Ashley Challinor

Austria took the stigma out of social housing. Here's what Canada could learn | CBC News While Europe struggles with similar trends to Canada of rising rents and skyrocketing home prices, experts say social housing models like Austria’s are among the best defence against a growing afforda...

Alright, sounds good, now we just need a bunch of cheap land following a world war that the city can buy followed by a sustained loss of population following the collapse of empire.
www.cbc.ca/news/world/e...

i should be in charge of the marvel movies. i will cast mark rylance, jared harris, mark strong, paul dano, and paul giamatti as the avengers. their headquarters are the municipal planning office of a midsize american city. the supervillain they defeat will be various challenges to zoning reform

Love this: On the Disenchantment of Urban Spaces open.substack.com/pub/venat/p/...

What should Toronto area mayors do during a trade war? Build. Every level of government has a role to play in dealing with the current crisis. Ontario municipalities should not be permitted to shirk their responsibilities.

"It turns out that no amount of bureaucracy, bickering or political division can slow Canada down when under threat. So what are Ontario’s municipal governments doing to assist in the economic war effort? Sadly, not much — especially when it comes to housing." www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

An Indigenous-led visionary housing development in Vancouver - Senakw - shows us how housing abundance can help dig us out of our darkest hour.

Learn more about this project here senakw.com and let's advocate for more like it!

Credit: senakw.com and @futur.blue

Issue 5: Policymakers and policy do-ers. There's nothing new under the sub except for how to get things done. Policycraft.substack.com.

Issue 5 of Policycraft is out! Inside we ask if the profession has all the ideas we need - except for an idea of how to implement them.
policycraft.substack.com/p/issue-5-po...

Opinion: You can love your country and still think it’s broken It is an expression of patriotism – not the opposite – to acknowledge your country’s deficiencies in an effort to try to make it better

"...this country must first acknowledge the depths of our sclerosis, our inefficiencies, our competitive barriers and our ideological rigidness... That doesn’t make you a traitor; it makes you a patriot." www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...

An absolutely staggering amount of Toronto's city planning work ends up boiling down to a debate over whether a building should be 25, 27, or 29 storeys as if that kind of precision was in any way meaningful.

It's not! Meanwhile, we burn time and money in a crisis.
web.archive.org/web/20120322...

What flexposts say: "We could use steel bollards but a bollard might scratch a car and that would be a tragedy. So, we're going to use these instead — things literally designed to be run over — because protecting even one car from a scratch is worth thousands of pedestrian deaths every year."

A summary of the More Neighbours Toronto 2025 Provincial Housing Platform. 1. Setting Ambitious Goals Housing policies should reflect the scale and urgency of the crisis. Parties must commit to building at least 1.5 million homes, reform the way that growth targets are set and commit to ending chronic homelessness. 2. Building More It’s time to end exclusionary zoning by legalizing multiplexes and multi-tenant housing. Limit excessive setbacks, stepbacks and parking requirements. Permit high-rise near major transit stations by-right. 3. Housing Justice Prioritize non-market housing on provincial land and incentivize affordable housing with subsidies. Empower tenants with enhanced access to legal aid and couple rent control measures with offsets to keep new rental projects viable. 4. Changing Behaviour and Aligning Incentives Incentivize municipalities to meet growth targets and timelines. Reduce taxes and fees on housing and provide alternative infrastructure funding mechanisms. Make more data publicly available so the public can hold parties accountable. 5. Scaling Up and Building Faster Expedite approvals for provincially-identified critical housing projects. Encourage modular and panelized construction with pre-approved designs. Implement legal and financing options for small-scale co-ownership.

Ontario: the provincial election is February 27. What would you like to see on housing?
More Neighbours Toronto has put together our ideas. We'll be grading the party platforms and statements against this to let you know where they stand. www.moreneighbours.ca/platforms-po...

Briefly felt the YIMBY leave my body out of fear for The Beer Can ngl 😅

Opinion: The Dutch and Danes have much to teach Canada about better health care The question is whether Canada will act on all those lessons around providing primary care to every citizen

Some of us have been saying. www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...

Issue 4: An efficient market for wonkery Plus, a time-sensitive opportunity to mentor in Toronto

Issue 4 of Policycraft is out! Featuring a call for areas where we need more policy thinking, a clear schematic for making policy and its implementation work better, and some great examples of policy advocacy done well. open.substack.com/pub/policycr...

Toronto is making LONG overdue updates to its Avenues Policies to make it easier to build midrises!

It's also adding new Avenues for the first time in decades. We've made it easy to voice your support to the Planning & Housing Committee at the link below:

win.newmode.net/moreneighbou...

