Mayor Plante was denounced by a lawyer after she posted some photos showing herself and her husband doing some renovation work on their Rosemont triplex. The lawyer claimed that landlords are not allowed to do any work at all on properties they intend to rent out, but the Journal looked up the rules and found she’s in the clear.
Updates from February, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
A 16-year-old is in critical condition after getting stabbed in Pointe Claire Tuesday afternoon. Three other teenagers have been arrested.
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Kate
Quebec’s cultural venues will be completely open by the end of this month, and everything else will be open by mid-March as we all, as Papa Legault says, learn to live with Covid.
Kevin
Bonnes nouvelles! Il y a de la place aux soins intensifs!
-Honest tweet from Legault
ted
Fauci and others have confirmed that we will all get omicron because it’s impossible to avoid. It’s mild, doesn’t get in the lungs and mostly people who have it are asymptomatic. The ICU is full of patients who test positive for omicron covid but omicron has no bearing on what’s ailing them. Some of those ICU patients who are incidentally infected with omicron will get very sick or even die or whatever illness landed them there. This offers a useful panic statistic for those who wish to misrespresent the situation as it will artificially and permanently keep a high number of people who “die with covid.”
Ephraim
People are dying from omicron. It’s a fact, not a myth. The majority of them are unvaccinated. You have more cases, because more people get it, therefore the numbers in hospital will be higher, even if most are asymptomatic, especially if they are vaccinated.
MarcG
Santé Quebec’s daily statisticsd indicate the number of people in ICU whose principal diagnosis is Covid – today for example is 134/178 (75%).
Chris
>The ICU is full of patients who test positive for omicron covid but omicron has no bearing on what’s ailing them.
That’s about 1/3 of them, 2/3 are admitted *for* covid.
>People are dying from omicron. … The majority of them are unvaccinated.
That’s an understatement. It’s more like 95%.
I can’t be bother to find links though.
Kate
56 new Covid deaths in Quebec over the last 24 hours.
Just saying.
dhomas
No data for Canada/Quebec, but interesting nonetheless:
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths-by-vaccinationChris
And does anyone think maintaining all these restrictions on society will convince the holdouts to get vaccinated and save their lives? If anything, I think I’d bet the opposite.
Ephraim
@Chris – I always find it amazing that we have people who are anti-vax, but not anti-ventilator
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Kate
In response to the SQDC’s intention to open a branch on Van Horne in the borough, Outremont has passed a bylaw banning the sale of cannabis completely within its borders.
Apparently residents were concerned that the branch would be near schools and daycares. I’m sure the SQDC had big plans to sell pot to three‑year‑olds.
steph
NIMBY a bit? Can’t the government shut down this by-law?
Kate
Someone would probably have to challenge it, no? I have a feeling the SQDC will simply put a branch just outside the border, as the SAQ has done.
Discussion here a few weeks ago about borough-specific bans.
DeWolf
Outremont’s new mayor is really focused on the big priorities!
There’s still no SQDC in Mile End, or the entire western part of the Plateau, so that seems like the logical choice.
carswell
The SQDC doesn’t open stores in communities that don’t want them. That’s been the rule from the start and there’s no indication of it changing any time soon, especially with the anti-pot CAQistes in power. Provincial legislation imposes a number of restrictions on store locations (tightened under Legault), most notably on the distance between the storefront and nearby “vulnerable” populations (educational institutions, daycare centres, etc.), which can make finding sites in the city a challenge, so nearby alternate locations, including in Mile End, may not be as numerous as you think. Also, the proposed Outremont location was within steps of a metro station; not true for anywhere in Mile-End.
In this morning’s soft-hitting Daybreak interview, mayor Desbois sounded quite open to the idea of an SAQ store in his borough. So, yes, it is a kind of NIMBYism. Outremont and other conservative bourgeois communities that have banned SQDC stores (TMR, VSL, etc.) still adhere to the belief that cannabis is evil and corrupting and that an SQDC store will attract a louche clientele who they want to keep far from their ‘hood.
