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Updates from July, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• Kate 16:12 on 2023-07-03 Permalink | Reply  

  CTV has a piece reminding us that the federal grocery rebate is coming this week.

  I have a question about this:

  […] if you are single you could receive a maximum payment of:
  $234 if you have no children
  […]
  And, if you are married or have a common-law partner, you could receive up to:
  $306 if you have no children
  [etc]

  Why does a married person get $72 more from the feds than a single person does?

  Kate, Jonathan, and Blork are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Blork 18:35 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    Married people have additional expenses that single people don’t have, such as (a) family plans on Spotify and iCloud, (b) couples therapy, and (c) second television because FFS all he ever wants to watch is sports and Breaking Bad reruns.

  • Jonathan 19:11 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    I think you can only get one per household. So technically that amount would be shared

  • Kate 22:10 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    Oh! That wasn’t clear. Thank you, Jonathan.

    Blork, you can pay me later for dangling a straight line for you.

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• Kate 16:08 on 2023-07-03 Permalink | Reply  

  A heat wave is expected midweek, with a Special Weather Statement to match.

  It’s already flexing the humidex Monday afternoon.

   

• Kate 16:01 on 2023-07-03 Permalink | Reply  

  Metro interviews a man who lives on a small sailboat in the river between Pointe‑aux‑Trembles and Île Sainte‑Thérèse, summer and winter.

  Orr and JaneyB are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • JaneyB 22:56 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    Love it. That’s a real Montreal story. The winters though…tough.

  • Orr 15:42 on 2023-07-04 Permalink

    As my friend once said about living on a sailboat, if you like living in your bathroom, it’s great!

• Kate 13:29 on 2023-07-03 Permalink | Reply  

  It’s a fundamental principle of justice that if you’re arrested, you will be seen in court within 24 hours. This Daniel Renaud piece in La Presse says a certain licence had been given in recent years so police could sort out their position on the charges, but a Supreme Court ruling in 2020, the arrêt Reilly, tightened the deadline back down to 24 hours exactly. Police sometimes have to scramble to make their case.

  Renaud has an accompanying piece about police also having difficulty tracking down judges to give them search warrants.

   

• Kate 12:10 on 2023-07-03 Permalink | Reply  

  A homeless man trying to catch a few winks in the entrance to an underground parking lot downtown Monday morning was driven over by a woman at the wheel of an SUV. He’s got leg injuries but will survive. I have no idea whether the driver in this case has broken any rules of the road.

  Blork, mare, and Ephraim are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Ephraim 13:29 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    As a Montreal tradition, did we test the homeless man for alcohol and not the woman at the wheel? (Edgar Trottier RIP)

  • mare 14:07 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    Rule #1 of the road: avoid ‘accidents’. Drive defensively and expect the unexpected.

    Collisions in parking lots happen a lot because drivers aren’t very attentive and look for empty spots, or if there’s a break in between passing cars. And shoppers, pushing their shopping carts and annoyed they have to walk so far, think they are seen but are often in the giant blind spots of modern cars. People just don’t look very carefully, or are still setting up their music, sat-Nav and air conditioning during the first minutes of their trip.

    (During my driving test, that started on a parking lot, I was hit by another car pulling out of their parking spot without looking. It was their fault but I failed my test because ‘I wasn’t driving defensively enough’. This was in the Netherlands where failing your driving test is very common because they’re very, very strict.)

  • Blork 14:23 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    Hmm, that’s an odd one. It almost certainly happened here:
    https://goo.gl/maps/7iCxhqgfUuo4G9KQ9

    …which is an unusual garage entry in that it’s very narrow and you can’t really see what’s in front of you as you approach the down ramp. Still, you’d think the driver would stretch their neck to look. You wouldn’t really expect to see a person laying there, but it would be normal to check for junk or broken bottles or a gaping hole or whatever. I’m guessing the driver has gone down that ramp every day for several years and never had a problem so they just took it for granted. (Never a good thing to do.)

    At the very least, the building owner should install one of those fisheye mirrors so that anyone approaching that ramp can get a reflection of the full passage all the way down.

• Kate 12:06 on 2023-07-03 Permalink | Reply  

  A man was shot in Montreal North overnight. It seems he was hit while riding a bicycle.

   

• Kate 09:50 on 2023-07-03 Permalink | Reply  

  Some folks apparently trying to hold a French‑style protest downtown Sunday evening were dispersed by police before achieving the stated aim of “on fait comme les émeutes en France faut tout péter.”

   

• Kate 09:47 on 2023-07-03 Permalink | Reply  

  A developer has created six tiny flats apartments in the staircases of a row of vintage buildings on Pierce Street – 350 sq.ft. all told at $2300 per month.

  Kate, EmilyG, jeather, and 7 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Ian 10:06 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    By my calculations to pay a 3rd of your salary after tax, you would have to make $98,750 for the privilege of living in a 350 sq ft apartment conveniently located in one of the best parts of town to buy heroin.

  • MarcG 10:17 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    Right around the corner from Concordia. They’re probably expecting these to be rented by wealthy parents of students.

  • Blork 11:57 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    I love that row of buildings. There’s been renovations going on there since before the pando (i used to walk up that block a couple of times a week), including repairs after a fire in the unit at the north end around 2018 I think. I always knew that whatever they did there would be expensive, but this just seems silly.

    I doubt they expect anyone to rent there long term. Like MarcG says, they’re probably targeting students (with parental $$) and other forms of short-term rental, such as visiting professors or other people who just need a conveniently-located furnished apartment for a few months.

  • JP 12:10 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    Maybe it’s the way they took the photo..but I think I’d feel claustrophobic in the bedroom.

  • H. John 14:16 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    Certainly brings back a lot of memories.

