The teenager stabbed Tuesday in Pointe Claire has died of his injuries.
Updates from February, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
Hey folks, our “covid is a sham” commenters Pierre-Luc, Ted, Phil from Frelighsburg and several other aliases – only posting mockeries about Covid – turn out to be all the same guy, posting from the same IP and parroting the same “freedom convoy” bullshit.
I’m deep-sixing the IP.
Kevin
I’d say I hardly knew him, but that would be a lie…
Robert H
Ha! Votre détecteur d’marde est intact. Brava et bon débarras!
dhomas
I’m ok with people having opinions that diverge from my own. I actually appreciate debating with people who think differently than I do. I have my convictions, but I don’t want to live in an echo chamber.
That said, when the same person/entity starts posting under multiple aliases, I draw a line. This contributes to what is, in my opinion, one of the biggest problems we have today: (social) media manipulation. It was on a small scale on the blog, but I completely agree with shutting it down here and in all forms.Bob R
dhomas – It’s nice you like talking with people who have opinions which diverge from your own. But whether or not covid19 exists is no more a matter of opinion than at what temperature water freezes.
Chris
Bob, literally 2 of the 3 comments Kate linked to acknowledge that covid exists.
Bob R
Chris – perhaps you did not notice I was addressing user named “dhomas”, directly above?
dhomas
@Bob R The opinions expressed by these now-confirmed trolls were not exactly negating the existence of COVID19, but rather what our response to it should be. This is absolutely a matter of opinion and a topic that can be debated. But we should not allow for bots to start shaping our media. Whether it’s an entity that is trying to convince us that COVID doesn’t exist or an entity that is trying to convince us that we should be in lockdown for another 24 months, I don’t care. They need to be shut down.
dwgs
@dhomas +1
Kate
There’s debate and then there’s trolling. That person was trolling, trying to own the libs.
-
Kate
A mother of a student at St‑Laurent High School says everybody knew about an abusive basketball coach, although not that he was (allegedly) also sexually assaulting students.
We see this over and over. Sports coaches are allowed to be as abusive as they like, it’s part of the culture, so long as it gets results. But then it goes too far, or someone pushes back, and too often the abuse also turns out to have a sexual element as well.
I have no suggestions how we fix that, except that maybe parents with sporty kids oughtn’t to push them so hard.
Tee Owe
Hi Kate – pushing is not abusing – encouraging a kid to realize their talent can be done in a positive way – yes, pushing, but way different from abuse – goes for coaches as well as parents – bottom line, there are good coaches and there are abusers. We (all of us) need to look past results as the only measure of success.
-
Kate
A woman and her son are accusing six SPVM officers of racial profiling over an incident last year in which police followed the son, searched his vehicle and accused him of illegal possession of a weapon, which he didn’t have.*
A second SPVM racial profiling story is in the news Thursday: Errol Burke, a man in his 50s, 5’7″, was arrested, cuffed and thrown to the ground by police looking for a 6’1″ teenager. The cops in this story have been suspended for what CTV calls a record – a stunning 30 days without pay. The incident took place in 2017.
*Note to writer: “damages” is what is paid in restitution after a court order. “Damage” is otherwise not pluralized.
steph
“Emotional damages” gets a pass in my book. Millions of hits on google as well.
-
Kate
Urbanist Gérard Beaudet says the ARTM report on the REM de l’Est contained no surprises so why are people acting like it’s such a shocker?
Robert H
«Comment peut-on justifier les conséquences fâcheuses du projet du REM sur les finances de la Société de transport de Montréal et, par conséquent, sur les services offerts ?»
Ç’est pas encore trop tard. Maintenant, il est temps d’annuler le projet REM de l’Est avant que la première pelletée de terre ne soit retournée. Dépensez tout cet argent plutôt sur le prolongement de la ligne bleue ET la ligne verte.
dhomas
Oui! There is no need for the REM de l’est! Just extend the Green line (underground) beyond Honoré-Beaugrand.
qatzelok
And the Blue Line West to Lachine. And start a Pink Line. And tramways on… There is no lack of possibly excellent mass transit projects. It’s the “get out of your car” projects that seem somehow… blocked.
