Based affordable housing developer

You see, the problem is that they can’t possibly meet the housing targets but also the problem is that if they allowed 6 plexes to be built they would drown under a flood of them

Narrator: it actually was just NIMBYs First they NIMBY transit expansion then they NIMBY homes saying well we can’t be expected to allow more homes if we don’t have more transit www.northshoredailypost.com/not-just-nim...

The culture war has fried my brain.

Delta puts together a proposal for townhouse-only zoning... and gets in on the game of trying to explain BC municipalities' newest planning concept of "pre-zoning" (perhaps inadvertently explaining a key portion of how we got into housing shortage in the first place) letstalk.delta.ca/pre-zoning

Speed cameras are good. 1. Modern cars/phones can give you a warning of where they are so there is little reason for anyone to get a ticket 2. If there’s a road where traffic is SAFELY going faster, govt should consider setting speed limit higher but with camera enforcement

This @homesforliving.ca discord emojii of Saanich Major Dean Murdock reacting... skeptically in a council meeting sparks joy for me

🚨 Have your say! 🚨 The Shelbourne Valley Action Plan survey is open until Oct. 13. This is your chance to weigh in on how Saanich plans for housing, transportation, and livability along Shelbourne. 👉 Take the survey here: bit.ly/3KgcUtE

My dad died early last year and my mom has been fighting with German bureaucrats for 18 months trying to get them to pay the widow’s pension she is entitled to. And that’s with my help to navigate. There is absolutely no reason why this shouldn’t be automatic.

I’m not a strong man

My comments in a nutshell

Time to fill out the survey for the Shelbourne Valley Action Plan. Slightly improved from the last one, but still mostly ineffective since it doubles down on discretionary approvals instead of proactive planning Survey open to Oct 13: hello.saanich.ca/en/...

Sudden removal of both provincial and federal incentives dropped the plug-in vehicle adoption rate in BC, but if you add hybrid share we're about flat year over year cdn.ihsmarkit.com/ww...

Tesla dropped from 47% of the Canadian EV market to 8% in just a couple years cdn.ihsmarkit.com/www/prot/pdf...

One of the main points I made when speaking to the Victoria / Saanich Citizens Assembly on Amalgamation is that we should under no circumstances go to a ward system where local reps have veto power. Evidence is clear it kills housing production.

openpyxl -> calamine for reading excel Data pipeline runs 95% faster. Over 18 minutes to 1 and change Rust ftw

Cool to see all these electric heavy duty vehicles at UVic. High time we electrified this sector

“For a pro housing city like Los Angeles” You see Premier Eby, the LA Mayor can write laugh out loud speeches without a comedian speech writer on staff

Every email from my kids school: 1. Here’s an email with an important site for you to use 2. The site information is not in the email, it’s in a separate PDF 2. The PDF is insanely wordy 3. The PDF has no link in it 4. The PDF has a QR code instead. 5. The QR code is expired

We’ll soon know the outcome of Victoria’s new Official Community Plan. Thanks to all who spoke up for housing, including director Sam Holland, who put it plainly: “My entire generation is being displaced... doesn’t that matter more than character?” www.timescolonist.com/local-news/v...

Ok I may have dropped the ball on updating my website a little too long

My comments to council on Colin Plant and Susan Brice's attempt to build less family-sized infill housing in Saanich.

Going into an election year and council is falling over themselves to try to bring down next year’s tax increases by kicking some projects down the road. I get it, but this isn’t a real strategy to reduce taxes, it’s just shuffling things around to look better for a year

Neat. And guess what, the ones that are far from primary growth areas and tucked away in some quiet street in the suburbs? Those are great too! No lot is too good for a 4-plex

Saanich has tons of potential to build family suitable housing via gentle infill because the vast majority of the land was previously a million+ dollar house reserve. Let’s make sure SSMUH isn’t undermined to stop the progress being made.

Without 3 & 4 bedroom units, it’s game over for families in Saanich. Small Scale Multi-Unit Housing (SSMUH) is the best option we have to build homes where families can live, grow, and stay in our community. Undermining SSMUH = undermining the future of families in Saanich.

It’s super cool that YouTube is airing ads featuring an AI generated Carney promoting a scam

And more SSMUH restrictions. This time we should somehow consider proximity to major roads (multifamily residents don’t deserve quiet roads?), limit heights, and otherwise cut down lots where they can be built. Province has to step in here if they don’t want SSMUH to completely fizzle out

Underappreciated that a restrictive complex zoning system that depends on currying favour with elected officials works just fine for big developers. They have the relationship, capital, and expertise to navigate it while the small players are shut out.

Literally just trying to sign up for my kid's school lunch website

We wouldn’t want people to actually create housing for families in their backyards. No we must ensure that ADUs remain just for servants and mortgage helpers

Developing software is fun again. ☕️ time while Claude works on this Stay tuned on this project…

At what point and how will we notice the global increase in software development productivity due to AI? Have we noticed it yet?

Interesting thread Generally the dialogue on rent control is too black & white The free market folks say any kind of rent controls are negative for renters, which is a misreading of the literature and ignores the costs of displacement. The advocates want vacancy decontrol but ignore economics

A dozen SSMUH projects in Esquimalt since they were legalized over a year ago. That's one per month. In what world is this very low uptake a problem that needs to be cracked down on? What is the target here, one triplex every 6 months?

It's a pattern. Next up, @dcavens.bsky.social with a push to sabotage small scale infill housing in Esquimalt by adding on more layers of costs and restrictions. Result: fewer and more expensive infill homes

What kind of bullshit process allows city staff, the developer, and plenty of consultants to waste hundreds of hours of time if council is unanimous that they don’t want six townhouses here?

The most frustrating part of these decisions is not that council is working so hard to get fewer homes, but that it’s in total opposition to what staff told this developer (support). How is anyone supposed to know what to build? Total process failure www.timescolonist.com/local-news/e...

No one is saying we should dismiss concerns of firefighters. But when literally the entire planet has figured out safe single stair buildings except for us, its also pretty damn clear the solution isn’t to keep them illegal

My commute is consistently putting a big grin on my face these days

Can confirm youtube.com/shorts/9-1MX...

This story is pretty damning www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

This is a really interesting move from the UK and Canada should investigate the same. An EV grant that only applies if the car was made in a low carbon way. Give local manufacturers a leg up while driving down lifecycle emissions and encouraging offshore manufacturers to produce in the country.

“many nonresident owners may be keeping units as investments or second homes, contributing to prices that shut out would-be residents” “The city assembly enacted a 2020 ordinance that set stricter floor area ratio limits effectively halting new high-rise condominium projects” Incredible stuff

Whenever I’m in Ontario I notice how committed they are to speeding. In BC I drive the usual Limit+PST but over there regular traffic speed on the highway is Limit + 20 to 30km/h and police let it slide www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Myth: "Developers will stop building if rents fall" Austin: Rents down 18%, still building at a rapid rate Reality: Developers only stop building when you make it very hard for them to build. If you don't make it so hard, they will keep building as long as they can make a profit doing so

Very sad to see Saanich councillor @colinplant.bsky.social trying to sabotage small scale infill housing even more than it already is in Saanich. Saying no to infill housing means advocating for $3M mansions. That’s not the Saanich I want to live in, and it’s not the Saanich my kids can afford

It's truly gross that someone trying to build housing that is compliant with the Official Community Plan is still regularly bullied to build less housing www.timescolonist.com/local-news/s...

There's a lot of talk at public hearings about views being impeded by tall buildings, but we we should talk more about how the views that will be created. Source: www.reddit.com/r/britishcol...

List of the inane ideas we elevated above making sure people have homes: #48