Early in the pandemic the idea was briefly floated to close the bridges and isolate Montreal. Aaron Derfel explains here how those tables have turned and we might want to protect the city from the 450.
Updates from July, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
Sorry if this runs into a paywall, but this is an interesting piece in the NY Times on social activist Balarama Holness.
ant6n
I had followed him on twitter during the election, and I thought it was odd how he was trying to become a municipal representative while mostly talking about systemic racism in a general sort of way. Perhaps it would’ve made more sense to talk more about things like mobility, services, snow cleaning and quality of life.
-
Kate
I know this is not specifically Montreal news, but I think it’s important and not getting much social play (at least, on the feeds I follow): the Supreme Court upheld a law banning genetic discrimination on Friday. Neither employers nor insurance companies will be allowed to demand your genetic information.
JaneyB
That’s great news!
Matthew
The fact that the court found suppressing discrimination is a valid criminal law purpose bodes well for some of the more fractious policing and criminal justice reforms certain communities have been asking for.
-
Kate
The city has announced yet another extension of the state of emergency that began on March 27.
-
Kate
The STM is planning its next steps: more free masks and an app to distribute information, in real time, about how crowded buses and metros are.
I heard on noon radio news that fares will start to be collected on the bus on July 20.
Max
I spotted a couple of inspectors on the Vaudreuil train line this week. For the first time in months. Which sucks, cuz I was kind of enjoying my free mid-day socially-distanced train rides. I guess I’ll have to buy a pass for August.
-
Kate
The forecast is for a 36° high Friday afternoon – not a humidex, an actual thermometer reading. Thursday, the CBC radio host kept saying we’d narrowly avoided a thunderstorm, yadda yadda. Lady, I was praying for a thunderstorm. I’m praying for a thunderstorm this afternoon.
Kevin
A thunderstorm ain’t gonna help. Tropical storm Fay (it’ll be a depression at that point) rolls over us Saturday afternoon.
I can’t take this. The heat is murder on my nerve damage.
Kate
Tomorrow’s high is 25°. I’m practically getting out the snow boots.
EmilyG
Was that the CBC radio morning guest host on this week? She tends to be a bit, uh, naive about weather conditions.
Kate
I think so, Emily.
EmilyG
She drives a car to work, and is quite well-off. I don’t think she needs to worry much about the weather if she can presumably stay inside comfortable-temperature spaces most of the time.
-
Kate
Some weekend traffic notes from CTV.
-
Kate
The local real estate market, which cooled briefly faced with the pandemic, is returning to the boil and prices continue to rise. Where are people getting money for houses in this economy? Beats me.
Uatu
Unfortunately, maybe from a recent inheritance
Mark
Real estate is a global asset class. Despite any local woes, foreign investors see Canadian housing stock as a strong, stable bet. Also, tech is minting millionaires. Shopify alone has added a thousand wealthy buyers into the Toronto/Montreal/Ottawa real-estate pool.
Myles
Once you’ve got a certain amount of money, you can always find some exotic investment tool to make even more off any catastrophe.
Joey
Prices are up because inventory is down… so for the last six weeks or so, buyers have outnumbered sellers. Anecdotally in Mile-End it seems everything that’s for sale has sold quickly and often above asking. Presumably many of those buyers “overpaid” because they had tight timelines, e.g., if they had sold their home and had to be out by a certain date. Maybe some took advantage of the excess AirBnB stock for the short-term, but I’m guessing these folks would prefer to move once, even if it meant paying more than they had anticipated. I would imagine that things will even out soon enough as more prospective sellers find themselves eager to cash in, though it’s a bit of a gamble – as great as it may seem to sell in a hot market like this, there’s not much value if you quickly become a buyer as well. Kind of an ideal moment to sell your Plateau apartment and move to the suburbs or the country…
Ephraim
Wonder how many realize that they won’t be able to put them on AirBnB without a permit and the city is only issuing permits for certain streets? (And I have noticed that places that were on AirBnB are going back to the condo market. But agents are still not properly disclosing the new realities… which opens them to lawsuits.) In any case, I have noticed that the Plateau is SIGNIFICANTLY up. There are three duplexes right near Prince Arthur for over $1.1M each. Not that I should complain…. The current estimate for my place means that I’m up more than 2.5X in 10+ years. Values are up about 25%. But it also depends on if you are condo, single ownership or coproperty, with coproperty still having the lowest values.