Uatu
They don’t care because they probably get their pot via home delivery anyway
walkerp
I’m pretty pro-weed, but the wailing and gnashing of teeth over this issue in California is quite ridiculous. One of the cities in the SF Bay Area made the same decision and the pot lobby was freaking out. Talking about “marijuana deserts” and how the community would suffer. Consumer capitalism ruins everything.
I get Outremont’s concern. It starts with a weed store in their quartier and the next thing you know lawns get untended, unwashed cars left outside the garage, where does it end?
DavidH
I live one street over from a SQDC and right next to a park. In terms of littering, the effect of the SQDC is worst than the the McDonalds and the A&W combined. Everything is overpackaged and a lot of people don’t wait to get home to consume. I didn’t mind the SQDC at first, but I’m starting to.
walkerp
Yes DavidH, good point, the packaging at the SQDC is disgusting. Once again, the plastic lobby insinuates itself where it’s not needed, using security and safety fears, to get big government bids. So gross. Thanks for mentioning that.
Go black market people! Better quality and less waste.
carswell
Overpackaging is an acknowledged issue in the Canadian industry. The problem is not driven by the plastics industry but by federal legislation, which encourages/requires it, purportedly for safety reasons (packages must be tamper-proof, child-resistant, odourless, etc.). Secondary packaging (cardboard boxes housing the actual container, for example) will soon be eliminated and producers should be moving toward smaller, more easily recyclable, even glass and metal containers. All containers will still be opaque, hermetically sealed and soberly labelled though, at least until federal law changes..
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Kate
A vigil was held Monday to mark a year since the shooting death of 15‑year‑old Meriem Boundaoui in St‑Léonard. There have been no arrests.
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Kate
La Presse visits a 1925 triplex flat little changed since 1925.
In other news of old buildings, Heritage Montreal wants the old Fulford residence on Guy Street deemed a heritage building. I wouldn’t bet on this, since the lot must be considered a highly desirable location for a condo tower.
steph
I’m pretty sure that whole strip of the block is primed for a tower. Chez La Mère Michel is gone, B-B-Barns is gone… developers are handing out fat cheques.
DeWolf
The site is zoned for a maximum of four storeys so it can’t be redeveloped without jumping through major hoops. Any developer who wants to build a tower would need to apply for rezoning, which would trigger a public consultation and potentially a referendum. I’d say the chances of that happening to this particular building is close to zero.
Here’s the fiche de zonage if you’re curious: http://www1.ville.montreal.qc.ca/CartesInteractives/ville-marie/doc/VM_76.pdf
The real play here is from Concordia: they’re keen on assembling all those Guy Street properties for future expansion.
MarcG
Nitpicky, I know, but it’s actually a 5-plex (main floor + basement is one unit and 4 apartments on the upper floors).
Kate
MarcG, I guess I think of “triplex” generically as “one of those 1920s-era three-storey residential plexes” that are all over Montreal. I live in one myself – a slightly atypical one, since the ground floor has always been 2 separate flats, not a big landlord flat like the one in the story. But thanks for the correction.
DeWolf, now that you mention Concordia, I know you’re right. They’ve been very keen on turning that section of town into their bailiwick for awhile now. I wonder if there’s any chance they could use the Fulford house properly, as a high-end office space for their bigwigs, or some sort of university club/ceremonial spot in some fashion.
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Kate
La Presse has a big story Tuesday: the ARTM has brought out a report saying the REM de l’Est is poorly conceived, and the Caisse de dépôt says it can’t proceed with the project given the list of negatives presented.
Chantal Rouleau, responsable de la Métropole, insists the project will go ahead nonetheless, and is going to try to make the ARTM “redo its homework” so that the results come out in favour of the project. Mme Rouleau, that’s not how objective studies of transit needs work.
If anything, I’m mostly surprised that the Caisse is prepared to bow to the ARTM in this. It suggests that they may already have had their own serious doubts about the profitability of the project.
Kevin
I think the multiple waves of the pandemic in the 14 months since the REM de L’Est was proposed have sunk the project.
The STM is losing money, remote work is here to stay, tens of thousands of francophones have left the island… and it’s evident that the REM will do nothing but cannibalize existing transit users.
Add in the construction headache as we enter a generation with fewer workers, and there is no way anyone is starting to build this thing next year, let alone finish by 2029.Jonathan
O-M-G. Shit hit the fan.
