The city’s taking over an as-yet-unnamed 380-bed hotel to extend the spaces available for the homeless this winter.
We can assume it’s not the Ritz Carlton.
Updates from October, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
According to CBC/Radio-Canada, a 42% of Montrealers are dreaming of moving off the island to live more cheaply among the chip shacks and raccoons.
walkerp
Be careful what you wish for. Things are not always what they seem.
steph
Can I buy one of these abandoned “on island house” at bottom dollar? … … … oh everyone dreaming to live off island doesn’t own anything yet, and probably never will… ejh.
qatzelok
Six months ago, the same people were dreaming of a world made of toilet paper.
Meezly
I can sympathize with people who WFH in a cramped rental apartment. If you’re relatively mobile, you could rent a bigger place for less outside Montreal. Let’s say the pandemic goes on for another year, you’d be potentially saving a few hundred bucks per month. So you have the advantage of living in a bigger space and saving some money (assuming you already have a car). When the pandemic ends, you have the option of moving back to the city, or if you realize you don’t mind living cheaply among the chip shacks and raccoons, then you”re set. But if enough people are moving out of the city, this gives city dwellers a chance to find better apartments if there are more vacancies, no? I imagine there’s probably a renter/buyers market right now?
Mark Côté
I imagine there’s probably a renter/buyers market right now?
Not yet anyway… Montreal housing prices are up 1.9% from August to September.
DeWolf
People who want a suburban lifestyle should probably leave the city because they’re the ones that get most upset about parking and bike lanes and things like that. But I suspect a lot of people simply want more space for less money, in which case they might be sorely disappointed, because the nothing is cheap anymore, even a ticky-tack box in a fourth-ring suburb like Mirabel.
Blork
I’m not sure people think in terms of “suburban lifestyle” specifically. Like DeWolf says, it more about getting more space, both for WFH reasons and other reasons, especially if you have a young and growing family. This includes realizing (possibly prompted by pandemic lockdowns) that maybe you’re 40 now and don’t need to be in walking distance of ten bars and 100 restaurants because you only go out a few times a month, so why pay the urban premium when you’re not living very urbanly?
That’s partly what prompted my move off the island a while back. I never thought I’d live in the suburbs, but I bought a condo on the Plateau and after living there for a year and realizing I was no longer going out to bars and restaurants five nights a week like I used to, and with my GF and I planning to move in together — and both of us being people who need space and our own home offices — we looked farther afield. We found a three bedroom house near an enormous park filled with wild animals for about the price of a 700 square foot condo on the Plateau. And the public transit commute was no worse than coming downtown from Rosemont or Lasalle.
And it’s true that nothing is cheap anymore. But a neighbouring house over here is on the market now for $490,000, and that’s for a two story, four bedroom house in very good condition with a gigantic back yard and an above-ground pool. What can you get for $490,000 on the Plateau these days? Another neighbouring house is asking $265,000 for a three bedroom house with a decent sized back yard, but that one needs a bit of reno. Still better than spending $700,000 on the Plateau or spending $400,000 and trying to cram two adults, a child or two, and one or two home offices into 700 square feet.
DeWolf
That’s exactly what I meant by suburban lifestyle, Blork! It’s a question of priorities and preferences.
For me the value of living in the city means being able to get around without a car. It’s not about being close to a dozen different bars – I care more that there is a dozen different grocery stores within a 10-minute walk of my house. If I feel stir crazy I can walk around and admire the architecture. I can sit on my front porch and be entertained just by watching the street because there are so many different people walking or cycling by. And I do like summer festivals, so it’s nice to be able to walk downtown in 45 minutes for that kind of thing. The trade-off for that in terms of space isn’t so severe: my wife and I share 1,000 square foot of space with a very functional backyard, although admittedly the entire garden is smaller than most suburbanites’ pools. We have always worked from home, but for us that means using our laptops to work in an armchair, on the sofa or at the dining table. In normal times I usually go out to a different café everyday where I find I am most productive.
But that’s us. It’s different for everyone. And that’s why I say it’s a lifestyle – it really depends on how you want to live, what kind of spaces you value and how you prefer to transport yourself when you’re outside the house.
Blork
I’m just saying that people probably don’t place that “suburban lifestyle” label on it when they start thinking about moving to gain more space at less cost.
DeWolf, your situation sounds like it works well for you, and that’s great. I can totally understand what you mean. But our home offices here are more than just laptops and easy chairs. We both spend a lot of time on long phone and Zoom/Slack calls. I have two desks and three monitors, she has a huge iMac and a laptop and typewriters (don’t ask). Between us we have three printers, all sorts of files and cabinets, and both of us really prefer to have our own space when we’re working and find it hard to work when the other one is on a long and loud call. We don’t have kids, but if we did that would be a whole other complication.
