Even smaller lots (33’ and 50’) can be suitable for single stair + modular (Just need cities to allow full density on small lots - looking at you CoV)

Looking for an engaging conversation next Thursday? - A land value tax would solve this.

If you live in a pre-1970 single family home, you're 19x more likely to die in a fire than if you live in a post-2010 multifamily building www.pew.org/en/research-...

To be clear, I do think the supply curve for housing, in general, exists, but Ford isn't in a position to criticize. Why doesn't Ontario pay 5% of the cost of every new home purchase if it's an easy fix? I think he would choose the upzones route if he had to choose between the two.

The less Ford does to encourage better zoning (ON has done very little), the more of any GST rebate would wind up in the pockets of existing homeowners. Best case: it offsets development fees, but that opens the window to cities hiking them more. I'm skeptical of demand subs-only effectiveness.

A new challenger has entered the arena!

#AcademicSky vancouversun.com/opinion/op-e...

So-called “inclusionary zoning” is a tax on new housing that reduces the amount of housing that gets built, worsening the housing shortage and driving up rent. It is bad, counterproductive policy and we should stop doing it.

10 million tonnes more of domestic consumption (early 2000 levels) would make up for losing about 1/3 of 2023 exports, which have also been on a long decline.

A reader found this passage from my book MAXIMUM CANADA suddenly ripe with relevance

Canadian softwood lumber consumption was almost 60% higher 20 years ago. We're not mass timbering very hard.

So few Canadians are reading printed newspapers now that, according to Natural Resources Canada, newsprint is turning back into trees.

It is amazing how much more conservative a lot of young people are leaning these days.

This is a terrific organization that helps ensure vulnerable people and their pets can access veterinary care. Give them your money! www.pawsforhope.org

Max nails it: state level mandates are how you make meaningful progress. Local government isn't just structurally hostile to yimbyism, it is functionally undemocratic. 1,000 fiefdoms does not a democracy make. Democratic governments have to be able to address voters' biggest concerns.

What should I do/see/eat/walk in Toronto?

City of Vancouver continues to use the horrendously misleading comparison of property taxes for the "median single family home" as their headline number despite that only 14.6% of homes are single family (per CMHC, & I believe that includes laneways), averaging $2.8M.

In 2018, then-Mayor Ada Colau called Barcelona’s new 30% inclusionary housing requirement for projects over 600m^2 a “paradigm shift,” making housing “a right and not a commodity.” It was supposed to produce 330 affordable units a year. The reality: just 31 affordable apartments in all these years.

Excited to see this coming along!

"Could a rise in Indigenous-led developments move the needle on Canada's housing shortage?" Sort of? Many see "13k homes @ Jericho" & forget that that's over 30 years. Senakw is great, but the Squamish are going to have win a lot more court cases to make a big dent...

In a rare confluence, BC Policy Solutions & the chamber of commerce people seem to be on the same page that corporate taxes aren't the major issue. I think, from left or right, the budget strikes as unambitious considering the rhetoric leading up to it...

Oof! Here's a big red flag for housing delivery in Vancouver. A 114'-wide assembly in a TOA (Cambie) is listed for about the low end of 2.5x a lone 50' lot. The lowest listing I could find nearby was $2.9M. Basically, apartment land values are unfeasibly low already.

@DougSaunders.bsky.social never misses. I don't know if it fully explains the apparent lack of willingness to act like we have a trade emergency & a housing crisis, but maybe the deficit explains that well enough.

Is there enough chip fab investment planned for all the AI datacenters in the works?

Paul Kershaw in the G&M: OAS is a pretty lavish subsidy for high income seniors that is dramatically more generous to higher incomes than the Canada Child Benefit. And it's THE rapidly growing problem for the Federal deficit over the next 4 years.

I probably should've been able to guess some of these but I don't think I could have got the order right at all. Before you look, who do you think is the top earning dead musician of 2025? Who just barely makes the top 10? www.ajournalofmusica...

