter-blooming mutant cherry tree in Vancouver)

As-of-right zoning for housing people, discretionary approvals for housing cars

A fine remembrance of someone left at Kits Beach today. Don't know who, but adding little anonymous touches of beauty around town is probably how I'd want to be remembered too.

Back-to-back CBC British Columbia news items. BC has too many people living in cars because they can't find housing. Think I'm going to stick with the province on this one. RV fire: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/... Metro Van mayors: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Today’s Rental Market Report sheds some light on how liquid demographics works in Vancouver. The rental vacancy rate for the metro region was 3.7%, giving people more choice on where to move. And they flowed toward the City of Vancouver resulting in a lower vacancy rate of 2.7% vs Surrey’s at 4.4%.

My Tyee article is out - on the stalewasem bridge: thetyee.ca/Culture/2025...

Neat history of Berkeley's 1916 claim to first single-family zoning in the USA & its alignment to racist restriction. The Shaughnessy Act from 1914 means Point Grey (Vancouver) has a strong claim to N. America's first exclusionary single-family zone. www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/docume...

Check and see if your mayor is on the Province's naughty or nice list! vancouversun.com/news/metro-v...

BREAKING: Officials in Sumas, Wash., immediately south of Abbotsford will be sounding their flood siren that warns residents to evacuate. This is a sign of likely flooding in Sumas Prairie in Abbotsford. www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=...

More broadly here, @jensvb.bsky.social and I explore solid v. liquid views in demography. Do people move on conveyor belts, so local projections can be based on on-off levers? ❌ Or do people move in streams, so they flow over a landscape & pool & settle in the containers available? ✅

Not surprisingly, I think @wazaroff.bsky.social has good housing takes here, but also great to see the fundamental decency & humility with which he's approaching many of his answers in this interview. Also now I kinda want to watch the old chess-themed RomCom he wrote & directed.

Recently StatCan started producing municipal level population projections. While that sounds good in principle, @lausterna.bsky.social and I explain why the StatCan projections are problematic. And we illustrate this using Surrey and Vancouver projections as an example.

Will the suburb of Surrey REALLY surpass Vancouver's population within the next couple of years? Maybe. But @jensvb.bsky.social and I lack confidence in demographic projection assumptions, which ignore the key issue: housing and where it's likely to land. homefreesociology.com/2025/12/08/t...

Vancouver's golden minute* is upon us! * used to be an hour prior to budget cuts

Last Friday of classes at UBC, so I have taken the time to give this important @anthonyfloyd.ca question some thought. I'm mostly NG.

Good deep dive into landlord-tenant disputes here, with criticism of how the RTB arbitration process is working. Most arbitrators are probably harried public servants doing their best, but I am reminded that Dallas Brodie prominently touted her time as an RTB arbitrator in her bio, and I shudder.

Reviving this fun format from a couple of years ago with updated data.

Just found old notes from hunting for my first Vancouver apartment when I got my UBC job, circa 2005. 1BR 4th & Stephens $1,000 1BR 11th & Alma $950* 1BR 10th & Blanca $910 1BR 7th & Vine $850 1BR Broadway & Larch $1,110 (I wrote "expensive" here) * this is where I ultimately ended up.

New: John Rustad steps down as leader of the BC Conservative Party, one day after saying he's "not going anywhere." "I know many are concerned by what they saw yesterday, but I want to assure every member and supporter of the party that this was not a hostile takeover by BC Liberals of the party."

"Rustad is alive" I'm contributing KEY INFORMATION to our ongoing live page about the Avignon Papacy of John Rustad www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

"When council approved the maximum 10-year timeframe, it was understood that the permanent development of... sites would generally be ready to commence construction within that period." Development timelines have gotten too long, but that's more time sites can be used for temporary housing.

Now we take you live to response from former BC Conservative MLA Elenore Sturko...

Asking rent data out from StatCan today for Q2 and Q3 2025.

[whispers] preservation of luxury estates has always been a primary purpose of zoning... Vancouver Archives Link to historical Westmount Park sales pamphlet: searcharchives.vancouver.ca/westmount-pa...

Downzoning was used by cities around the world to preserve neighborhood aesthetics & protect property values. New evidence from Chicago in @findingspress.org ⏬ shows downzoning's effects over several decades: —Massive drop in housing construction —Higher home prices —Increased racial segregation

Excited to share a new video I produced with Urbanarium on their Decoding Timber Towers competition, which challenged teams to design 8–20+ storey buildings out of wood! Check it out here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ42...

We talked about this in my class. People (& lenders!) need to have credible information about climate risk to their homes. However the way it is done right now, if at all, has lots of uncertainty. A home could be categorized as low-risk when it’s high risk, & vice versa! NOAA should do this service.

More details on the terrible fire in Hong Kong, really converging on the conditions created by the renovation work being done. Foam panels blocking views & collapsed scaffolding blocking exits combined with elderly residents in accounting for awful death toll. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/28/w...

Fun new Vacancy Chain study from my UBC colleague Limin Fang (& others). Tracks what new vacancies open up elsewhere from the people moving into a new condominium building containing 202 market-rate and 310 affordable units from inclusionary zoning?

Fascinating! Informal housing is one solution to housing shortage & we've got a lot of it in Canada, but when it looks like this it tends to get shut down quick. Not surprisingly, the "barn permit" one looks like it's on Agricultural Reserve Land...

Here's reaction from the @ubcic.bsky.social: www.ubcic.bc.ca/ubcic_strong...

The Ottawa-Alberta MOU is nothing more than a pipedream - Coastal First Nations "We have zero interest in co-ownership or economic benefits of a project that has the potential to destroy our way of life and everything we have built on the coast," says Heiltsuk Nation elected Chief Marilyn Slett

So it's now US policy to export hate against "people of a migration background" on the basis of sensationalizing crime (which immigrants are statistically less likely to commit). Be right back. Gonna add "person of a migration background" to the bio. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/u...

Pretty interesting piece on expanding expropriation powers for high-speed rail. The "right of first refusal" & "prohibition on work" bit meant to prevent speculation are worth noting (Act suggests each also attached to compensation). Act: www.parl.ca/DocumentView... www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

you should support liberal currents!

approved despite over 600 speakers signing up to speak to the budget, with all but a tiny number strongly opposed, and following a public engagement survey that found the majority of respondents supported a property tax increase to avoid cuts.

Earlier today while drinking my coffee, was just thinking we need more discussion of aesthetics in roots of NIMBYism. Lo and behold, by 1pm the scholars of Bluesky deliver! Lots to like in this paper, even if I'm bound (as sociologist) to insist there is at least SOME accounting for taste. Neat!

November sunrise before the rain

Pity the historians of the future, stuck repeating: "Well, ACTUALLY, the origin of the phrase 'trumped-up charges' dates back much further and is unrelated to the presidency of the same name."

Past the rage-inducing headline this is interesting both for the usual reasons (genuine difficultly to assessing high-value, rare-transaction properties & lots of benefit to owners' strategic valuation) & for the specific case (Onni's got a big property on Granville in Shaughnessy 👀)

Exceedingly rare example of the notwithstanding claws being justifiably used to counter human rights.