That is the argument that Joshua Gordon, who is an assistant professor in the Simon Fraser University School of Public Policy, recently made in this opinion piece in the Globe and Mail. In his view, there’s no evidence to suggest that housing supply can actually… Read More
Architect Michael Green’s new house in Kits Point, Vancouver was recently featured in the Globe and Mail. He and his family went from a 3,500 square foot home in the suburbs to a 1,500 square foot semi-detached home in the city, close to downtown. The… Read More
New rental housing measures were approved by Vancouver City Council this week. I haven’t gone through the policies in the detail (you can do that here), but they aim to increase rental housing supply by doing things such as “pre-zoning” for 6-storeys on main streets… Read More
There is something happening in many North American cities right now. We are starting to question the supremacy of zoning for only single-family homes. This past summer, the state of Oregon passed policy requiring cities of 25,000 people or more to allow duplexes, triplexes, and… Read More
In this January 2018 report from the Fraser Institute, they pegged the average population density of Paris to be about 21,067 inhabitants per square kilometer (2014 population year). It is the second densest city in their report after Hong Kong, but the densest in Europe.… Read More
This week, RBC Economics published a study on Canada’s rental market where they argued that the pace of new supply needs to at least double in markets like Toronto in order to meet future housing demand and balance the market. Similar things, I’m sure, could… Read More
A colleague of mine sent me this Bloomberg article today and said, “Here’s an article about things you already know.” The article cites a recent report by Altus Group that compared government-related fees on new housing across Canada and the U.S. What they discovered will… Read More
In March 2018, Statistics Canada launched the largest “wastewater-based epidemiology pilot test” ever conducted in North America. Over a 12 month period, it collected wastewater samples across the country in order to test for traces of cannabis and other drugs. The pilot captured 8.4 million… Read More
Jens von Bergmann (data analyst and mathematician); Nathanael Lauster (sociologist); and Douglas Harris (law professor) have been working since 2018 on a study of how condominiums are used and occupied across Canada. The goal is to use the results to better inform public and academic… Read More
Bloomberg recently reported that Canada admitted 321,065 permanent residents last year. This is up 12% from 2017, where the country admitted 286,479. Last year was also the largest cohort since 1913 (the year before World War I), where the country admitted just over 400,000 people.… Read More