When someone crosses the floor in parliament the gaining party should have to line up on their side of the house, hand in hand, singing "Red rover red rover, send Chris d'Entremont over" #cdnpoli

$20B more (+33%) in mortgage loans for multi-family rental housing. I haven't looked how this compares to other CMHC programs but off the top of my head I think it's similar to the increase in the Apartment Construction Loan Program last budget?

And to assist with this, funding for Build Canada Homes inexplicably got reduced from previous commitments. Unsure how they expect to both catalyze new building technology and dramatically ramp up affordable housing with what amounts to pocket change.

Has anyone estimated how much poverty rates are about to go up because of cancelling the consumer carbon price? The last rebate went out in April.

Great article, but again, i think the "shoebox" era is far from over, 'cuz people want them. We should build nice narrow-lot apartments anyway though; maybe some singles will choose to have roommates instead of being forced to by zoning!

Reading through the comments is fascinating, but one person claims that a scissor stair design would have been more efficient... That's incorrect, a scissor stair version actually uses more area than two separate switchback stairs for this particular scenario, because...

"Jays win world series" is unfortunately pretty representative of the "news" Google chooses to share with me.

The narrative is more "people don't want shoebox condos" than ever but I think many saying that would consider 500sf a "shoebox" & apparently condos over 540sf aren't selling. 1/3

The good news is that Metro Vancouver housing permits (total units, all types) are running above starts recently, not crashing. In the City of Vancouver things are, as usual, just muddling along in neutral. The question I suppose is how many permits will ever lead to completions.

If I were rich, I'd just have two dishwashers and never put the dishes away.

I think it's fairly obvious that blanket vacancy control, especially now, would be extremely destructive to rental construction. But I do wonder if vacancy control after, say, 30 years, combined with the current system of applying for above limit increases www.cbc.ca/news/cana...

Pro-housing voices from the right of center are increasingly focused on a "we need housing For Families" framing. In a new column I explain why broad-based liberalization, especially for inexpensive types of housing, is important for helping people start families: www.governing.com/urban/to-sup...

In 100 per cent unsurprising news, the bank that supposedly pulled funding from a Richmond project because of the Cowichan court decision says it definitely did not pull funding because of the Cowichan court decision www.thecanadianpressnews.ca/national/cou...

An entirely normal reaction to current separate policies being consolidated into a single plan coordinating direction for the city that does not actually making any changes to existing circumstances

Did anyone else's Google Assistant get an upgrade that makes it not work anymore? My wife tried calling me, & it called some other Owen, not in her phone book, instead, multiple times. Another time, it texted me something random instead of asking her what she would like to say. And more weird things

Important context from @sustainabletall.bsky.social. There is no point in talking about embodied emissions in concrete towers without considering the counterfactual, holistically.

When is the Federal Housing Design Catalogue going to add any apartment buildings? Building duplexes & ADUs faster is not going to help the housing crisis in BC's cities much at all. 4-plexes are a marginal improvement, & a rounding error in Vancouver.

You can get elected on values and not watered down nothingness or trying to be a version of the one in power (message to Ontario liberal leadership candidates)

Edmonton's infill election is over, and Edmontonians overwhelmingly voted for a pro-infill council. The predicted backlash never came. Now, it's time to build. And what better place to start than near our LRT stations. Read our op-ed 👇 #yeg #yegcc edmontonjournal.com/opinion/colu...

I’m at the launch of Oregon’s design competition for sunlight suite buildings - neighborhood-scale mulifamily buildings designed around one central staircase. “This is one of those innovations whose time has come,” says Gil Kelley of @1000oregon.bsky.social.

If I were the premier of a province facing a devastating housing shortage & collapsing lumber industry, I would simply legalize 6-storey single stair apartment buildings on small lots. www.vancouverisaweso...

CDMX getting an all-electric ride-hailing option?