The city has renewed the state of emergency it’s been in since March 27.
Updates from July, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The city is putting up $400K to stimulate downtown shopping. Large outdoor terrasses and temporary public squares are planned, but even reading this item makes it clear how contradictory this has to be: organizing “pop-up art installations and “surprise” music and dance performances” while “encouraging physical distancing and discouraging group gatherings.”
David432
They’re trying to give city workers papers to push when they should be slashing fees, taxes, and other compliance requirements. We’re looking at a catastrophe.
Hamza
That’s a tiny sum for such lofty goals…IIRC the gazebo on the mountain cost about that much
Ian
Classic Montreal response: Is this a problem we can throw clowns at?
dwgs
Nice try Hamza but you’ve underbid, the final cost was 700k. 🙁
Kevin
The city should save its money — it’s going to need it.
I strongly doubt that any government is going to be able to cut taxes for the next few years, because the amount of tax revenue is going to plummet.
I have a feeling that we’re soon going to see more A Louer signs than we did in the mid-90s, and that the value of commercial property is going to nose dive.
david123
If we get a redux of the 1990s economy, and want to make the most of it, then we’ll need 1990s levels of indifference to code enforcement/casual corruption. You could pretty much do whatever you wanted then without really worrying too much about city inspections, compliance, even taxes.
Ian
If we go back to 1990s housing prices I’m definitely buying property this time around, a triplex was only 60k in St-Henri in ’92 😀
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Kate
Metro reports an increased police presence at Cabot Square.
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Kate
Quebec marked 180 new cases of Covid Tuesday, mostly in Montreal, but only one new death.
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Kate
Permits to allow landlords to turn duplexes and triplexes into single-family homes have been suspended during the Covid crisis. Some landlords have launched a petition to break this ban.
david641
Very positive, if approved. But just the start.
This bridges the absolutely cretinous gap between my fellow affordable housing activists, one side (almost all) of which is trying to restrict housing and lock down the Montreal they found when they moved in, and the other side (depressingly small) which correctly understands that the reason that this move is good is the same reason that building more housing is good: unmet demand means higher housing costs, which means gentrification, which means displacement, etc.
Let this be a start of a change in the absolutely moronic housing policies in Villeray and Rosemont. And please let I move to the Plateau.
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Kate
It’s not the first time this Point St-Charles building has been in the news. First it was condemned and its regular tenants evicted, then the owner was caught out renting it on Airbnb despite its condition. Now it’s been boarded up after it was being rented out to what La Presse describes as a vulnerable clientele – new arrivals in Canada, who presumably couldn’t find anything else.
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Kate
Google reports a 456% surge in queries about bicycle routes on its Montreal map, confirming an impression that a growing number of people are cycling as a safely distanced way to get around.
Ian
I admit I’ve been using Google maps to try to figure out bike routes but that it doesn’t allow me to choose a preference for bike paths is kind of weird. To be fair though now that Bellechasse is basically a giant two way bike path from Saint Larry all the way out to Saint Michel makes it a lot easier to plan how to get across town.
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