Issue 3: Ensnaring Ourselves in Good Intentions. And a definitive declaration on the best bagel flavour. Policycraft.substack.com

Issue 3 of Policycraft is out, covering policy experiments, red tape, and the fundamental flaw of everything bagels.

policycraft.substack.com/p/issue-3-en...

Zoning By-Law Renewal: One Year Review – Jacob Dawang Edmonton’s housing policy continued its march forward this past year with the new zoning by-law renewal coming into effect and district plans in force. Let’s take a look at where and what type of home...

A year ago, Edmonton rewrote its zoning from scratch. Among other changes, the base zoning in mature nbhds changed to 8 units, 10.5m.

A year later, what has been the effect? I looked at building permit data to see. More in the 🧵 or in my blog post 👇 #yegcc #yeg

www.jacobdawang.com/blog/2025/ed...

A Toronto Star headline from September 5, 2024 "‘The condo market right now is a ghost town’: Toronto has a record number of units for sale. Here’s why they aren’t selling despite a housing crisis" Sub-head "‘Something is wrong with the market when we have housing nobody wants and homelessness at the same time,’ says Coun. Gord Perks, Toronto’s planning and housing chair."

A Toronto Star headline from January 3, 2025 "A GTA renters’ market? Here’s how fast rents are dropping in Mississauga, Brampton, Oakville, Oshawa and other Toronto area cities" Sub-head "A look at condo apartments in other municipalities show rents were on the decline — but not everywhere or for all unit types."

Graphs from 12 CMAs across Canada demonstrating an inverse relationship between vacancy rate and rent change between 1990 and 2021. The relationship holds despite vastly different patterns in the changes, from one sustained increase in vacancy in Sherbrooke to a series of big fluctuations in Calgary that likely follow the boom-bust cycle for oil-related jobs. The Source is MountainMath https://doodles.mountainmath.ca/posts/2022-02-18-vacancy-rates-and-rent-change-2021-update/

What a difference a few months and a little bit of framing makes. Condo vacancy rates that were once portrayed negatively have turned into lower rents. There is still work to do, but more supply lowers rents - yes, even in those evil condos. www.thestar.com/real-estate/...

I sat in court at the Gisèle Pelicot rape trial. This is what I saw Gisèle Pelicot became a symbol of courage when she waived her anonymity to attend the trial of her husband and 50 other men accused of raping her — and ignited fierce debate about the law surrounding ...

"A collective noun for rapists? A violation, a banality, a shame."

www.thetimes.com/world/europe...?

A pathway through a downtown Winnipeg park, with snow everywhere.

Winter days lost in Canadian cities Decline in winter days each year with a minimum temperature below 0 C between 2014 and 2023 Table with 2 columns and 7 rows. City Days below 0°C lost Vancouver 19 Toronto 13 Montreal 6 Calgary 5 Ottawa 4 Edmonton 3 Winnipeg 1

I say it every year, but I’ll take Winnipeg’s real winter over Toronto’s any time (having spent 14 years in Toronto). I’m sad for Vancouver and Toronto. www.cbc.ca/news/science...

Toronto is so frustrating because it's always been close to being an incredible place, and so many of its problems are self inflicted or imposed. The bones of a great place are here, we just need to build on them. What I mean is stop prioritizing cars and upzone the neighbourhoods.

Congratulations to our new board members, @zakls.bsky.social @stoneape314.bsky.social, Stephanie Bertolo, and Nicholas Harterre!

They bring fresh perspectives and passion to the table, and we can’t wait to get started.

Here's to a great year, and fixing the housing crisis for the next one!

The Chicago Fed Money Museum, where you can get your photo taken in front of $1M cash and roleplay as the Chair of the Federal Reserve. That's... something kids would like, right??

The historic Hotel Georgia in downtown Vancouver, with a tall residential tower beside it that paid for the restoration of the historic hotel with bonus density. Without this program, the heritage hotel would likely not still exist.

Did you know, the hotel that #TaylorSwift is staying at in downtown Vancouver likely wouldn’t exist without Vancouver’s density/heritage system?

The Hotel Georgia had a full renovation while I was chief planner, & we “paid for” the cost of the restoration with bonus density in that tower beside it.

Lollll got me

I wonder if Sky Bridge accidentally suggested the wrong accounts to me and I followed without realizing. Pictures of trains sounds way nicer than what I'm getting (increasingly enthusiastic calls to murder CEOs in the street).

The "Popular with Friends" tab is just the worst collection of takes ever assembled. What is wrong with you people.

THREAD: How to check if the screenshot of a social media post is real or fake?

Fake screnshots of online posts regularly mislead people. So, here's a simple guide on how you can quickly check if a screenshot of a post attributed to an account is genuine or fake before falling for or sharing it.