-
Kate
Despite a recent Superior Court ruling, dear Simon Jolin-Barrette says judges do not need to be bilingual and he’s thinking of enshrining that in law. The item adds “A Laval University political science professor thinks Wednesday’s motion is more about politics than language.”
André Pratte thinks the withdrawal of funding for the enlargement of Dawson College is political.
Of course it is. The CAQ knows it can’t go wrong taking a dig at the use of English. It’s almost as safe and popular a move as taking a dig at immigrants.
Ian
The Dawson funding “scandal” is especially infuriating in that Dawson literally can’t increase its enrollment regardless of funding, enrollment numbers are capped by the Ministry of Education. When Bill 96 goes through enrollment at English language CEGEPs will be even more stringently controlled.
For the government to conflate funding classroom expansions with expanding enrollment is disingenuous at best, as they control enrollment rates AND school funding.
-
Kate
Bundles of supposed paper waste from Montreal turn up in Asia contaminated with unrecyclable garbage. I haven’t watched the Enquête piece yet, but the CBC summary tells you enough.
nau
In the other thread, Blork was asking (likely rhetorically) whether anywhere did recycling properly. If we’re being strict about “properly”, probably not. But it’s really not hard to do better than Montreal. In the ’90s, Vancouver was already collecting paper separately from everything else (and collecting newspaper separate from other paper). Now, it also collects glass separately in a grey box (but no longer has a separate newspaper collection, apparently, I’m guessing because it’s collapsed as a waste stream). Visiting Japan once, I noted they had numerous categories that they streamed different waste materials into, although one stream was all the stuff they would incinerate (not paper, however), which hardly counts as recycling. They were clearly much better at recycling small household metal items beyond the cans, lids and foil we do.
-
Kate
Our new medical overlord Luc Boileau dropped a bombshell Wednesday, saying that more than 2 million Quebecers have had Covid since the beginning of December, and that is why we must stop worrying and learn to love the virus.
Alain Vadeboncœur, who usually writes for l’Actualité, posted a piece in response asking how Boileau got this number, but concluding that if it is true, then the virus really has thinned out to the point where many of us are infected without knowing it.
Update: Footnotes from the news: Prince Charles has caught Covid a second time and Governor-General Mary Simon also has it. (Francophone media are rather more prone to running items on the royal family, something I’ve noticed for a long time but can’t account for.)
MarcG
Waiting for Me Mom & Morgentaler to drop their new single Everybody’s Got COVID
Joey
Now imagine if more than 42% of Quebecers had received their third dose (which, it seems, is the one – based on its recency, I gather – that makes Omicron effectively little more than a nuisance). Data here and as of January 30: https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccination-coverage/.
If only the government would make concrete plans to extend the vaccine passport to cover booster doses and automatically pre-booked appointments for another booster six months after a person’s last shot. The sooner we conclude that for the foreseeable future we’re going to need everyone to have a recent-ish booster dose, the better.
Bert
Joey, not sure what you mean by the third shot extending to vaccine passport. A third shot is displayed in the passport, of course if you have it. If you mean that the third being required where passports are required e.g big-box stores and the like, then that is another way to interpret it.
mare
Remember that they stopped doing general population PCR tests? Instead they tested Heath Care Workers hospital patients (and probably some other groups) *every couple of days*, whether they had symptoms or not. (Anecdata: I had 5 (!) PCR tests during my 2 weeks of being admitted, presumably all negative.)
If, over 2 months, 25 or even 30% of those people tested positive, which is not an outrageous percentage, and you apply that to Québec’s total population it’s easy to extrapolate that 20% of us has had an infection with SARS-CoV-2 (Omicron or Delta) during those months. (Percentage corrected down because HCWs have a higher infection risk, they don’t work from home, travel more and due to lower socioeconomic status (we don’t pay them a lot) live in more crowded environments.)Still, that 20% leaves an enormous quantity of people who haven’t been infected yet, so Omicron still has a nice pool of fresh victims to replicate in. Slowly but steadily, until it has also reached most people who shouldn’t get infected.
Getting out of this will be hard, both physically and mentally. There’s a big split in society: Why did we go to all that trouble staying home when suddenly everything is declared fine and can be opened now? Versus: Why did we get restricted so much when nothing happened (hospitals are still standing; and I don’t know anybody who had serious Covid.) and we can open up so fast now?