Mme. Rouleau is roiling!! I can only imagine. But this report can really be our saving grace.
ant6n
Ha. Very interesting.
But one should be careful with some arguments. For example, it may be desired that a line serves many ppl who already take public transit – if it allows them to travel more quickly and comfortably. New metro users shouldn’t be only built to convert car users to transit, but to improve as many ppl’s lifes as possible. It may even make sense to cannibalize existing metro ridership — if it’s used to relieve over-crowding. But those aren’t really the objectives of the REM est.Daniel D
Anyone know if the REM est has / would have had a non-competitive clause like the one in the West? I.e. to removing bus routes to downtown to funnel passengers onto a single route?
DisgruntledGoat
I’m happy that some due diligence is being done on the project beyond the single stakeholder (Infra). I have been pro-REM in comments here but if the experts say it’s a bad idea *shrug*
That said, the East End is going to suck for transit for the foreseeable future then. I was hoping I could buy some kind of shoebox hovel near a plastic thermoforming plant and commute into downtown by 2030. Instead it will be some kind of hellish crammed bus trip like the Longueil to downtown route before the original REM.
The Integrated PIE-IX BRT Project might be finally getting up and running by Fall 2022, fucking hell! Originally tried in 1989. This is the speed of public transit planning and investment in this city since the late 80s. It’s shocking not not really looking promising.
Uatu
@daniel there’s a non compete on the south shore so it would probably be in the East as well
Faiz Imam
Stopping buses on the south shore makes complete sense, its quite normal to replace dozens of buses with a single high volume trunk line.
Even if they didn’t formalize it in a non compete contract(which I indeed find distasteful) good planning practice would be to terminate all buses at Panama anyways.
Wheras transit in eastern Montreal is totally integrated and complex, Theres really no way at all they could cut it up that wouldn’t be totally stupid.
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Kate
Shots were fired in the de Maisonneuve entrance to Peel metro Monday evening. No victims were found.
Ian 08:48 on 2022-02-09 Permalink
Not a triplex but a 4 plex.
“Valérie Plante est propriétaire avec son mari d’un quintuplex qui a été transformé en quadruplex en 2020, dans l’arrondissement de Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie. Elle y habite avec sa famille. Le couple, considéré comme propriétaire-occupant, a trois locataires.”
Interesting that the building Plante & her husband own used to be a 5 plex but they converted it to a 4 plex, implying the renoviction of at least one renter… Also interesting to note that 4 plexes won’t be included in the proposed rental registry.
Kate 09:00 on 2022-02-09 Permalink
See my note from yesterday about triplexes.
Ian, it’s possible the building was transformed to a quadruplex before she took possession, but admittedly it’s more likely she chose to do that to the building.
YUL514 09:07 on 2022-02-09 Permalink
I wonder what our mayor charges for rent. Hmmm
Blork 09:32 on 2022-02-09 Permalink
“…used to be a 5 plex but they converted it to a 4 plex, implying the renoviction of at least one renter.”
It’s more accurate to say it implies the POSSIBILITY of a renoviction. People change apartments all the time. There’s as much (or greater) chance that the tenant simply ran out their lease and left. Maybe they found a cheaper or better apartment elsewhere. Maybe they were students and they graduated and moved on. Maybe it was a couple who split up. Maybe they found a better job and moved to Chicoutimi.
Kate 09:33 on 2022-02-09 Permalink
YUL514, I also wondered. It would be interesting to be her tenant. If you felt she was charging too much, you could take the story to the media…
Ephraim 09:46 on 2022-02-09 Permalink
Some also have a single bachelor apartment in the basement that doesn’t always rent and is sometimes used as inter-generational, with a door to the rest of the basement on the inside. A separate unit, but it may not have been rented and incorporated into the rest of the home. There are many such cases.
