Nathan Lauster

This 1964 acknowledgement of the importance of "concealed households" (or MHU, central to my recent paper with Jens), comes from the same piece where Glass coined "gentrification" as a term. Also, maybe Glass knew something about coining a good term? ("Concealed Household" > "MHU"?)

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew calls on prime minister to abolish the Indian Act at meeting with chiefs

"As real incomes and aspirations rise, as people get married earlier and live longer, existing households split up, and there is a higher ratio of households to population, with a consequent increased demand for separate dwellings." Ruth Glass (1964, p xix) gets MHUs! cc: @jensvb.bsky.social

"The ability to create separately titled units, with their own financing arrangements and the flexibility to be sold independently, is appealing to families." Lots of good commentary in here, including from my UBC SALA colleague, Inge Roecker, as well.

Pet theory: BC often acts as the rest of the world's political counterweight. So you're all welcome, I guess.

Polls are about to close, trying my hand on a pre-generated web page that dynamically updates as results come in. Wish me luck. doodles.mountainmath.ca/posts/2026-1...

Did my duty so that I can continue to complain about the BC Carbon Tax being cancelled. #bcpoli

Soundtrack for October. There's still time! youtu.be/FoYZE6IiQyo?...

Reminder to VOTE!! Polls are open until 8pm today!! 🗳️🗳️🗳️💖💖💖

While waiting for anonymous ballot markings, a quick graph on the geography of votes. People can vote at any place they want, but on average people tend to vote close to where they live. GREEN and ABC were the top two parties at every polling place, here is a map of the GREEN vote share advantage.

The housing policy affinity between the BC Conservatives & the Alberta Conservatives & Vancouver's own TEAM party is real. BASIC PREMISE: preserve the low-density detached hoods where most of their voters live, discarding the "private" otherwise valued in property rights as needed along the way.

Just as a private equity firm buys out a corporation and strips it for parts, a consultant class is raiding the Democratic Party and getting “generationally wealthy” along the way New from me and @adambonica.bsky.social newrepublic.com/article/2163...

Each infill design comes with a specially tailored referendum asking "Should this property remain subject to pre-2024 zoning, or should it begin the legal process required to separate from that code, as undertaken by Edmonton in reforming its code?"

War on Cars! (complimentary)

Nice coverage of Seattle debate over a recurring big city issue: What to do when people catch on to the obvious sheltering solution available to them after cities have made parking super cheap and housing super-expensive.

This RULES

I dunno, I'm pretty committed to calling it the 99 B-Line till I get to call it the SkyTrain. youtu.be/SBRoW0XAG4A?...

Sun's still hot enough to melt a perfectly good cat this late into October. Disturbing.

One election down, one to go, BC. No wait or line-up to vote at the Broadway & Blenheim location right now... easy-peasy, in-and-out!

Strategic voting, FTW.

The 2027 IBC has been officially published, and it allows single-stair apartment buildings up to four stories! See the new section 1006.3.3.2 codes.iccsafe.org/content/IBC2...

"Moscow has deployed a reliable set of tools to keep its runaway children in line... Trump is now using the same toolkit against Canada: economic coercion, annexationist rhetoric, and support for internal separatist movements."

Correct 🌶️🌶️🌶️ take on housing. Concrete example: if we think rooming houses and micro suites are not adequate housing, the humane response is not to outlaw them but to strive to create conditions where nobody chooses to live in them.

Just going to repost this without reading in the spirit of the topic

How far back does rule against single-stair buildings appear? An archival data point: City of Vancouver's 1912 Building Bylaw (941) required two stairways for buildings (except 1-2 unit "dwellings") over 3,000 sqft. (same 3k rule appears in 1941 National Building Code of Canada)

Is your province requiring its municipalities to better comply with Charter Mobility Rights by allowing more people to move there? That's good. Keep going, BC. Is your province further restricting municipalities from better complying with Charter Mobility Rights? That's bad. Stop it, AB.

Did the thing. And look how happy I am! Also: Go OneCity Vancouver! @onecityvan.bsky.social

What if a solution to the housing crisis is right in front of us? My long read on the shrinking neighbourhoods of Toronto and Vancouver and how we could fill them up with people again. www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic...

Had to stop myself from nodding along too vigorously while reading this @1alexhemingway.bsky.social piece just to avoid the whiplash potential. Anyway, good piece!

Signs you might be in Ottawa

Would love to have the transcripts from the meetings where these were decided upon. Sidenote: TX and FL should compare notes, given how many classical mainstays of the sociology curriculum made the list.

first day of advance voting in Vancouver!! a beautiful day to go fill out a comically large ballot!! stickers for adults and children alike!! vancouver.ca/election/202...

Fun archival find from 1952. ONE WEEK in wait time for a building permit was deemed unacceptable by local builders, as approvals shifted from the building to planning departments ahead of the new zoning bylaw. Nowadays, what's an extra week? vancouvergeneralcontractors.com/vancouver-pe...

Fun 1910 real estate ad demonstrating Vancouver's lengthy history of setting up a laneway house to rent out back as a mortgage helper.

Overview of the new Canadian historical census data & six original research articles demonstrating what can be done with them are now online in the journal Historical Methods. Not open access but first 50 copies apparently can be dowloaded from: www.tandfonline.com/eprint/DQTIH...

Just putting it out there that I am a voter who cares about climate change and regular summer wildfires and my own kids' future and stuff and I would also like to see some election pandering - like ANYTHING - thrown in my direction. I mean, the Carbon Tax was doing a lot of emotional work for me.

AI polls can lean on racial or partisan stereotypes, a new @pewresearch.org study shows. An experimental AI poll found that 97% of Hispanic adults in the US were likely to follow the World Cup. The actual figure – based on human respondents – was 43%. www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/20...

For the past week, I've heard a lot of people say "provincial and municipal elections happening at the same time is confusing, especially since I don't fully understand what a city is in control of." So, I did a four minute explainer piece to try and help www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqlh...

Good moon out there! (mediocre iphone from window pic notwithstanding)

This is great, and hits a genuine area of confusion for many folks! Only note I'd add is that the Province also has a role in mandating more housing near transit (and the BC NDP actually delivered on that with Bill 47, though lots of room for improvement). www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/h...

@onecityvan.bsky.social posted their housing platform. Lots to like: more housing options, more non market housing, better support for renters. Also, they're calling for affordable & accessible flats (like our Four/Five prototype 👇) to be allowed everywhere we already allow plexes and large homes.

"The Martins...use their fireplace almost every day during colder months. But that will have to end when the new duplex is built next door...because provincial rules stipulate that chimneys must be at least two feet above neighbouring structures." They use a fireplace in a downtown area? 😱

A Vancouver-area First Nation has issued a travel advisory for the US, after members were detained by ICE.

Strange article from Strong Towns on "filtering". Fundamentally, they do not believe in indirect spillover effects, where adding high-end supply can reduce low-end rents. Instead, we have to intentionally and directly target the low-end. 1/

Remember as we head into a potential double-header of an election season: If your ONE is OneCity, you're sitting pretty. If your ONE is OneBC, you've messed up, buddy.

2024 Canadian Housing Survey data came out today, lots of things to look through. One item that will likely get people talking is forced moves. It's a difficult metric to interpret, but there seems to be a COVID dip and now a jump in 2024 across all regions. canviz.mountainmath.ca/plot?v=13757...