Interesting how this interacts with coupling up and other living arrangements, for contrast here are age-specific headship rates.

Best explanation of the liar's dividend that I've ever seen.

Great building and unit layout. A couple other distinction between living in Europe vs North America I can't help but notice. 🧵

I recently had the chance to chat with @wazaroff.bsky.social who is running for mayor. He is smart, has great judgement, and spends his time providing affordable housing for those who need it. He would make an excellent mayor.

I appreciate @1alexhemingway.bsky.social’s consistent advocacy for non-market housing without downplaying market housing or the broader supply shortage. By covering not just zoning but also suppressed household formation, this is pretty much the gold standard for left-YIMBYism.

Nice. This should fit nicely into the 3FSR 400-800m TOA annuli. And in the anticipated 6 storey village zoning and some of the area plans whenever that zoning change happens.

From the Metro Toronto Planning Board's 1959 draft Official Plan (voted down by Metro Council). You could not say something this obvious in Toronto's Official Plan anymore.

New data release of the National Address Registry out today, good to see continued development, and it's getting better with each release. Here all properties with mailing address in Vancouver.

New piece! For the second time in three years, Metro Vancouver has raised development charges just after another level of government lowered taxes on new housing, capturing the savings instead of lowering total costs. Read Metro Van Strikes Again here: www.missingmiddleini...

Your regular reminder that the province intervened in municipal land use regulation because cities have and are very inclined to continue to strongly curb the right to build housing for people. (And that the soft approach that leaves cities a lot of wiggle room has failed.)

Finally found some time to play with Meta's new image segmentation model. (Special thanks to @kylewalker.bsky.social for making it super-easy.) Just open the map view and tell it what to find. First example: cars. Quite impressive for foundation model without additional training.

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.

Good take. Being clear about concepts matters. A lot of our housing discussions go sideways because people aren’t precise about the concepts they are talking about about. And the seemingly simple concept of “vacant home” is a prime example where things go wrong frequently.

There's been a flurry of housing policy announcements in recent years, but much of it is less than meets the eye. In a new report for @bcpolicy.bsky.social, I outline why BC’s housing crisis and shortage is solvable—and key structural changes we still urgently need. bcpolicy.ca/housing-cris...

I'm going to be voting for William Azaroff as OneCity's mayoral candidate in February; I think he's the best chance we have at a mayor who will be great on housing. I'd strongly encourage you to join the party and do the same.

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.

Consultants contracted by Minnesota found that an eight-story single-stair building with 6,000 sq. ft. per floor (building 4) has dramatically lower fire risk than a same-height code-compliant two-stair building with a larger floor plate (building 1) www.dli.mn.gov/sites/defaul...

Great framing by @kevinerdmann.bsky.social. This part too.

Your regular reminder that it takes a ginormous amount of privilege to claim that our low-density neighbourhoods are "working". (Old data, but story did not change.)

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/...

There was this narrative that cities kind of wanted more housing, and just needed a bit of nudging from the province to get over the hump... Good to see that not all munis are on board with winding back the clock.

Report on Sen̓áḵw progress from my morning ride into downtown, the crane for the second tower is getting taken down and now only serves the small round structure between tower two and three.

Big new blogpost! My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more. --> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

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? ✅

According to @thetyee.ca , I’m a housing CEO who used to make indie chess movies and rom-coms. Honestly? Fair assessment. We talked about running with @onecityvan.bsky.social, fixing our housing deficit, and why directing is actually great prep for City Hall. thetyee.ca/News/2025/12...

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...

My simple test for city housing policy: 1) Do you support turning a parking lot and grocery store next to skytrain into lots of homes, and 2) do you support making it easier to build more non-market housing throughout the city? Votes are in and only One City of Vancouver party supports both 1 & 2.

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.

Council will decide on Vancouver's Social Housing Initiative tomorrow (Tuesday). It is exactly what is needed RIGHT NOW. The need is obvious, with 73% of low-income renters spending too much on rent, not to mention crowded households due to the housing shortage. So why NOW? 1/5

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.

I spoke to Dan Fumano about proposed actions to address costs affecting development viability to help unlock new housing supply. Prices and rents are dropping, which is good, but costs need commensurately go down if we are to keep building housing. vancouversun.com/opinion/colu...

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.

Just finished listening to this episode, great wrap up of the incentives series explaining our inability to view some things holistically and make effective tradeoffs. It does not have to be this way.

Without downloading any new pics, describe your vibe for today using an image from your gallery

This is really wonderful to see! CMHC is now releasing data on development charges across Canada. Must read piece.

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

Sorry, in Vancouver that requires a rezoning. There will be a hundred speakers at the hearing with some opposing it because they fear it will gentrify the neighbourhood, some who oppose it claiming it will bring transients into their quiet hood, and a few in favour because they want a fun city.

Neat. ggplot for python producing interactive graphs.

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...

Interesting use of street-level graphics to transform a cross-walk into a data visualization in the Tuzla Municipality of Istanbul, to depict the stark and devastating figures of the number of people killed and injured (20,000) over the last 10 years at cross-walks across the country.

Recently made a few maps of the new Finch West Line 6 + surrounding land-use More here: schoolofcities.utoronto.ca/maps-of-line... #toronto #transit #maps

I had a lot of fun making this choropleth map of property sales prices in Germany. Predictably, big cities have the highest property prices. This pattern is typical now.

Another great paper demonstrating the effects of new housing on the rest of the housing system. Reminder that the vast majority of moves are moves into old housing, focusing on the affordability of new housing is missing the forest for the trees. (Also congrats Limin and @justintyndall.bsky.social!)

Yet another reason why this should pass. So that we don’t have to go through the same stupidity every time we rezone one social housing project at a time. (Also, spot zoning one project at a time is no way to run a city.)

Great news, Vancouverites doubled up more between 2021 and 2024, so based on that baseline we now need fewer homes to accommodate future population growth! Metro Vancouver still working hard to coordinate the worsening of our housing shortage...