Joey 09:47 on 2022-02-09 Permalink
I too am surprised the journalists working on this story were more interested in the manufactured issue of landlords doing some reno work on their own (go find a contractor who’s available) rather than the more significant quetsion of how the mayor and her husband wound up in a quadruplex that as of 2020 was a quintuplex. Whether the tenant left or was renovitced (willingly or grudgingly) is germane, but the more interesting question is whether a mayor who decries the lack of housing was responsible for removing a dwelling from the already-tight supply. I’m not a huge fan of personal hypocrisy stories involving politicians, if only because they tend to be cheap shots (like this nonsense about the tiles) and discourage good people from public service, but the Projet gang are all about virtue signalling and tsk-tsking everybody else about everything all the time. Wouldn’t surprise me if some enterprising journalist is spending the day exploring a little more.
Kate 09:48 on 2022-02-09 Permalink
Ephraim, yes, I’ve seen a lot of those, but not in 1920s-era triplex/quad/quint buildings, but in the more recent duplexes, usually clad in white brick, with a garage underneath. The door to the bachelor apartment is typically beside the garage door. There are scads of these buildings in Anjou, St‑Léonard, eastern Villeray, Lasalle and indeed any neighbourhood built up from the mid 1950s to mid 1960s.
ant6n 14:26 on 2022-02-09 Permalink
If u buy an apartment and kick out a tenant to use the unit as a residence for yourself or close relative like child, that’s totally fair and not a renoviction. it’s not immoral to combine two units to make a family apartment. Problem is when people kick out tenants for “their own use”, but don’t actually use it, then renovate it and rent it out for much more.
Joey 14:44 on 2022-02-09 Permalink
@ant6n I wonder what proportion of the PM membership as well as PM-elected officials would agree that “it’s not immoral to combine two units to make a family apartment.”
ant6n 18:49 on 2022-02-09 Permalink
A lot of the traditional housing stock in Montreal has apartments in the 50-60sqm range. Its hard to find apartments with 100-120sqm. Back in Berlin I grew up in a 6 person household right in the city center with 140sqm, thats not something you can easily find in Montreal. So youll have a lot of 1 or 2 person households in those small apartments, 4 person households (like the Plante family) will get pushed to the suburbs, which is not something you want. If these families find a way to have a larger apartment in the city, than this can bind the family to the city generationally. Given that the density is about the same, even in the long term (2-4 people in 2 apartments vs 1-2 in 1 apartment over, say, thirty years), I’d say merging two units can be a net benefit to the city.
Or put in another way, as Enrique Peñalosa (Former Mayor of Bogota) said: “children are a kind of indicator species, if we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for everyone.”
Ian 18:58 on 2022-02-09 Permalink
I have somehow miraculously managed to raise 2 children in Montreal apartments without depleting the rental stock. Many of my friends have also managed this. I suspect that this one of those “where there is a will there is a way” situations especially from someone who should serve as an example, like, say, the frickin’ mayor.
Faiz Imam 21:09 on 2022-02-09 Permalink
Ian , raising a child in 600sqft is very much doable, but then again so is using a cargobike to transport a mattress across town.
Certain types of people can manage it, and I respect the hell out of them for it, but its clearly harder and not for everyone.
Ian 23:00 on 2022-02-09 Permalink
Plante’s original unit was 600 Sq. Ft? Funny I didn’t see that number in the article or any other sources, and I have my doubts this was a 5 plex of 3 and a halfs. I do think the mayor of the party constantly claiming to be very concerned about gentrification and dimnishing housing stock should be held if not to a higher standard, at leastthe party line.
I know one 9f the main reasons the city doesn’t go after rapacious developers is a fear of big money lawsuits but as I learn more I realize it’s simply because they are not just had in glove but peas in a pod.
Ian 23:02 on 2022-02-09 Permalink
*typing on a phone, apologies for the many typos
Kevin 10:09 on 2022-02-10 Permalink
We need a convoy protesting to build more 7 1/2s in Montreal.
Blork 11:54 on 2022-02-10 Permalink
The most sensible comments in this thread come from Ant6n. If you want your urban neighbourhoods to be intergenerational and sustainable, and not just something to grow up and escape from, you need to offer a variety of living options. Just because someone can or has raised a family in a tiny apartment, that doesn’t make it the benchmark for everyone.
