Geoff

Hard to like a policy that requires $3,000 one bedroom market rents to build below market housing.

That’s wild if there’s that many!

A fun little video project.

Kinda makes sense? There’s a legal obligation to show that you’ve made real attempts to find someone.

Is it more than just the one? An ad like this is like $1500.

Based on what I know about the cost of basics like fences and portapotties (multiples, not percentages), it’s become insane to throw large scale events in Vancouver. Police run on overtime for all events. I can’t even imagine the security planning costs now. All borne by the small businesses.

Inside a Surrey ‘local news’ site run by AI Surrey Speak published fake news about a politician and an AI-generated picture of a real murder victim

Wild to see a company supported by @sfu.ca’s Venture Lab spewing political disinformation and AI slop on the net.

I’m still not convinced this is an ad grab/AI slop bucket, the timing and error is so large. Good digging by @zakvescera.bsky.social at @theijf.org.

theijf.org/article/insi...

@alyssajayne.bsky.social it’s you

It does help keep prices down, though, taxes landlords, encourages people not to hoard land.

The US has some of the most progressive tax rates globally.

The reality of the Nordic dream is that someone in a 500k home there pays lots more tax than we do, in addition to taxing the rich.

Could you go higher? Texas (Texas!) cities charge like 10k on a 500k home, 25k on 2m.

A land value focused increase that probably looks at something closer to what Toronto charges, a 3m home here is 10.5k/year rn, would be closer to 15-16k there. Apply it broadly to the land so people are rewarded for sharing.

Wild take haha. Have a nice evening ☺️

Doesn’t sound a whole lot like centrism to me, I think you need another axis these days to talk about parties like OneCity that want to build change, vs parties that want to focus on conserving where we are or where we were.

Azaroff has been saying pro growth, pro housing, pro worker, practical progressivism. That’s a pretty different message on the whole.

The wheels of politics are re-aligning. A fair and equitable city is one where homes are widely available, energy is cheap and useful via solar etc, and opportunity abounds. That means building.

The growth progressive is the future. We are going to build our way to an equitable world.

Being pro growth means more than just creating as much housing in the city as possible, it means building community centres and pools, uplifting parks, letting small businesses thrive to create great jobs with living wages.

We are growing whether you like it or not. We need to grow well.

I harassed you twice, you were one of the easiest people I signed up, good friend 😅

It’s based on backcountry!

Ken Sim won’t be defeated by posts, polls, or prayers. He’ll be defeated in a vote.

That takes conviction in a single progressive candidate who can unify this city.

One of my favourites of your work.

The guy has like nine fingers, some of them are completely floating. Doesn’t match style.

But there’s also just a weird digital gloss to the characters when you look closely.

No signature.

As a photographer and image creator I’ve played with these tools a lot. Looks pretty classic AI to me.

We basically did everything we could to stop building homes.

You could say “both”, but I tend to look at the huge restrictions on private development outweighing the 5-10% of public development, but there’s no doubt the combination was devastating.

Zone capacity chart showing shrinking zoning to existing population

At the same time you have the wall of permitting and zoning constructed during the 70’s leading into the 80’s. Vancouver Downzoned Kits, grandview woodland, and the West End. That has long term downstream effects on private construction.

In LA zoned capacity looks like this.

They need better carrots and bigger sticks.

Even if you look at social housing funding, the feds, at the absolute height, were responsible for ~10% of total construction. 90% was private. We stopped building.

Housing is a provincial responsibility, clearly outlined in section 92. Much is delegated to municipalities, as is in the province’s power. But from building code to land use to permitting and commerce, the blame lies, ultimately, at the provinces feet, and through them municipalities.

That would require a constitutional amendment here in Canada. I don’t know the entire legal background in Japan, but I’m under the impression they do not have a federal style of government, all powers are derived from the central government.

I assume so. UBC even has a few full rides for international students. Issued early to be competitive.

However, I’ve also heard that rather than discounting tuition, schools are giving out scholarships as incentives (still trying to attract talent).

OC members, time to vote!

This was my wife’s first opportunity to vote for something in Canadian government, we voted together this morning, and so it holds a special place in my heart.

We are hoping her citizenship makes it by October for the election!

I’d argue that without significant zoning and permitting reform we cannot make real technological progress on productivity, as much of that progress relies on standardization and mass production.

AI plan checking and routing is speeding up permitting approval processes in many cities.

In a pilot in Canada, Hamilton saw a 60% improvement in processing times.