    40 years ago, I was on the executive of CUSA (Concordia’s student association, not yet a union). One co-president, an engineering student, shared a flat on the second floor of those buildings. I attended lots of meetings, and parties, there.

  • Blork 14:38 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    Also odd about those tiny apartments is that they’re at the BACK of the row houses, accessible only from the little-known rue Police (basically an alley) or another alley at the north end. So not only are they small and expensive, they will be pretty DARK and relatively airless. And who wants to go home late at night by creeping around a dark alley in the shadow of a tall office building?

    Here’s the “before” view from Streetview: https://goo.gl/maps/HAUJc3ZSU23DRCNv9

  • Blork 14:43 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    Oh… and there isn’t even a door in front of the toilet. Watch the video; as they guy walks in you see a tiny bathroom sink off to the right, just past the kitchenette. The toilet is in that nook with the sink. No door. I suppose you could hang a curtain, but WTF?

  • Kate 15:24 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    Wow Blork. Not what I’d expect for $2,300 a month, even in these decadent times.

    Also, the TVA guy says the row of houses “a l’air tout à fait ordinaire.” I wouldn’t say so – I’d say that’s a remarkably well preserved row of vintage buildings you won’t find everywhere.

    One plus: no room for a breakfast bar.

  • Blork 15:28 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    Yeah, no bringing a casual date home for a snack.

    The one nice thing is the drawers built into the stairs, which is always cool. But they’re really tiny and flat, and how long before they’re crawling with spiders and centipedes (and maybe worse)?

  • Blork 15:42 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    No breakfast bar (lol) but probably no dining table either!

    Yeah, it’s a beautiful row of buildings. They look nice from the outside but AFAIK they’re quite run down inside, at least before the recent renovations, which seem to be in fits and starts and not well coordinated, although that’s from my very casual viewing from the outside.

  • Kate 16:04 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    Which now makes me wonder: do you wash at the sink? There’s clearly no room for a tub, but no shower?

  • Blork 18:29 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    Oh wow. Maybe there’s a shower stall to the left of the toilet, which would be behind the kitchenette wall. I’m guessing the lack of a door is because there’s no external ventilation for the steam from the shower.

  • carswell 19:04 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    You’d think having what amounts to a toilet in the kitchen would be illegal. It’s certainly unsanitary: studies show that flushing a toilet with a lid up casts a spray of micro-droplets of, well, you know what up to several feet away.

    Since these mini-townhouses appear to be targeted mainly at university students, I wonder whether the expectation isn’t that they’ll shower at the nearby Concordia gym.

  • Blork 19:50 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    To be fair, that barely qualifies as a kitchen.

    There’s no way there isn’t a shower. It’s gotta be behind that kitchenette wall.

  • carswell 20:48 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    It’s a food preparation and dining area. Fridge, stovetop, microwave, sink, cabinets and countertops, washer/drier, optional dishwasher and… a kitchen bar (mais oui, Kate!). None of which I’d want attached to an open bathroom, even one with a designer toilet. Maybe there’s a pocket door between the two rooms.

    The project’s website has a few more photos/renderings but, unfortunately, no floor plan: https://www.forumproperties.com/fr/residential/maisonettes-tiny-house-pierce

    However, looking closely at the “new” pic of the bathroom, you can see a showerhead hanging from the ceiling between the toilet and the sink with a faucet on the wall. So you shower in the middle of a closet-sized room, spraying water on the floor, walls, toilet, sink, mirror and shelf. I think I’d head to the gym…

    Apartment hunting many years ago, I toured a “3” on Resther IIRC. Going in for a visit, I assumed the sign had lost it’s 1/2 but, no, there was a doorless alcove off the kitchen with a toilet. No tub or shower and the only sink was the kitchen’s.

  • steph 21:37 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    Yes, the toilet is in the shower. I guess you could do your dishes in the shower too and wash your salad. Hopefully you don’t get the fuse box wet.

  • Blork 22:21 on 2023-07-03 Permalink

    Carswell, I suspect that “3” you saw was a dump, not a brand-new construction renting for $2300 a month. But as steph says (and I confirm; you can see it in one of the photos), there is indeed a shower head in that tiny bathroom, in the ceiling in front of the toilet. They’re obviously inspired by the bathrooms you find in RVs built into Sprinter vans.

    I stayed at a cheap hotel in Rome that had a bathroom like that. It was a shared bathroom (maybe six rooms had access) but it was much more spacious than this one. It was like a regular bathroom without a shower or tub. So I asked to hotelkeeper “dov’è la doccia?” and she pointed to a hand-held shower nozzle and hose coming out of the wall. There was a drain hole in the middle of the floor. So basically you end up spraying everything in the room when you took a shower, which was weird because like I said, it was a shared bathroom, and there was nothing to use to dry the other fixtures with besides your bath towel. So weird!

  • jeather 10:39 on 2023-07-04 Permalink

    Is it just me, or is there no oven?

  • carswell 10:45 on 2023-07-04 Permalink

    @jeather There’s a microwave and a mini-stovetop. There’s also very little space to store dishes, especially baking dishes. The developers probably think residents won’t be serious cooks and will eat out/take out a lot.

  • jeather 10:52 on 2023-07-04 Permalink

    So, not just me. I suppose you could get a convection toaster. But tbh the full sized dishwasher is puzzling, it looks like it has more room in it than the cabinets.

    Just reminiscing about friends I had in similar sized studios in the same area back in the day and how much they paid in rent.

  • EmilyG 12:24 on 2023-07-04 Permalink

    This is maybe a bit nitpicky, but it seems that these tiny houses have 2 or more floors. I thought “flat” meant an apartment that’s on just one level?

  • Kate 13:06 on 2023-07-04 Permalink

    EmilyG, I wrote the post before carefully examining the video. Let me fix that.