The city has launched its tax roll for 2026‑2028, which shows a sharp drop in evaluations downtown.
Updates from September, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Geneviève Guilbault, having somehow shaken off SAAQclic, is now minister for municipal affairs and Bernard Drainville will have a year to mess up the environment. More details on the shuffle, a piece that says Sonia LeBel “might” become education minister. Martine Biron is said to be going to higher education. Final details will be announced Wednesday afternoon.
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Kate
Owners with businesses around Milton-Parc are falling on hard times as many students who used to frequent their cafés are staying away because it’s become the haunt of homeless people and drug dealers.
TVA links this story to the recent claims that two thirds of people who work downtown find the whole area has become run down and dangerous.
Ian
The street construction and building renovation everywhere doesn’t help either, I’m sure. The cafe on the NW corner in partiucular seems to have suffered – it’s a very unwelcoming area what with the cones, nets, heavy equipment, detours, impatient drivers, rerouted bicyclists, and of course the homeless trying to find a spot to simply be in the midst of it all.
DeWolf
The café you’re thinking of actually moved across the street into the funny hut that was once home to a Second Cup.
But yeah, the scene has gotten rough at the corner. The group of Inuit people who used to congregate there has been supplanted by a different, edgier crowd. Lots of pretty obvious dealers too.
Ian
Yeah there’s crack dancers some mornings. Good to know the café moved, thanks 🙂
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Kate
A puerile prank called Doorkick Challenge has arrived in town, involving pounding on residential street doors at night then recording the response of the householder – angry or frightened – for the delectation of TikTok. Police advise not to confront the pranksters.
Ian
I guess better here than in the US where you might get shot.
MarcG
Not sure if it was related because I didn’t wake up enough to get up and look out the door, but this happened to me a month or two ago. A particularly stupid trend because it could actually be someone in need of help. I don’t think that teens quite understand how much unprocessed pain adults carry around with them, just waiting to be triggered; a couple of really scary stories of revenge linked in those articles.
Kate
CTV item adds that a kid in Texas was shot dead after ringing doorbells.
You’d think parents in a place like that would warn their kids that it’s dangerous to act like little shits.
Ian
The last time someone hammered at my door late at night it was the Chaverim, telling me my upstairs neighbour had set the yard on fire flicking a roach into some wood chips (as witnessed by my Hassidic neighbour’s kid). I appreciated that. That said I do get people knocking on my door pretty late but it’s usually my Hassidic neighbours during Shabbos becasue they don’t use doorbells then.
All this to say it wouldn’t be much of a surprise in this neighbourhood, the pranksters would probably get a more quizzical response than they would have hoped for.
jeather
Happens in Germany, too.
DeWolf 11:44 on 2025-09-10 Permalink
A sharp drop for office buildings specifically, and not just downtown but almost everywhere. But a rise in value for other commercial properties and residential.
GC 14:02 on 2025-09-10 Permalink
Yeah, if it’s all about feeling unsafe downtown, then whey are office buildings in Anjou dropping in value?
The fact that residential values are growing slower in Ville-Marie, versus other places, might be a side effect of that feeling…but it’s difficult to reach that conclusion from just this data. Ferrada is smart enough to know this, I’m sure, so it’s vexing that she’s banging that drum.
Nicholas 14:23 on 2025-09-10 Permalink
This is the same story around the world: more people working from home, less need for office space, more need for residential (and no drop in industrial, because you need to be in person). Two small companies I know well were bursting at the seams as their slow and steady hiring filled their offices. In February 2020 one signed a five year lease on a larger place, and one was about to, but didn’t. The company that didn’t is still happy in their space, because it’s rare everyone is in the office at once, and they can manage it, while the other wasn’t and has just downsized. And neither business is downtown. This is true downtown and in the suburbs and everywhere in between. It’s not that safety isn’t a problem, but come on.