JP
I’m not sure where anyone is getting the money either, but then I remember what I do for a living…and some of the crappy education and career decisions I’ve made, so that I’ll probably never own anything, unless/until I inherit.
Friends who are professionals with good careers (i.e., they make above-average salaries) and have a substantial amount for a down payment have lost more than one bid…apparently to people willing to pay $600,000-$800,000 cash from the get-go. I suspect this could be due to the reasons outlined by others above, and quite frankly, money from people moving from elsewhere to Canada, which is a stable place to live and park money, if you have it.
Kevin
I suspect this is the last gasp of the hot real estate market.
Pre-approved mortgages with few properties on the market led to a spike in prices.If the pandemic really does produce a change in work and lifestyles, I suspect a lot of people are going to permanently move out of the city. Who wants to live *and work* in a 3 1/2?
Mr.Chinaski
Other side of the medal, condos aren’t selling great in some neighborhoods, airbnb has flooded the market and inventory is going up :
JP
“If the pandemic really does produce a change in work and lifestyles, I suspect a lot of people are going to permanently move out of the city. Who wants to live *and work* in a 3 1/2?”
So true.
Blork
Not just out of the city, but *away* from the city. Even before the pandemic I was reading about smaller cities and towns getting a bit of a rebirth from young people getting out of Dodge and moving to smaller towns where life is more affordable and (from some points of view) more pleasant. Remote working enables this hugely, but many of the people making the move are also artists who no longer feel the need to have physical proximity with their various agents, galleries, etc.
Most of the articles I saw were from the US, where they would talk about people moving from San Francisco or New York to places in Minnesota or Iowa or whatever. But I’ve also seen similar articles about people moving to small towns in Southern Ontario or Manitoba and whatnot.
Certainly for 2020 my life would be no different if I lived in Drummondville, Rimouski, or Métabetchouan–Lac-à-la-Croix instead of Longueuil. Or not much different. I’ve only been to three restaurants since mid-March (for take-out only), have done zero cultural activities outside of the house, and have only done one face-to-face visit with a friend. I could have done all that from anywhere. That said, I will be really really really happy when it’s no big deal to go to the Jean-Talon Market and so on; places which have no equivalent in those other towns.
More on-topic, I will attest that my five year suburban experiment (started in 2003 and still on-going) has never felt better. There are only two humans living in this house, but we both like a lot of space and both want our own home offices. We are both done with tripping over the other person and trying to work by plunking a laptop down on the dryer in the back and calling it a desk. No. She gets a room of her own and I get a room of my own and that’s how we stay civilized. Also, a back yard with garden boxes. A workshop in the basement (that we actually use). Space for all those book shelves AND a huge TV. A treadmill and exercise area. Etc. etc. No way we could afford that in the city, at least not in the parts of the city where we’d want to live.
For reference: I saw a place for sale in Villeray yesterday that looked really nice. It was the right size (four bedrooms – or two bedrooms and two offices) and had a spectacular kitchen in terms of the workspace and whatnot. It was thoroughly renovated, which means there’s no way it’s anywhere near what I could afford, but I kept looking anyway. The renovations were tasteful and allowed the place to keep its original charm (not a total do-over like some of those highly designery places we’ve been seeing). All in all what I’d call a dream house in Villeray. I figured it would be around $800,000, which is way above my budget. Then I checked -> $1.5 million. FFS! $1.5 million for what is basically a regular house but on the nice side, not even a posh Westmount duplex. So Longueuil it is.
Kate
Who wants to live *and work* in a 3 1/2?
I don’t mind it. My landlady calls my place a 4½ but it’s laid out so you couldn’t easily share it with someone else. I’d say I have a kitchen, a bathroom and a double room which is half bedroom, half office/workroom. There’s a sort of salle des pas perdus between the front and back of the flat, which I suppose the landlady counts as a room, but I don’t know what room it would be. Certainly nobody could use it as a bedroom.
Mind you, in summer I also have a tiny back porch and yard, which is nearly a whole extra room, conceptually. But I’ve lived and worked in here through winters and it’s been fine.
