Nathan Lauster

A stop sign. Under the stop sign, another, red rectangular, sign is affixed. It says "Actually stop. Like, for real."

Someone in my neighborhood got FED. UP.

three jack-o-lanterns from me and the boys. Corporate greed. Fish nightmare (a.k.a. The Heron). And 'ole stink-eye.

Pumpkin testing... 1... 2... 3... pumpkin testing...

Everyone who makes money on housing understands that strict zoning and politicized permitting is good for landlords and bad for tenants.

An example of Small-Scale Neighbour Opposition more easily overcome with help from the province's Small-Scale Multi-Unit Housing (SSMUH) requirements.

Chuckling at the staffer's "YES, this developer will put in sidewalks for THEIR lot, but you misers still need to pay for the REST of the sidewalk!"

Good writeup of how the Trump administration has used housing as one of the justifications for their deportations, and how that fits into a history of US anti-immigrant housing policy.
Someone should write a paper on Housing Nationalism…

Opening Doors | Publications | Carrefour Vivre en Ville Consultez notre publication « Opening Doors ». Carrefour Vivre en Ville

I wish there was a way to convey how much of a big deal this is to me, I wish you could feel it.

Our work on housing policy, condensed in a single report, has finally been translated to English. You can download it here:

carrefour.vivreenville.org/publication/...

(Click "Télécharger le PDF")

A+ Halloween costume

B.C. communities could lose millions as pipeline companies set to pay lower property taxes | CBC News B.C. Assessment has proposed a revision to its gathering and transmission pipeline cost model, which could leave B.C. communities short hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax revenue.

This is actually an interesting dive into BC Assessment practices (and lack of update since 1986!)

But also, and hear me out, what if in addition to a tax on property we also had something crazy like a tax on carbon emissions to draw on for revenue? www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

marital/martial

Crow on a chimney looking over the sunrise falling on Fall foliage in Vancouver

Crow surveys the morning

New Lewis Center at UCLA report by Paavo Monkkonen on French social housing.

Is the cost rental and financing model upstream of France’s ability to build large number of units without deep subsidies?

escholarship.org/content/qt8d...

The Utopianism of the Meritocrats Trumpism has long been characterized by a desperate retreat from the dangers of thinking, making a heavy reliance on cliches a requirement. One of those cliches endlessly parroted by the administratio...

"Conceptualizing and provisioning what people need is a far less abstract task than somehow ascertaining what each person deserves, and giving it to them." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-utopiani...

Surprisingly strong connection between the Open-Ordered Index (authoritarian parenting beliefs) and voting behaviour - here measured by pollsters in Canada for 2019 (CPC = Conservative).

est. of "Ordered" outlook in Canada ~34% always there to build on.
www.ekospolitics.com/index.php/20...

To Build Fast, Think Small | Sightline Institute How re-legalizing small apartment buildings would spur the homes city dwellers need now.

To people looking for a home today, writes @dannyoleksiuk.bsky.social, it matters a great deal whether that home is built next year, or in ten. Re-legalizing small apartment buildings throughout our cities would create more homes faster. www.sightline.org/2025/10/28/t...

Liriodendron tulipifera - Wikipedia

Liriodendron tulipifera if you're down with the Latin en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liriode...

Bright swathe of evening sunlit tulip trees along 10th, with dark clouds above and city/mountains behind

Late evening sun on the tulip trees of W. 10th, decked out in their finest Fall regalia

Age Disparity in Shelter Cost per Room – Mountain Doodles Housing sometimes feels like a generational issue – because it is.

Do young people face higher shelter costs than their older compatriots? @lausterna.bsky.social and I look into this question and the underlying mechanisms that can lead to age disparities in shelter costs.

Setting aside some of the complexities of the metric, Shelter Cost per Room varies markedly by age of householder, with the young paying the most.

These disparities are strongest for owners, though they've also grown for renters, esp. in YYZ & YVR!

3/ homefreesociology.com/2025/10/25/a...

Pretty good! Though I feel like there might be another axis of differentiation based on whether it's "their" water or someone else's.

Some Canadian communities make it mandatory for homeowners to replace lead pipes. Do such bylaws work? | CBC News The Canadian Environmental Law Association is recommending that all cities pass bylaws to make it mandatory for property owners to replace lead pipes on their side of the property line. Hamilton has a...

Some standards are arbitrary & indefensible & make housing more expensive than it should be (e.g. those preventing sharing).

Other standards are very defensible, but also quite expensive (e.g. no more lead pipes).

Regulatory reform = sorting out our standards.
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

That's a great question. I've definitely seen some research considering how divorce & asset division can lead to unequal outcomes, but I don't think I've seen anything up-to-date (accounting for recent price escalations) for Canada.

Figure of shelter cost per room by number of rooms reported, metro, and year. There is a clear drop in shelter cost per room by number of rooms, steepest for low-number room progressions.

One of the tricky things about Shelter Cost per Room as a metric is the economy of scale with number of rooms overall.

Rooms are cheaper the more of them you can afford!

In post, we talk through some of the reasons for this & also consider the complexity 2/

homefreesociology.com/2025/10/25/a...

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

Age Disparity in Shelter Cost per Room Co-authored by Jens von Bergmann and cross-posted at MountainMath Residential floor space offers a common denominator for trying to standardize across a range of housing metrics (e.g. price pe…

Is late Monday morning a good time to play around with new housing metrics?

Trick question! It's always a good time to play around with new housing metrics. @jensvb.bsky.social and I have a look at Shelter Cost per Room (as opposed to sqft) in relation to age.
homefreesociology.com/2025/10/25/a...

Amanita Muscaria mushrooms (a.k.a. Fly Agaric), red caps with white spots on a white stalk, amid yellowing maple leaves, popping up in the medians of Point Grey in Vancouver

'Tis the Season for Amanita Muscaria!

Also the name of a great @csecooney.bsky.social character from Saint Death's Daughter. Both perfectly capable of providing nightmares before christmas.

Nice. Going into my reference files for anyone teaching Sociology of Consumption...

Where's that from? It's brilliant...

The Liberals promised to end boil water advisories on First Nations. They didn’t.

Auditor General Karen Hogan says the government's record on water was the most disappointing failure she found in her audit.

Hear the full discussion on the latest APTN Nation to Nation: youtu.be/xQ9LvNMVf7s?...

This is really fun, though I want to put forward a petition for re-titling the paper "Taking the L"

Totally. Though to be fair, kind of a self-inflicted wound. There were a whole lot of people selling regression models as AI to heighten the visibility of their research and get access to new funding streams opening up.