I do miss the food situation in the city, although I’m fussy so even if I lived there it wouldn’t help much because the places I like are so spread out and disparate. As it is, I actually get around the city more as a person living in Longueuil than I ever did when I lived on the island. Less frequently, but with more coverage. I can go in on a Saturday or Sunday (driving; my bad) and hit the Jean-Talon Market, a couple of stores I like in Mile-end and the Plateau, get lunch in St-Henri, and be back home within a few hours. And I usually don’t have traffic or parking problems because I don’t go at peak times and I don’t complain about paying for parking.
When I lived on the Plateau I pretty much did everything on the Plateau, which is nice and Jane-Jacoby, but ultimately seemed sort of limiting.
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Kate
A woman who lured two bikers into a deadly trap was sentenced to 17 years on Monday. Allowing for time served, she faces 11 years behind bars. Her associate, already convicted of murder, is doing a minimum 25-year life sentence.
walkerp
That story captures well the old edict that there is no honour among thieves. Nasty business.
Kate
But also, that modern-day gangsters still have molls.
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Kate
As presaged, François Legault has extended the red-zone restrictions until November 23, another four weeks.
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Kate
Radio-Canada finds that voter support for Valérie Plante is down, but how many of the people they surveyed will actually cast a ballot next November? Our municipal representatives are elected by fewer than half the eligible voters.
Plante has become a magnet for all kinds of dissatisfaction – negative social media junk posted by angry people in Joliette, people chronically pissed off about projects like the Turcot and the REM that Montreal didn’t ask for that were wished on it by Quebec, and the elephant in the room, Covid restrictions. Anyone who’d been mayor through this period would be getting grouched at; that Plante is a woman makes her even more of a target.
Jebediah Pallindrome
I think you nailed it… we can wax poetic all we like about how woke we are but Montrealers have this bizarre affinity for Boss Tweed types that went out of vogue (at least in the States) quite some time ago.
What’s remarkable to me is how Montrealers’ complaints of their city, its infrastructure, and their political situation consistently comes across as something that’s unique to Montreal, when in fact Montreal is – politically – not fundamentally different from many other North American cities. The fact it has an elected political party as government is very distinct, but for some reason Montrealers almost seem like they’d prefer mayoral-candidate driven parties that disappear once the candidate loses.
How does this city hate its major comparative administrative advantage?
Plante has done an objectively fine job and her ‘scandals’ pale in comparison with her predecessors.
That said, she should be much clearer about what is and isn’t municipal areas of jurisdiction. I think she could be more critical of the province without too much kick back. I think she could say things like ‘we never asked for this and it’s not what we need’ (re the REM) and Lego wouldn’t be able to do too much in return, but what do I know.
Mr.Chinaski
The problem with municipal elections is that they are driven by people not happy about things more than the opposite. Parties spend much more energy mobilizing their base than pushing the actual platforms to run with. They spend their money doing pernicious polarization (in this case, amplified by the empathic side of Plante) and wedge issues (parking, bike paths, housing price, Lachine Marina, etc..). Covid-19 just acts as an amplifier of all-things-urban.
This is not good news for her if you look at previous elections and how sitting mayors got kicked out because of these same reasons… Cause it’s not like all these issues appeared by magic in the past 3 years, they were always there. People whined about the same things 5, 10, 15 years ago.
Azrhey
Last summer, when we could have a drink all together at work in the backyard, my boss who lives in Lorraine was b!tching and moaning about Montreal and Plante in a boderline sexist discourse. Saying that Montreal was the worst managed city in North American, maybe the world. Now, dudedad lived in Lévis and in Lorraine all his life but he opined that Montreal was worse than every major city in the world. I told him I had lived in half a dozen major cities in North America and Europe and Montreal was very…. very… average. they all were. he couldn’t believe that Montreal was not, in my opinion, a major disaster zone. Major cities are just all meh when it comes to management and organization. What they all have in common is citizens, usually living in the outer crowns, complaining about how the central city mayors are the worst in the world. London, Paris, Lisbon, Barcelona, Chicago, Montreal, Berlin, Rome…. all the same really. Well, maybe not Copenhagen, but still.
Kevin
Nah. Montreal construction truly is in a class of its own.
The lack of co-ordination, the lack of notification — it’s amazingly inept.I think part of it is just too many cooks, too many little fiefdoms, and it’s not just geography (but seriously, 19 boroughs is stupid) it’s the overlapping spheres of power.