Ephraim
I don’t want to live in a small town…. sorry, just not for me. When the big activity in town is going to the mall… no, not for me. Where you can’t walk because there is no sidewalk, not for me. When the best restaurant in town isn’t in town, not for me. When you ask for a half sour pickle and they look at you as if you fell off a turnip truck, not for me. I’m a city boy. I want to walk to a corner store. I want to walk to a restaurant. I want to live among others.
EmilyG
I’m currently living and working in a 3 1/2, now made bearable by air conditioning.
Kate
Ephraim: likewise. I have only ever lived in a city. The country and small towns make me antsy and I know the main reason why: I can’t drive, so I’m always there at someone else’s sufferance, and can’t just leave when I please.
Kate
EmilyG, I know you’re a musician, and I don’t know how that works out in a 3½. The loudest my work gets is occasional passionate keyboarding.
EmilyG
I had to negotiate clarinet practice time with my landlord.
Though most of my paid music work is in the music arrangements I write on my computer. The landlord hates it when I type on my computer too late at night or early in the morning but isn’t bothered by the typing during the day.
Kate
Hates it when you type? Good lord. Are you writing on a Smith-Corona?
EmilyG
The landlord lives below me and sound goes through the floor easily. I type on a computer that’s on a table that’s on the floor.
He says it makes as much noise as a family of five.JaneyB
@Emily G – there’s got to be a way around this eg: some kind of floor sponge or insulation. There are new materials being developed all the time. That’s a very crazy situation.
EmilyG
But he’s a light sleeper.*sigh* And I have to try to go to bed around 10 PM or else I’ll make too much noise walking around on the floors.
Though a solution is to just put my laptop on my lap while typing, if it’s too early or late in the day. But yeah, the situation sucks.Ephraim
I can’t even manage the ‘burbs… mall culture. With a 20 minute walk, I can be at dozens of restaurants, 4 pharmacies, 2 large supermarkets, a multi-cinema, 2 SAQ stores, 2 bakeries, 5 parks, a concert hall, etc. And I can walk from here to the Eaton Centre…. but yet I have only been there once in ten years and that was for dinner at the Time Out place.
@EmilyG Your landlord should have taken the TOP apartment rather than the bottom.. But there are a number of ways to mitigate the noise, in particular a rubber mat and a carpet on top of it. And when they renovate, fire/sound proofing in the ceiling. Caulking all the cracks also helps.
Bryan
@EmilyG I feel your pain. I once had a neighbour call the police on me because of my piano practice. On a digital piano. Which I played using headphones.
If you’re ever interested in playing the Brahms or Beethoven clarinet trios, let me know! I have a cellist I work regularly with.
-
Kate
La Presse reports on two instances where SPVM police used immigration questions and threats on two Black Montrealers (I blogged a less complete story about Lamine Nkouendji a couple of days ago). Is it normal that when police stop you for clipping a yellow light they begin by asking you about your immigration status?
Alex
Is it normal that police even stop you for clipping a yellow in this province? Judging by the way that almost everyone drives I thought it was an accepted practice to blast through until the light is red
Kate
If you’re white it’s probably no big deal.
dwgs
They must have forgotten to beep their horn. That seems to be the accepted practice here, go through way too late but tap the horn once or twice. /s
Ephraim
Maybe it’s time for the government to require the police to read people their rights immediately. Nothing shuts up a policeman faster than “What are my rights? Am I being arrested? I want a lawyer. ” At that point, they have to make a decision.
Incidentally, we also need to make a rule regarding police arrests and stops near the end of their duty cycle. Making a stupid arrest near the end of their cycle is a great way for them to request overtime pay. If we require a superior officer to authorize the overtime and that pay is conditional on the actual prosecution, they will likely stop that practice. It’s a known loophole in policing for earning extra overtime pay.
-
Kate
Excellent piece by CBC’s Verity Stevenson looks at one reason our cops started doing intensive street checks on Black youths: a series of lurid newspaper articles in the 1980s reporting on street gang crime that didn’t exist. But this reportage became a “fact” used to ramp up police funding over time.
Uatu
Yeah, black gangs = crackdown on any black teens. Meanwhile Mom Boucher showed up at a hockey game, was introduced to the crowd and got a huge round of applause. Sure, no systematic racism in Quebec.
Reply