Joey
@Bert, sorry for being unclear. What I meant was that the passport definition of “adequately protected” should mean three+ doses for all those who are eligible (basically everyone 12+). I’m sure there is some way to program it so that those who got their second dose late and are not yet eligible for the booster can be temporarily considered “adequately protected” (maybe on the condition they book an appointment). I think a lot of people who are vaccine hesitant won’t get their booster until their employer mandates it or their ability to enjoy daily life requires it.
Joey
@mare of the remaining 80%, many had COVID but either never got a rapid or PCR test or got a positive rapid test, and many more were exposed but never tested because of rapid test scarcity, lack of or mild symptoms, or both.
Kevin
@mare
A study out of Qatar indicates that Omicron doesn’t need a pool of fresh victims, because of all the variants, it provides the least protection against reinfection.
In other words, if you got Omicron, you’ve got almost a 50-50 chance of getting sick with Covid (even Omicron!) again.
The usual caveats about studies apply.Joey
@kevin yeah my impression is that, while Omicron infection doesn’t create the same kind of immunity benefits as previous variants, the vaccines most certainly do – if you’ve had a dose recently. Again, anecdata, but the Omicron wave hit our household – one person tested positive with the most minor sniffles, one tested negative with a classic January cold and one person tested negative and felt nothing. The three of us will never be able to say with certainty whether we had COVID, so the two million infected figure at least doesn’t contradict our lived experience (not that it would be necessarily wrong if it did). The feeling around here is that (a) we’ll probably have more COVIDesque episodes going forward and (b) the level to which we have curtailed social behaviour in the last two years and especially recently doesn’t *feel like* it matches our own risk assessment. We’re not COVID deniers or truthers and we are extremely pro-vaxx, but it still feels like we are responding as if the only options are March 2020 panic or breathe-on-purpose-in-peoples’-faces.
steph
The restrictions were put in place to protect vulnerable people- not the healthy. There’s no place for healthy people’s Anecdata in the discussion.
dmdiem
Protection against omicron due to previous variant infection or vaccination is low. Which is why we see equally high levels of omicron infection in populations with high levels of previous infection or vaccination, versus populations of low levels of previous infection or vaccinations. In addition, populations with high levels of previous infection or vaccination showed lower levels of death compared to populations with low levels of previous infection or vaccination.
In other words… previous infection or vaccination does not provide protection against omicron infection. It does, however, provide good protection against death from omicron.
Conversely, Infection from omicron provides excellent protection against all previous variants. We can see this by the fact that omicron has completely outcompeted all other variants with no new outbreaks of previous variants in populations that were exposed to omicron.
To put it another way… omicron is vaccinating the planet.
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus is your friend.
Joey
@dmdiem vaccination doesn’t just protect against death – even if it’s negligible at stopping infection, it’s all good news from there, no? You’re as likely to get COVID if you’re up to date on your vaccine, but you’ll have milder symptoms, very small chance of hospitalization and basically no chance of death (exceptions of course for more vulnerable populations).
And @steph the restrictions were put in place to protect the healthcare system – vulnerable people are, as ever, left to their own devices when not politicially expedient to showcase the collateral benefits they get, protectionwise.
j2
Re: booster for passport, I’m delaying my third because a positive PCR test (plus antigen tests) in late December and science (well Canada and CDC and not Quebec) say 3 months will produce a better protection outcome.
(I still have not recovered 100%. December I ran 12k and a 5’34”/km pace, best I’ve done since is 6’20” on a 5k and my heart rate is about 10-15bpm higher. Basically slower and worse than when I first started running 14 months ago. The extreme cold has definitely limited activity though, but more than it would have when I had clean lungs.)Chris
>What I meant was that the passport definition of “adequately protected” should mean three+ doses for all those who are eligible (basically everyone 12+).
In addition to what j2 said, last I checked, for younger age groups the risk of heart issues from a booster is actually estimated to be worse than the risk of covid.
dmdiem
@Joey… As far as I know, the UK is the only country that has a symptom tracking system in place. I haven’t dug into that data so I can’t really say if being vaccinated reduces symptoms of omicron. Sorry. I just don’t know.