Like, the entirely artificial distinction between streets controlled by the borough and those controlled by the central city. It seems like the only reason it exists is to cripple decision-making. It literally prevents anyone from taking action. Why would a city do that to itself?
And that leads to the desire to have a strongman plow through the madness. When nothing works right (and really, there is so much stuff in Montreal that does not work right) the desire to have someone ram through something, anything, is appealing.
Supposedly controlling this madness in Montreal are more than 100 elected officials at the municipal level, arranged in layers that the majority of the public does not understand, with local media that does not have the resources to investigate and review each candidate during an election campaign.
Jebediah Pallindrome
^ This is what I mean… I live in a large American city that has far far fewer elected officials and they’re completely overwhelmed. The city’s overly dependent on the state to get anything done, and this often puts it at odds with state priorities. Moreover, the city I live in was home to many competing industrial concerns, all of whom created their own borough govts and local police, etc. So it’s more divided but with fewer people in charge or taking responsibility.
There are streets here where only one side was repaved because the other side was technically across a borough line (boroughs here are between towns and cities, not necessarily parts of a city like in Montreal). In another case, half a street was re-paved because that was the half with standalone single-family homes and only they had voting rights. The apartment building side of the street didn’t get paved because they can’t vote.
Montreal’s a big city and big cities need big governments. If it were a province it would be fifth largest, behind only Ontario, Quebec, BC and Alberta. If all of Montreal’s metro population were unified under a single city, that city would have a population larger than Alberta!
Administration of 2 million people isn’t made easier by a ‘less is more’ approach. I’m not sure how much longer Montreal can coast on a policy of ‘meh, people just don’t understand how shit works’. Eventually the city’s going to have to go on the offensive and make sure citizens know what’s going on.
Kevin
Jebediah Pallindrome
Do you know about the water meter scandal?
This large government with dozens of elected officials passed the largest contract in the city’s history with a rubber stamp and no oversight. Not a peep of disagreement.They only got caught when an internal audit by the federal government caught two Revenue Canada employees — and that turned up bribes from multiple companies, and that stumbled onto the Water Meter thing, and so on and so forth.
More does not mean better oversight. In Montreal’s case, more just means it’s impossible for the public to oversee the politicians. It’s become a game of 100+ card Monte
John B
What do the grumpy people want, a return to cars everywhere, more gridlock, and fewer alternative transport methods to get around the traffic?
The Plante administration could have probably done some things better, but since I’m a bit of a hippie I feel like they’ve let opportunities go to waste. For example, all the streets that were pietonnisé for COVID should have been kept pietonnisé, with some modifications to make delivery easier. The pain of removing traffic was past and after several months it had been proven that life was possible without cars on those streets, but all that will be forgotten with the return of cars to formerly non-car commercial streets.
The question of if we vote for Plante next year will probably depend a lot on who she’s against. If Coderre comes promising a return to the past will people actually vote for that? What about if somebody out-lefts and out-greens Projet, would people vote for that instead? I would definitely listen to someone who offered equal bike & car parking on the street.
JaneyB
My current theory is that it’s drama-withdrawal. Not enough scandals disorients some people here. Now they can’t even go out for a night on the town to get any kind of intrigue. It’s just Soviet-style grim, alone with artisanal cheese. Parking whiners are eternal, of course. Maybe if she wore a mink coat and smoked a cigar the haters would feel the familiar echo of bygone backroom deal-maker days.
MarcG
Alone with artisanal cheese! This needs to be the title of your pandemic memoirs.
Jebediah Pallindrome
^ Kevin
The water meter scandal was eight years ago, three mayors ago. And I don’t think it necessarily contradicts my point either. Tremblay et al surrounded themselves with yes men. They weren’t a political party in the same way Projet is. We have plenty of evidence that not everyone tows the company line and that’s a very good thing indeed.
I’ll counter your example with one from my city. In 2012 my city had problems with the water authority, so it semi-privatized it as a cost reduction solution. Within a year lead levels in tap water reached Flint levels. It had never been higher than the normal acceptable range prior to that.
America has dozens upon dozens of failed, failing and hanging-on-by-a-thread cities. Even though Montreal followed American city development patterns throughout much of its history, mercifully it veered off down its own path. The forced mergers were a godsend, we have no idea how lucky we are.
Big cities need big governments. Plante’s non-scandal scandals are proof positive we’re heading in the right direction. We bitch and moan about bike lanes, not elevated cancer and birth defect rates as a consequence of ‘no government is best government’ policies.
