Damien Moule

Trying to be genuine shade.

I'm not entirely sure the brothers Spoke have the umm.. patience to wage a successful factional fight for mayor but I'm also interested to see what the rising (but still small) culture war resentment faction on the right tries to do. They can't be that happy with Bradford or the Tories.

Not only is February brutal in Edmonton... the leasing market feels like this snowstorm too. The absorption rate has completely shifted. Many of us predicted that Spring 2026 leasing would be different, but I don't think anyone expected this many units to hit the market at the same time. Right now, tenants have options - lots of them. They walk into a showing, and if the unit isn't exactly what they want...there is similar one just across a street. What we're seeing right now is something we haven't seen in a while - a real competition between landlords. free months of rent gift cards parking incentives flexible move-in dates upgraded appliances utility credits Everyone is trying to lease asap as the lender is coming at you and if you don't achieve proforma - you get to buy the rate down ouch! For investors this means a few things: You need to be strategic, flexible, and realistic (!!!) with pricing and incentives.

Turns out building more homes makes housing more affordable.

Edmonton real estate investors are realizing that because so many options are on the market for tenants, they need to be sweetening the pot with incentives - and being "realistic" with rent.

#yeg #yegcc

I think I'm missing something. How is a co-op more automatically organized for advocacy than say.. a condo? They seem on the face quite similar in terms of organization.

Mine were dairy and bean farmers in Ontario, unsuccessful in New Brunswick, and low german speaking Mennonites in modern Ukraine who didn't survive/fled the Russian Revolution.

What people had in their heads when pitching the Finch LRT... vs. what we got.

Refreshing to see the conservative side of Toronto politics flailing around looking for a candidate to run against an incumbent mayor for a change.

true. both are needed to provide faster streetcar service in Toronto.

A few years back @jacobdawang.com made an interactive map showing TDSB school utilization for those interested.
jdawang.github.io/tdsb/

No one seems to want to make that decision after the last round of closures. Not the elected trustees, not the provincially assigned supervisors. They're all just pounding the table and repeating the basics: high expenses due to too much floor space per student.

I don't want to blame stable neighbourhoods for literally everything in the city... But like I want to blame them for a lot.

Spatial mismatch. There's no school in Liberty Village so every nearby development says there's no capacity. But Central Tech is empty and massive and old.

If you wanted to help the TDSB with the clear problem of too many undersubscribed schools, you could have you know.. allowed more people to live near those schools.

My hot take is that the battles over TDSB control are basically downstream from the fact that Toronto City Council forced rust belt budget problems on the TDSB by pricing out families with children through their policies.
thelocal.to/ontario-scho...

I think all 8 were farmers with the only distinction being what type of farmer, what size of farm, and where they were.

If you're following me I hope it's at least partly because you're interested in Toronto municipal policy and politics. If you haven't given much thought to the election this year then I would encourage you to think about posting/donating/volunteering with a focus on the outer wards.

Whatever old city races there are (BEY plus whatever) will be fighting over small differences. The action *should be* in the suburbs where there are many bad councillors who need the boot and at least 2 good councillors who need defending.

To Colleen's point I went back to the oldest Housing Now progress report I could find from May 2020. Green are currently under construction, yellow have planning approval but construction not started, red are no progress at all. Note the estimated construction start dates. Also still 0 units built.

Summary for those who don't like reading tables (what's wrong with you?)

I have a hard time keeping track of the various city owned housing sites and what's happening with them. So thankfully CreateTO has an update report they're giving the board on Friday with attachments listing all the sites
secure.toronto.ca/council/agen...

I won't hesitate.. to spend several months before endorsing someone.

A lesson learned for advocates:
1. Sometimes studies clear the runway. But sometimes they just waste time and resources.
2. If you're going to pass a study bill, have it be done by an agency with (a) research capacity and (b) an ability to make objective assessments.

Pretty good reasons not to run imo.

Favourite part here is the "regardless of statistics". Translating to plain language the reasons for not running are:
1) the election would be about my affair with a staffer and that sounds like a bummer
2) the lines of attack that people want me to run on are kind of weak and contrary to reality

Have you heard this new band called the Yeah Yeah Yeahs?

Are conventions so valuable? The main business of Toronto's Exhibition Place is conventions, and they claimed $600-million a year in economic impact. On 192 acres of land in the middle of a prosperous city.

That is not a lot of money.

www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis...

I once wrote in on an executive committee item about development charge reports asking that they be aligned with the variance reports. I got a request for a meeting from the manager of the group who produced it to discuss how they could improve because I'm the only one who ever mentioned it.

One of the most consistent findings in public polling is people want "more transparency". But I assure you they don't actually want more transparency about Development Charges. How do I know? Because no one $!#@ing reads the existing Development Charge reports produced by the City of Toronto.

Damien Moule thought breaking through to the masses. (Just kidding the surveys reveal the public to have extremely low understanding of municipal taxes and incoherent views on public policy).

Good luck city of Toronto in turning Eglinton/Kipling into a thriving main street anchored by a transit station.