Kate 15:10 on 2022-02-10 Permalink
That’s one of the issues we have. People really did raise families in tiny spaces. My Plateau apartment, 1880s vintage, felt like about enough room for me, the cat, some books and a computer. But one day the doorbell rang and it was a crowd of people: three generations of a family. The two old ladies were sisters and had grown up in my apartment, along with their parents, and probably other siblings and a grandparent or two. It boggled my mind, but that’s how it was. (The son and grandson were a little abashed by the ebullient old ladies. It was a funny scene.) (Also, cultural footnote, they were Jewish, from a time when that part of town had a working synagogue and a lot of Jewish residents, a long time ago.)
My present apartment is about the same square footage, although laid out differently. I doubt when this building was put up 100 years ago that the units were intended for single people or childless couples. But the landlady certainly doesn’t expect whole families to move in. In a story surprisingly like the previous, one day I heard people outside, and there was an old man pointing to my apartment. He had known the man who lived here, whose name I recognized after a curious rummage through the Lovell directories one day. He remembered correctly that the man had been a security guard, and that he had been impressed by his gun. His whole family had lived in the apartment next to mine, which is a mirror image of my place – which has, in my estimation, about enough room for me, the cat, some books and a computer.
I suppose, given this, adapting more than one unit into a family house makes sense, but then we have to deal with the loss of dwellings involved in the process. I saw a few adaptations of this kind (viewed from the front porch only) when doing census work around Villeray last summer, and suspect it’s a trend that will continue. But something else has to come along and make up for the lost living spaces if it does.
ant6n 15:47 on 2022-02-10 Permalink
Arguably, there’s a bigger “loss” of dwellings with singles occupying one unit, than a family of four occupying two (implied: the increase in the number of single person households puts more pressure on the rental market than families occupying two units).
But one has to be careful with this sort of blame game here. We need to increase the number of residential apartments in urban settings.
Ian 17:34 on 2022-02-10 Permalink
Haha what? Your apologia gymnastics are getting pretty vigorous here – a single person taking up a large unit doesn’t take that apartment off the market – when they eventually vacate the apartment is still there. If a couple merges two apartments into one, there is one less apartment available as rental stock.
People that merge 2 units are taking a unit off the market, permanently. It’s as simple as that. This is not some kind of “blame game” with which “one has to be careful”. We do indeed need to increase the number of residential apartments in urban settings, and part of that is not taking units off the market because someone with the money feels like converting two units into one. This is no different than someone buying a duplex and converting it into a single family dwelling.
More to my point, however, Plante appears to have renovicted someone by converting her 5 plex into a 4 plex, despite talking the anti-gentrification talk for many years. That makes her a hypocrite, and I wonder how many other elected Projet officials are doing the same, playing both sides of the fence.
ant6n 18:18 on 2022-02-10 Permalink
Well I’m sorry it’s beyond your mental gymnastics ability that the variables affecting the rental market doesn’t just consist of the number of rental units (e.g. demographics, home ownership rate and occupancy/sqm play a big role), but if u accuse everyone of being a hypocrite or apologist or whatever, then people won’t try to help you in your understanding, or agree with u, or engage with u, for that matter. But perhaps u can look up the term renoviction on your own time, so that perhaps in the future u can use the term correctly.
Ian 18:29 on 2022-02-10 Permalink
Simply saying “it’s not immoral to combine two units to make a family apartment.” doesn’t make it true, but if using the term “renoviction” to describe this (which I maintain is still a renoviction, legal or not) upsets you, then I will rephrase my statement:
Plante appears to have taken a rental unit off the market by converting her 5 plex into a 4 plex, despite talking the anti-gentrification talk for many years. That makes her a hypocrite, and I wonder how many other elected Projet officials are doing the same, playing both sides of the fence.
Note that I didn’t call YOU a hypocrite, just Plante – though you seem to have taken it that way. Unless of course you personally have converted multiple units into a single family dwelling, in which case then yeah, you’re a hypocrite too – but that’s not my concern here. Plante is our mayor, and should be held to a higher standard.
This is not a matter of mental gymnastics. If you take a unit off the market to make a “nicer” place that’s one less place people can live. Like I said, we do indeed need to increase the number of residential apartments in urban settings, and part of that is not taking units off the market because someone with the money feels like converting two units into one. This is no different than someone buying a duplex and converting it into a single family dwelling – even if it’s not illegal, it is immoral in the midst of a housing crisis.