Jens von Bergmann

CanViz - Canadian Data Visualization Tool Interactive data visualization tool for exploring and analyzing Statistics Canada data tables. Browse thousands of Canadian statistics, create custom plots, and download data in multiple formats.

It used to be a question in the census, but hasn’t been in a long time. StatCan now has a survey on that, every two years but only three cycles so far. Metro Victoria was 11% in the last cycle. canviz.mountainmath.ca/plot?v=15940...

Downtown olympic flame lit.

YouTube video by About Here The Bike Share Dilemma

NEW VIDEO: The Bikeshare Dilemma

Bikeshares and scootershares (also known as “Shared Micromobility) is one of the fastest growing forms of transportation on the planet today, but cities appear deeply divided on how to manage them. youtu.be/qfz6AsYycA8

Planning rationale? If I want to be facetious I’d say it’s a good dose of warm fuzzy feeling plus some buzzwords.

Renewal Development Renewal Development champions responsible demolition, home relocation, and the repurposing of quality homes in British Columbia. We divert well-built houses from the landfill and extend their life thr...

Link to company website with some more information on past projects.

Yeah, pretty sure this only works because this enters the negotiations when trying to get projects (with land assemblies) approved.

There is a company here in Vancouver that’s doing this. Basically, we have a lot of “perfectly good homes” that are getting demolished because they sit on very valuable land that demands higher use of land. The company then picks them up and barges them to remote communities where they are useful.

Housing is a Housing Problem Co-authored by Jens von Bergmann and cross-posted at MountainMath. The main housing problem in Canada is that there is not enough of it. We can see this by looking at prices and rents, but also by …

Are "pre-rebuttals" a thing, like "pre-zonings"?

If so, here's a pre-rebuttal from @jensvb.bsky.social and I to the latest argument that supply doesn't matter (from CCPA, sigh).

The Key: Doubling up is the demographic indicator demonstrating our shortage. homefreesociology.com/2025/07/06/h...

Feels very German with lots of rooms. And a bedroom without a closet!

For completeness, here is the City vs Metro comparison.

“Apartment” is where most of the multiplexes are categorized under.

At first posted a graph with mixed-up labels, deleted now and reconnected (hopefully) with the rest of the thread. Thanks to everyone in the thread to point out problems.

Fixed now, but this is hugely embarrassing. Sloppy legend assignment, but that's what I deserver for vibe-coding this I guess. Will delete the skeet with the faulty graph and try to connect the rest of the conversation back in. Thanks for pointing out the problems!

Wait, I was showing housing starts too in that graph higher up, not permits. And looking at it again by going to the link the labels are reversed. That's a bug on my CanViz tool, something seems to go wrong on mobile which is what I used in the morning. 😱😱😱 Here is what it looks like on my laptop:

Strongly agree.

From our 2023 Housing Nationalism paper:

"[R]eactionary nationalism operates as part of a cultural toolkit for solving problems, where entrepreneurs practiced in the tool can advance their own interests by seeking out and magnifying
problems to solve." hdl.handle.net/2429/87373

Yeah, I'll check city vs CMA later today. The city data looks to me like it's using CMHC starts (or completions?) not permits, so there are timing differences. And also differences in how things are classified. But that should not be that much of a difference.

The assumption that household is the same as family is deeply embedded in policy, research, and casual housing discussions. And it causes lots of problems.

Still stunned every time a planning prof looks at the landscape of rising rates of doubling up and concludes that’s entirely due to people’s preferences. And that the strong correlation of doubling with rents is purely coincidental. And that adding homes won’t change doubling up rates.

Could all have been avoided if he had thought to sign his emails up top…

YouTube video by Arsch Huh BAP - "Kristallnaach" (Arsch huh 9.11.1992)

Randomly remembered going to this concert, and was trying to think how this song (originally from 1982!) fits in with current events. Back then it felt like a future to try and prevent, now it feels like a stage we already passed, roughly around the “they are eating the dogs and cats” phase.

Electric power generation, monthly generation by type of electricity

Random browsing through today's StatCan data releases, electricity generation by type in Canada. canviz.mountainmath.ca/plot?v=62783...

Fun read. (Unless you are an owner in that building I guess.)
Not fair to end on a cliffhanger.

Email filters are pretty easy and effective, paper mail filters not so much.

Super interesting article. And yes, high vacancy rates in non-market housing is a sign of poorly designed policy. Also, pretty depressing what some seem think a "solution" to this misalignment is.

Such a confused article. Vacancy rate for “affordable housing” is not a meaningful metric.
That metric is useful for housing allocated by market mechanisms, but non-market housing gets allocated as soon as it’s available. We should look at wait lists instead, 8000+ long and ~2 years wait time in NS.

Could not help myself, ran the numbers. Scrapping the Capped Assessment Program (similar to California's Prop 13) so that incumbent homeowners pay the same effective rates as newcomers or renters would yield a substantial tax revenue increase for HRM. The CAP has grown into a large fiscal liability.

Fixed

Great to see Andy Ramlo's liquid demography contribution below!

Wish @jensvb.bsky.social and I had been able to include it in our post criticizing the solid demography alternatives (i.e. his red lines)... homefreesociology.com/2025/12/08/t...

Nova Scotia CAP map Explore the effect of the Nova Scotia property tax CAP

Some years ago I did a project to assess the fairness of CAP and mapped who under and over pays. But maybe the correct framing always was that nobody overpaid but a lot of incumbent owners under-paid which caused the current budget crisis.

Epic thread on budget meeting and potential property tax increases in Halifax, and I wonder how much can be raised simply by killing the CAP that has protected (predominantly rich) incumbent owners from paying the higher effective tax rates newcomers and renters face.