Alex Beheshti

Nothing about the current collpase in housing starts is shocking to me

For years people warned cities not to cook the golden goose with high DCs and onerous application processes because they needed the eggs not the meat!

All the meat is eaten, the feast is over, and now we suffer empty stomaches

Maybe it's just me but I feel like trying to get data from the province has never been worse and the quality of the data you can get is abysmal.

How have only half of municipalities submitted their financial information returns (FIR) when they were due back at the end of May but its October.

For years, my colleagues and I warned everyone within ear shot in study after study that the situation with DCs was untenable and unsustainable.

Now the city has killed the golden goose despite the warnings. I take no pleasure as a Torontonian in saying this but we're in the FO stage of FAFO.

It's not that boomers are any more nimby than any other generation, it's that they have more time than any other generation to spend on opposing housing.

Just look at the nimbys of a new rental project downtown Toronto, or 5 new single-family homes in Aurora - lots of abundance in grey hairs.

Im sure if the city wanted to be entrepreneurial here they could find away around that.

It may also just make it easier to dismiss this as how does a no asset corp have standing.

*When* the city wins this case, they better be demanding costs. Historically the city avoids doing this, but screw that, I'm so sick of this as a taxpayer.

If the case is found frivolous, then we the taxpayers should get every dime back as is the right to ask for in court.

Got married and we're moving to a place that can't handle all the stuff we both have. We each had to do some closet cleaning, so in the shuffle, I had to make my choice.

It's easy to get digital versions of most comics and books, so that's why I gave them up.

Four boxes of starship stacked on top of each other

Had to give away my books, comics, and board games today, but I'll never give up my starship collection.

That's the sane rationale choice, right?

It's October 1st 2025 and despite being told September 2025 is when we could expect the Eglinton Crosstown to be opened....it isn't

Epic fail of all epic fails.

A new article clipping claiming that there are millions of vacant homes in canada

We already have vacant homes taxes in our most chronically unaffordable cities like Toronto and Vancouver, but they've done very little.

Why, because "millions of vacant homes" is a bad misinterpretation of census data akin to a hoax.

The 🍾 socialist left is not serious about housing.

How long a letter can you write about a 4-page report that recommends against doing anything?
Pretty long, it turns out. First, we must have a discussion about what a priority *is*.

Made a mistake. Those werent 1st generation chagres, but 2nd generation. That is the second round of DCs after the intitial legislation went into effect.

Still horrible if you consider thats from 2003 to 2005

my mom took tylenol when she was pregnant, which made me super focused on menswear and now i have a million followers on twitter

I have to say this is disappointing.

Despite their pleasant-sounding name, CBCs are nothing more than an "apartment tax" because that is what they *exclusively* apply to.

No other housing form pays this tax. Based on their discriminatory nature, on that basis alone, they should be ditched.

Doing some research on developers charges and found this treasure in a news article from 1999.

Adjusted for inflation:
Vaughan $34,300
Richmond Hill $32,300...
Toronto $10,250

Ill let you all compare them to their actuals todays, but its clear that DC inflation has been astronomical.

🌆🏗️ BIG NEWS🚀

I am thrilled to take on a new (volunteer) role as Chair of @build_toronto, the first municipal project of @build_canada

We’ll be working with civic & business leaders to push for ideas that improve governance, growth, prosperity, and opportunity in Toronto.

(Vid cut to 3M)

Last night, the City hosted a public consultation for Craven Rd (Councillor Paula Fletcher's ward).

Staff worked almost a year on a request for bespoke policy, carving out this one road from the City's zoning bylaw permitting as-of-right garden suites, which came out in 2022.
🧵

Sometimes I remember that this started when residents objected to a garden suite at Committee of Adjustment that was refused. That is, the existing rules already prevent the thing that they got upset about, but they want the rules to be more restrictive anyway. storeys.com/toronto-gard...

Ford government declines to say if temporary foreign worker program should end | Globalnews.ca Premier Doug Ford's office declined to take a position on whether or not the temporary foreign worker program should come to an end amidst growing unemployment in his province.

Young Ontarians are disillusioned by sky high cost-of-living, housing insecurity and rampant unemployment.

Doug Ford’s message to them?

You’re not looking “hard enough”.

For someone with so much contempt for education, he sure lectures a lot.

#onpoli

globalnews.ca/news/1140573...

Rental trends in Canada, showing decreases in rents in most cities https://rentals.ca/national-rent-report

I commonly hear people say that “rents never fall, at best they’ll stagnate, landlords would never accept less money than before”.

Where does this come from? It’s clearly untrue. Under the right market conditions, prices can absolutely fall.

RT-8 design guidelines

So what kind of architecture is that precious? The design guidelines tell us, it's basically fetishizing mail-order from the Sears Modern Homes catalog.

What am I missing?

Toronto used to charge for safe injection sites, and in the background study made that 100% growth related, meaning all drug users were apparently new to the city according to their math.

There are lot of ridiculous stories like this littered through DCs and CBCs.

So the histroic data has some wild categories. Some municipalities charge for cemeteries, which Im not sure how that is growth related, other than the only two certainties in life truly are death and taxes.

The services that municipalities are allowed to charge for have shifted around a lot over the years. The current list is inclusionary in that you can only charge for services the province allows.

Before, you could essentially charge for any service except certain services so it was exclusionary.

The DC situation is getting completely ridiculous. It reminds me of old internal tariffs in ancien regime France. Economically ruinous but relied on to fund regional governments and can't be reformed because that would necessitate raising taxes on the land owning aristocracy.

A chart summarizing what services are eligible to be included in development charges for three provinces. Ontario includes the most services, followed by BC, and Alberta allows charges for the fewest services. There are nuances limiting some charges to certain municipalities or partial collection, as outlined in the article.

A timely article from @alexbeheshti.bsky.social at MMI on development charge (DC) differences across Ontario, BC and Alberta. Key chart that attempts to summarize the complex pieces of legislation across these provinces. www.missingmiddleinitiative.ca/p/halving-dc...

Man arrested after driving child-size pink Barbie Jeep through town | CBC News Police and a legal expert say driving any motorized vehicle, including a toy, without a licence and insurance is a punishable offence.

My original lede for this was "they caught him ridin' purdy"

Man arrested after driving child-size Pink Barbie Keep through Prince George www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

New post: I read Patrick Condon's book, so you don't have to.

1/

Jens and company cover this in the paper.

You can see some of the discussion in the screenshot, but for a more holistic understanding I would recommend reading the paper.

There are many points the screenshot doesn't cover. For example, other studies found that upzoning leads to more living space.

This is despite the two reforms looking very similar on paper, so why the difference? Some of it is likely explained by Kelowna making it easy to build multiplexes, while Coquitlam burdened their multiplexes with lots of process and risk. Differences in parking requirements likely also matter.