Municipal government complaining about lack of tax revenue should raise their taxes

New blog on the economic effects of the building boom in Halifax open.substack.com/pub/deny/p/n...

Nova Scotia Power profits will be $200 million by 2027? Thats not much money, folks

It should be a core mission of people who care about Halifax to extend the usable waterfront. And I’d include displacing industrial sites

The BC government will literally send you a cheque for owning a $2M home. I don’t think owners of $2M assets need property tax relief

Only the shameless @fcm.ca could make this chart showing property taxes falling in real terms and blame everyone else for their members austerity crusade

HOV lanes can be good, but are often under-used and are poor filter for urgency. That's why cities are moving more to HOTs (High Occupancy-Toll) or express lanes. They make money too.

NEW POST While cities across North America struggle with housing shortages, Edmonton is proving that zoning reform works. In 2025, for the first time in history, the number of homes permitted in 5-8 unit rowhomes surpassed detached homes. 🧵 #yeg #yegcc #yimby www.jacobdawang.com/blog/2026/zb...

Was hoping detailed assessment rolls would be available for 2026 by now...

Icymi

Why is municipal politics so dysfunctional? Partially because mayors can get away with answers like this. « Halifax Water is crucial to solving the housing crisis and I want to starve it dead ».

« Congestion pricing won’t work here » often misses that there isn’t a fixed number of trips, and not all trips need to shift to transit 1:1 www.ibtta.org/sites/defaul...

Though to translate Mayor Fillmore’s words into actual policy moves because of his tendency to…hold contradictory positions. But I look forward to BRT in the year of our cuts 2026

Halifax urbanism meeting on Via with @kwilsonhfx.bsky.social

The last couple of weeks were busy for HFX by Bike, so here are some videos you might have missed: A trip through one of Halifax's newest neighbourhoods (Bedford West): youtu.be/7IH3UcHMUIs?...

Icymi open.substack.com/pub/deny/p/t...

Massive opportunity for Nova Scotia, have it all generating by 2028 and sell it back to them for a profit

Just got the feeling that the public is getting better at understanding housing issues (eg, importance wood vacancy), anyone else feel that way?

Huh — is this the same mayor stepping out of his lane to stop Halifax Water from doing its job to enable more housing?

New blog on the rental market in Halifax open.substack.com/pub/deny/p/t...

NEW DATA: Nova Scotia's population growth plunge continues. Population fell by 1,388 in from Jul-Oct, a 0.5% reduction, the first since early 2020 and the largest quarterly decline since 1966. The decline comes from falling non-permanent resident population

I don’t know, feels like Nova Scotians might want defending from the U.S. president threatening the country

This fact would boggle the mind of the municipal government consensus, where seniors who have made huge tax-free profits simply *cannot* be asked to contribute any more to our cities

This is good, but the "generational" investment here amounts to less than 10% of the units currently under construction across HRM. Just to show how far we are from a public housing boom

Monday's show is out for subscribers

Yes we are getting higher taxes. This was explicitly the tradeoff council made for low taxes in past years. They chose to rob our present selves just so we could also rob our future selves to save the average(/mean) property tax payer about ~$100 a year. For more info check out issue 2 of GP

Yes. Traffic *could* be fixed immediately. Even a modest charge to enter the peninsula would do multiples of what any network re-jigging could to improve speeds. We don’t like that solution though. In the meantime, can we at least stop on street parking on Quinpool?

👀

"We do need development but.." I'd like @ecologyaction.bsky.social to not be equivocal about housing. Where should we put 20,000 units if not sprawl? Is it the peninsula?

Councillors boast about being the closest to the community and then repeatedly demonstrate they don’t want better for the community if it risks a tax hike

New paper out tomorrow. Check your inbox or head on over to Atlantic News or the King's Co-op Bookstore!

New blog on the Capped assessment program and how to reform it without scaring grandma open.substack.com/pub/deny/p/p...

Did Janet Steele read the blog?

Backroom deals are the alternative to upzoning. Some politicians like the backroom deals more

For context, 26,000 homes is roughly the housing shortage in Halifax, NS alone. Population ~500k. Not to scale

Calgary NIMBYs for centralized land planning!

This would be a fantastic undergrad / masters thesis topic, I believe all the necessary data is publicly available

Good illustration of the casualness that many bring to traffic discussions. Rarely do they interact with the fundamental problem of geography: cars need a lot of space.

1-bed units downtown for $1660 is equivalent to $1375 pre covid. Not bad?

New blog talks Nova Scotia's tax problem open.substack.com/pub/deny/p/n...

This has been a long time coming!

Dalhousie should be allowed to buy up and redeveloped the trash bungalows that surround campus if it cannot redevelop campus buildings. HRM wants to block both, and there’s no consideration for what to do instead

Change in dwellings 2016-2021. The peninsula cannot be allowed to stay stagnant. Not while the outer suburbs boom

Not to jump ahead, but IMO the way to do this is to cap the CAP, limit the gap between taxable and market assessments at some dollar value, like $200,000 to start, and then you could scale that down if you want. Hits all the high value properties while limiting impacts on low value homes

Janet Steele working on a motion to ask Nova Scotia to phase out assessment cap By @suzannerent.bsky.social

The posting to policy pipeline lives and gives me hope. Cc @denysullivan.bsky.social @landofsticks.bsky.social

That’s some induced pedestrian demand @andyfillmorehfx.bsky.social, we could do this more than twice a year