The number of home sales is down in Montreal, but not the prices.
Updates from March, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Jean-Roch Boivin was a retired writer and critic who had been living in a modest building on Carré St‑Louis. After the building was sold, the new owner began a campaign to get the tenants out, offering them a paltry $600 to leave – this was reported by Radio‑Canada last fall.
Le Devoir, for which Boivin used to write, says Boivin has died at age 79 after being forced out when the owner started doing things like punching holes in the roof to bring water down into the apartments. Zacharie Goudreault talks to the last tenant determined to stick around.
Update: CBC covered the story a few days later.
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Kate
A report by the regional environmental council says that street parking spaces should all be paying ones – not just for environmental reasons but because when they’re not being paid for, they’re beind subsidized, even by the third of the population that doesn’t own a vehicle.
Chris
I’ve been yelling into thin air about this forever. 🙂
Doesn’t seem like there’s anything new here that Shoup didn’t write about back in 2005.
But I guess nice to give the can another kick, not that it’ll do any good. 🙁
Ephraim
Every single parking spot should be in the city budget. Every single one. That includes the ones used by city departments, those used by the buses, those used by BIXI and those used by the police. And each department should be paying for them. Until we value them in the budget, no one is going to value them at all.
Daniel
Yes, as a new car owner, I say this is a great idea. The only possibility I can see (perhaps selfishly) is an exception for people with physical disabilities. But even then a nominal fee would perhaps be appropriate, just to break away from this notion that the right to jam your giant machine on the public right-of-way is free as air.
Nothing else about owning a car is free. I’m not sure why on earth the parking would ever be.
Uatu
There is no free parking. There’s just paying upfront or later.
Joey
I wonder what proportion of spaces are truly free – meaning they aren’t metered or reserved for sticker-holders. Twenty years ago there were a lot more random unmetered/unrestricted spaces, even downtown.
Anyway, it’s not clear what the city’s goal is (or should be). Downloading a larger share of the cost of parking on to users? Ensuring the most efficient use of parking spaces in commercial areas? Raising revenue? Discouraging car ownership? Making people feel like they can park on their street relatively hassle-free? Reducing emissions? Gotta pick a lane…
Kate
There’s mention of apps that could help people find open parking spaces as one way of enhancing fluidity. (I’m sure this has been discussed before and isn’t the complete novelty the article suggests.)
It’s a tricky business. On the one hand, city hall was making parking free downtown everywhere before Christmas, to entice people to go there to shop. And in general, store owners want street parking to be as effortless and gratos as mall parking. On the other, more revenue from parking would be nice, besides trying to coax people into using other forms of transportation…
Ian
Since the city seems to have given up on the “carrot” of reliable public transport across the island, they’re only left with the “stick”, i.e., make owning motor vehicles prohibitively expensive (unless you are rich enough to already have driveway). Also a sweet tax grab.
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Kate
Three professors were asked to write a report on racial profiling in the SPVM, and they finished the job months ago. Now the Red Coalition says the report has been withheld rather than made public.
jeather
Guess it would look bad and then they couldn’t give all the police raises.
Ephraim
Has someone asked for a copy under the access to information law? Made the city justify why they refuse access, publicly? Make them squirm, make them squirm, make them squirm….
Ian
How convenient that this happens at the same time as journalists across all media outlets are getting the sack.
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Kate
A woman pleaded guilty to homicide in court Monday, cutting short her trial for murdering her six‑year‑old daughter in 2020. La Presse goes into some detail about how the woman was in a psychotic state at the time, and high on a cocktail of drugs.
The sentence will be decided later this month.
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Kate
Fady Dagher is giving all new SPVM hires a raise.
Ian
With all that pesky STM budget in their pockets the cops can certainly afford raises.
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Kate
Snow removal workers are under pressure to work fast, and rewarded for doing so. So it’s not surprising that they cut corners on safety and traffic rules. But they are driving large, dangerous pieces of equipment. La Presse accompanied a patrol that keeps an eye on the process and fines the more egregious offenders.
Joey
Today I learned that Decelles intersects with Cote-Des-Neiges…
Kate
It does, just south of Queen Mary near the secondary gate to Notre‑Dame‑des‑Neiges.
jeather
TIL that saying “far west” is acceptable French, but though all the quotes from people say “trucks”, the article calls them camions.
EmilyG
Also, I think there’s more than one street in Montreal called Decelles.
Kate
Far West is well established French, coming from magazines and movies, although it’s interesting that it isn’t an expression in English, where we’d probably say Wild West.
EmilyG, there’s a Decelles in CDN, and another in St‑Laurent.
jeather
Yes I also found that link, I just hadn’t seen or perhaps noticed it before (the meaning is, after all, transparent). Though it’s not clear when the old literal use (atttested in 1871!) translated to the figurative one. I’d think that the literal use is now Old West and figurative is Wild West, in English.
Joey
LOL of course it does… my bad!
Mitchell
“cut corners on safety and traffic rules” — so my experience wasn’t unique. I was literally chased by a chenillette one day. I was walking down the snow-filled sidewalk when it turned the corner — and kept coming. It wasn’t that it couldn’t see me, because I was far enough away that it could. Because of the snow banks, I couldn’t just jump into the street. So I had to run back up the half block or so to the next intersection to get out of the way.
CE
I once saw them racing, one on the sidewalk on each side of the street. I had to jump into a snowbank because the one on my side was losing the race and seemed to have no intention of slowing down.
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Kate
Looks like Denise Bombardier picked the We Hate Montreal card this week at the Journal.
DeWolf
At this point the Journal could just replace its columnists by AI and we’d be none the wiser.
azrhey
I never thought Montreal was particularly beautiful, to be fair.
Having read that emesis, I’m finding it more and more beautiful ❤️Kevin
DeWolf
You joke but it’s been done and it was hilarious.
https://mobile.twitter.com/EmergencyBlog/status/1631692978396725262Kate
Kevin, that text is completely credible as an MBC column.
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Kate
Shots rang out early Monday on Stanley Street and shells were found, but no victims. The Journal specifies it was outside Chez Paree and CTV says its frontage was shot up.
Two possible arsons also happened early Monday, in Kirkland and in Pierrefonds.
Ian 21:22 on 2023-03-07 Permalink
Funny how inflation despite interest rate increases works that way.
Lots of desperate former FOMO buyers that are now sellers, that nobody can afford to bail out.
Maybe if our groceries bills didn’t go up a third in the last year we could afford more nice things.