Pierre-Luc
25% of all Quebecers had covid and only a tiny fraction got sick. Omicron is so scary!
Tim S.
Chris: that kind of statement is really, really irresponsible without a reference.
Chris
Tim S., sure, here you go:
https://podcast.apple.com/ca/podcast/this-week-in-virology/id300973784?i=1000545396455 (especially around 44 minutes in)
https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/healthpolicy/96635If you are a healthy young male, IMHO *mandating* a third dose for participation in society (the topic I was replying about) is a step too far. Having two doses will very likely keep a young person out of hospital, and thus not burden the rest of society much, and so further health choices should really side more to individual choice.
Tim S.
Thanks Chris. I don’t have time to listen to a 44 minute + podcast, but I’ll note that your second link says nothing about the risk of heart conditions from vaccines.
-
Kate
A man was shot dead Wednesday evening in a residential garage in Lasalle. The victim was known to police. Second homicide of the year.
Update: Radio-Canada names the victim as Domenico Macri and says he was “proche de la mafia montréalaise.”
-
Kate
Dominique Ducharme, who got the Canadiens closer to a Cup last season than they’ve been in years, got his pink slip Wednesday with the team currently in last place. La Presse’s list of six possible replacements demonstrates that Patrick Roy doesn’t know how to wear a mask.
YUL514
The job went to Martin St Louis who isn’t one of the six. BTW, it’s not just Roy who doesn’t know how to wear a mask in that article, add Bouchard and Vigneault to the list.
Kate
Indeed.
St Louis has not been an NHL coach before. I guess they figure it can’t get any worse, so why not give this guy a chance.
-
Kate
Michel C. Auger tears into the REM, saying it’s a hard drug for politicians, all about an immediate hit and no thought for the future. I want to quote bits for you, but it’s all good, incisive critique.
As a tweet I just found summarizes it, the REM involves:
- Privatizing public transit
- Competition for the STM that will sap its budget
- A project that can be sold off by the Caisse anytime after five years from the opening, including to foreign investors
- A scar on the city
- Vast cost overruns
The ARTM is right. It is not the answer for the east end of the city.
Matt G
And to think that this is an article from last year. It’s been known for some time.
carswell
And UdeM urbanist Gérard Beaudet tears into critics of the ARTM report. Assuming the intransigent Chantal Rouleau is speaking for Legault, it will be interesting to see if the CAQ government will continue trying to ram this through despite the growing opposition and unignorable evidence it’s bad urban planning.
Kate
Matt G, so it is. I saw it linked on Twitter today and thought it was so timely!
But I’ll leave it up.
-
Kate
With nothing better to do, the city hall “opposition” is chucking mud, hoping some will stick. One item is that the city is on a “debt binge” which I strongly suspect is an attempt to frame institutional bookkeeping practices in terms that will make the current administration sound inept.
Were this the first term for Projet, such an allegation might carry more weight, but it isn’t.
Opposition is also all over the failure to get recycling working properly, now that the city is auditing Ricova, the firm that undertook to do the job. Recycling properly, finding markets for the resulting material, isn’t easily solved, and it may turn out to be one of those things that can’t be done both properly and profitably. Meantime it gives Ensemble something to kvetch about (while, as always, failing to make any constructive suggestions).
steph
when interest rates are lower than inflation, there’s nothing inept about borrowing to invest.
Blork
Does anyone anywhere do recycling properly?
Kate
We’ve all been kidding ourselves for a long time about recycling, especially plastic.
-
Kate
The city is putting $10 million into its community gardens over ten years, both to improve existing ones and to create new ones. Interest in community gardens has grown a lot in recent years.
-
Kate
The mayor’s service vehicle, a Toyota Highlander, was found in a Coteau-du-Lac warehouse being prepared for shipment to Africa along with other stolen vehicles. Police are certain that the thieves had no idea whose it was, and no sensitive documents were in it when it was taken.
-
Kate
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.
Ian
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
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
I wonder what our mayor charges for rent. Hmmm
Blork
“…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
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
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
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
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
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
@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
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
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
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
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
*typing on a phone, apologies for the many typos
Kevin
We need a convoy protesting to build more 7 1/2s in Montreal.
Blork
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
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
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
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
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
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.
Reply