Kevin
Jebediah
Big =/= effective. It just means someone else to blame.The forced mergers were rejected by the population a few years later.
If Montreal had done the same thing as your city with water, we would have had the same result — because there is no oversight.
In fact, Montreal’s been cost-cutting on infrastructure for decades. And when push came to shove to fix it, Plante also decided to pass the buck.And if you think Projet Montreal isn’t full of yes men and women, please be introduced to Sue Montgomery, Julie-Pascale Provost, Luc Ferrandez, and others.
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Kate
According to Metro, the STM has not paid any ransom to reclaim its website, nor does it intend to. This piece says that even external sales of passes for November are blocked, so if you’re accustomed to updating your Opus anywhere but at a metro station, you’re SOL.
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Kate
Quebec’s red zones are likely to be extended when François Legault holds his presser Monday afternoon. But a revolt is brewing, as 200 owners of gyms, yoga schools, dojos and so forth are poised to defy any further measures and reopen later this week regardless.
Ephraim
I wonder what they will say if they are the centre of an outbreak and Quebec specifically mentions them by name. This is the kind of thing that can ruin a business for a LONG time.
walkerp
So much rolleyes. The mental health of their clients argument is particularly annoying. “Wellness” is the ultimate symptom of the extreme individualism that marks these times. If physical fitness is what you need to maintain your mental well-being then go do it outside, where you will get even more benefits.
Douglas
I support them opening up.
If the government can’t prove those places were the cause of outbreaks, then don’t shut them down.
And they haven’t proved that gyms were where people were having mass outbreaks.
Douglas
walkerp.
The government used the entire “mental health” mumbo jumbo argument for keeping certain businesses open during the lockdown. So the gyms should use the same mumbo jumbo and open.
These businesses are livelihoods, its how food gets put on the table for people.
Covid is going to be with us for another 6-8 months. Might as well live with it rather than put your head under a rock and try to pretend you will eradicate it, when we failed to do so after 7 months.
Andrew
One spin class in Hamilton followed all the distancing guidelines, screened everyone for symptoms and still turned into a superspreader event with 74 cases.
https://www.refinery29.com/en-ca/2020/10/10097157/spinco-hamilton-superspreader-event
So at least one mass outbreak.
walkerp
Just because the government’s policies are not totally coherent does not mean you get to make yourself an exception. This virus is extremely pernicious. We all have to make sacrifices. I’m sorry for the people that run those gyms. It sucks. I’m really freaked out about the local Y, which I used to go to almost every day. Will it even survive? It’s terrible. But this is a war, we all have to sacrifice for the greater good. Indoor exercise spaces are ideal covid-19 distribution zones: small spaces, many people breathing heavily. Go outside and exercise.
MarcG
Can someone explain to me what the worst case scenario is for small business owners under these circumstances? They can’t pay their rent or the loans they took out to start the business so declare bankruptcy… then go on EI…? Or are there any systems in place for rent and loan forgiveness to help them coast through?
Ephraim
Change the requirements for them to open up. Require HEPA filtering with air circulation being changed every 5 minutes and employees cleaning the machinery between customers. It takes 10 minutes to clean the machine between uses, as the chemicals need to stay WET for 10 minutes to work. (Read the packaging.) If they can certify this, let them open…. with one caveat, if they are found to be the centre of a spread, they will be required to pay a fine per client or close for x days per client, plus the name of the place will be publicly announced, so that people who went there know to be tested….
Douglas, unlike the United States, we have an economic circle of responsibility in Canada. What one business does in this regards can lead to hospital bills that we all, as a society pay for. You don’t get to do what you want just because you want to do it. We have food inspection at restaurants, etc.
jeather
The problem is that you can’t predict which given gym might have an outbreak. That place in Hamilton, it wasn’t more lax than all the others, it was unlucky. And some gym will be unlucky, not because they are bad but because gyms are particularly good at spreading. It really is terrible for gyms; I don’t know what the solution is. But it isn’t to just shut them when any one gym happens to have an outbreak.
Joey
@jeather isn’t it, though? If you know any one (more likely more than one) is likely to be the centre of an outbreak, why *not* close them all until case counts start growing at a more manageable rate – especially given the many different support programs available to small business owners?
jeather
I was saying you can’t just say “well, we will close any gym if and only if that gym has an outbreak”, because it’s not about one gym having bad practices, it’s about gyms being unsafe in general and which gym has the outbreak would be due to bad luck. I agree that they should be closed right now.
Douglas
70% of deaths in Canada come from people 80 years old and above.
We are bankrupting entire industries for 80 year olds that don’t even frequent these establishments.
Genius.
