It’s only a few months since the last time a journalist was sent to do a piece on the STM lost and found, but this one has more statistics and an amusing anecdote about false teeth.
Updates from February, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
An older couple was found dead in a house in Côte St-Luc Wednesday night, and it’s thought to be carbon monoxide, although the coroner will investigate.
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Kate
Living space is under pressure. Côte-des-Neiges-NDG borough wants tighter controls on Airbnb while Park Ex activists are calling for social housing instead of uncontrolled commercial development.
david100
Airbnb should be straight up banned outside of Ville Marie and buildings under 10 years old. There’s absolutely no public policy defense to inviting speculators to take rental units in established neighborhoods off the rental market, thereby raising the cost of housing for everyone, so that they can let them on a (very) short term basis to tourists, effectively acting as illegal hotel rooms for profits to be captured by (1) the speculator; (2) whatever lender he has; and (3) Airbnb in San Francisco.
There is, however, a good reason to move investment dollars into new construction that investors will fund with Airbnb (and others) in mind, but that will end up being here for the next 50-100 years, ergo eventually converted to rental stock. So, we should allow this sort of short term rental down in Ville Marie where it will mean more construction of towers that will eventually become rental units. And we should cap it at 10 years so that (1) investors can know the value of their investment; (2) there’s a constant flow of capital into new units; (3) we force units into the regular rental market after 10 years; and (4) along the way we keep construction and redevelop steaming along.
The time to act on this is now. In Vancouver, so many people are so far gone with real estate investments, that it’s difficult to act without impoverishing people, literally, not figuratively. You want to shift people into productive investments instead of incentivizing parking money in a property and relying on scarcity and immigration to fund the retirement. In central Montreal, so many of the owners don’t even live in the city, and they’re not numerous enough that a city administration could lose an election by crossing them. But if you let it continue, it’ll get to be a problem like in Vancouver, where everyone is so invested in the real estate industry that it becomes politically difficult to wind it down. And that’s at the expense of Quebec more broadly, where investment in productive enterprises (as opposed to real estate) has always been higher than in Canada.
Ephraim
@david100 Faster solution. Revenu Quebec can require AirBnB to issue Releve for the income. At that point, they will receive forms and have to actually pay 100% of the taxes. And since RQ is also the licencing bureau and the fines start at $2500 per day, getting a list of who has income will allow them to also send out the fines for not being registered. My guess is that a few days after hearing that RQ is getting their name, their address, their SIN number and all the income, you will see most of this dry up. (And then they can go for the missing GST, QST and property tax.) It’s all underground tax evasion.
John B
I don’t think we should restrict geographically. When family visits they often stay in an AirBnB, because: I live in a crowded apartment with animals some people are allergic to, and there are no hotels in Verdun. I used to live in NDG, where there are also no hotels.
AirBnB gives me the freedom live in a smaller apartment with no guest room, and still have people be close by when they visit. That’s great!
If there is so much demand for AirBnBs that they’re able to suck up rental space, (and apparently they are), then maybe we should find ways to make it easier for Hotels to compete. Part of that is requiring AirBnBs to charge & report taxes, and be properly insured, as Ephraim suggests. Part of that is probably to let hotels exist in neighbourhoods where people live.
Bill Binns
I think a better solution than banning is to simply limit each individual address to X days of short term rental per year. Each rental requires a permit that costs something (but is quick and easy to get online) and renting without a permit has a very steep fine. This allows AirBnB to be what it was supposed to be (short term apartment swapping) without neighborhoods being turned into hotel districts. Landlords should be able to ban tenants from subbing their apartments out as well.
Tee Owe
With John B and Bill on this one, as well as TC on another thread – we should not throw out useful innovations just because at first use they are abused – work with them, take advantage, get it right.
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Kate
As recently noted, the city is holding public discussions over how to redevelop old industrial parts of Lachine, and now it’s doing the same for east-end Longue-Pointe so’s to find a way to mix industrial and residential streets acceptably. The Journal calls the idea an écoparc industriel.
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Kate
The music teacher Daisy Peterson Sweeney will have a park and an adjoining street named after her.
Jack
Nice
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Kate
The city’s access to property grant is so popular that it’s having trouble keeping up with demand, a delay being blamed on their computer system.
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Kate
A Rivière-des-Prairies woman who fell on an icy sidewalk a year ago is suing the city for nearly half a million dollars after she broke her ankle in three places and may have permanent consequences from the injury. (The CTV link is from a year ago.)
She says her sidewalk is just as bad again this year.
(There’s no denying sidewalks have been bad this winter. I took a classic misstep and fall myself on Wednesday, on Jarry.)
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Kate
Anjou mayor Luis Miranda says he’s going to ignore city orders over snow removal and proceed as he sees fit. In December the city said no when he wanted to clear away a snowfall, and he says the lingering effects of that precipitation are still messing up his borough’s streets. Miranda has even issued an apology to his constituents.
dhomas
I live right on the border of Anjou and MHM; my house is in Anjou, but literally the other side of the street is MHM. I have to say, the streets on the Anjou side are always cleaned much faster than the MHM side. I don’t know how this affects costs, but I must say that it’s much more pleasant to drive on the streets of Anjou. Sidewalks are pretty crummy all over town, but at least the chenillettes are passing and putting down salt in Anjou.
dhomas
One thing I’ve yet to see in Anjou is those “croque glace” machines the city has shown off: https://youtu.be/rMggMc05oDg
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Kate
The Grey Nuns want to give their 17th-century hospital building on St-Pierre Street to the city, to be used for education and research. but they estimate the needed work at $35 million.
david100
they’re 30 million short, that seems like an enormous amount. I’m really surprised that the nuns had 4 million clams to contribute, pretty impressive that they’d want to save the building instead of just deciding to re-establish the convent on Aruba.
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