Douglas
MarcG
Businesses have nothing. 0 for personal.
They have partial rent from the government.
After that, there is no way to put food on the table for their own families when there is no income from their business.
MarcG
Since Douglas is obviously not to be trusted on this subject I did a tiny bit of research myself and found that the province is offering loans which may not need to be repaid if they are used to pay for the following things during forced closure: municipal and school taxes, rent (the part not covered by another government program), interest on a mortgage, utility costs (e.g., electricity, gas), insurance, telecommunication costs, association fees and licenses (https://www.cfib-fcei.ca/en/advocacy/employment-and-labour/quebec-covid-19-relief-measures-for-your-business). Also the feds are offering to cover 90% of rent cost with the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy (https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2020/10/government-announces-new-targeted-support-to-help-businesses-through-pandemic.html). There’s a wage subsidy as well so if you stay open for take out and delivery then paying your employees doesn’t cost as much. There’s a bunch of stuff about interest-free loans as well, so presumably you could take one of those and swap it for your existing non-interest-free loan.
Kate
MarcG, thanks for all the research. The links in your comment meant it was automatically held for approval, sorry about the delay posting.
MarcG
More thoughts on small business owners: a business which is forced to close completely, like gyms, has the government covering most of their business expenses, but it’s true that they have no income, so they would have to dip into saving or take out a loan. For a very small business, like some of those tiny gyms you see, I imagine they’ll close and declare bankruptcy or something, but presumably the owner of Energie Cardio has a few bucks put aside for a rainy day, or other investments that generate income, and won’t starve to death while they wait this out.
Also:
Viruses are not like fires, you don’t have to be inside the burning building in order to get hurt. The people leave the gyms/restaurants/bars and spread it around.
Death is not the only negative outcome. You’re not considering the fact that being ill is horrible and that hospitals have limits.JaneyB
@ Douglas – Post-covid illness may be more troubling (and expensive) than the death rate. It is not just about the aged.
We’re surrounded by fresh air and people stayed fit before gyms. I hate the covid restrictions too and all the idiots who can’t do simple things but the bottom line is that the hospitals can only bear so much. Europe is falling over a cliff. Our numbers are holding and on the way down in Montreal. Steady, as she goes.
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Kate
A man was stabbed in Villeray early Monday, not fatally, and – as in several recent incidents around town – he’s not cooperating with police.
Does anyone know: if you’re the apparent victim as in this case, and you know who attacked you and why, and police suspect you know but you don’t want to tell them, do they have any leverage against you?
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Kate
Several mosques around town have been broken into recently. Is it common to call 911 for a break-in in the wee hours to be told there are no cars available?
Brett
If the Imam who called told the dispatcher that the perp was scared off and now long gone, then yea, I’m sure the dispatcher would tell him to wait till the morning for the cops to come around and fill out a report. However if the Imam really wanted the Law to show up at that hour, he could have said something about how there were currently hundreds of faithful Muslims gathered for Laylat al-Qadr or whatever. In that case I’m sure the police would have showed up lickety-split 😉
Ephraim 19:32 on 2020-10-26 Permalink
Okay, so it’s not Labelle, since they have about 100 rooms. And this would need to be about 190 rooms, because they want it to be 2 to a room with a divider. My first guess would be Espresso, which has about 185 rooms. Travelodge has about 240 rooms.
Kate 20:05 on 2020-10-26 Permalink
According to Google, it costs a minimum $666 to stay one night at the Espresso. Most stays are priced at $720. That’s classy digs.
Joey 20:09 on 2020-10-26 Permalink
Kate, I suspect Ephraim is right and that price is a function of there being basically no rooms available. If you try and book random nights in January you get no vacancy. Given that it’s a typically cheap, three-star joint, that $666 figure is likely just a function of the city taking over (or perhaps it’s closing for the time being).
J 20:35 on 2020-10-26 Permalink
Surely you mean “Expresso”
Ephraim 20:37 on 2020-10-26 Permalink
It’s likely they didn’t close out all the rooms and the software repriced because of lack of availability. You know… the last room in the house is the most expensive room in the house 🙂
Kate 21:45 on 2020-10-26 Permalink
J, I think I meant “café fort style italienne”.
Kevin 21:46 on 2020-10-26 Permalink
Kate
BEN, J’ADORE LE FRANCAIS MAIS C’EST UN PEU TROP, N’EST-CE PAS?!
Kate 22:54 on 2020-10-26 Permalink
https://lorembarnak.com/
JaneyB 09:03 on 2020-10-27 Permalink
Kate – Oh, that link is priceless. My new favourite thing!