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Adam Mongrain

@adammongrain.bsky.social

2.1K followers 3K following 860 posts

Director - Housing policy | Directeur - Habitation, Vivre en Ville Montréal, Québec EN/FR

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Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 10d

In the lead up to the publication of the English version of @vivreenville.bsky.social's housing policy book, I wanted to take a bit of time to flesh out a few ideas that are essential to make sense of where we're going. Today: all housing prices are monopolistic prices.

medium.com/@AdamMongrai...

There’s no place like (your) home

Through many of the same mechanisms as there being no such thing as non-market housing, there’s really no place like home.

medium.com

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Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 3d

This is the least bad thing about all of that but it sucks for me, I had an interminable rant about conflating housing supply with trickle-down policies

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 3d

Ontario's awful ideas about security of tenure are upending my blog schedule

Reposted by Adam Mongrain

lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 3d

well this kicks ass www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

NOVEMBER 3, 2025
THE ART WORLD
RECONSTRUCTED
In "Monuments," the Confederacy surrenders to nineteen artists.
By Julian Lucas
6:00 AM

Picture is the statue described in img 2

•he hirst thing you see is a horses
- ass, protruding, upside down, trom the thorax of a monster. A man's arm descends from the beast's stomach, his gloved hand clutching the blade of a fallen sabre. There's no sign of a rider's face, but a head of well-coiffed hair dangles from the creature's eyeless muzzle. Every part of the work comes from a statue of the Confederate general Stonewall Jackson that was removed from Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2021. It was subsequently given to the artist Kara Walker, who carved it up in accordance with a butcher's diagram. The finished sculpture, "Unmanned Drone"—on view at the Brick, in Los Angeles, as part of a joint exhibition with MocA called
"Monuments" —is at once an act of carnivalesque retribution and a recognition of the Confederacy's zombie-like persistence. A rebellion defeated more than a hundred and sixty years ago refuses to stay dead; between the creature's legs, a horse head emerges from a gape in the bronze, like a new Jackson already foaling.

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Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 3d

If I understand the ICC drafting process correctly, there’s a case to be made that building code dysfunction is also a matter of conflict of interests, right?

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 4d

Videos in which we see the comforting normalcy of the sky give way to the abyss of space are awesome in the old-timey sense, i.e. they inspire awe and/or terror. About a 40-60 split for me.

Olivier Simard-Casanova @o.simardcasanova.net · 4d

If you want an actually insane (and very cool) video of a passenger in a fighter jet, I cannot recommend enough this one by Sam Eckholm

Flying the U-2 Spy Plane 70,000 Feet to the Edge of Space

YouTube video by Sam Eckholm

youtu.be

Reposted by Adam Mongrain

Brett "Solidarity 2025" Banditelli @banditelli.org · 29d

Hi. It's me. 2 weeks later. This is done. 58 frames over 3 seconds, *50* layers in the final image. WOO. This was a long edit, felt like ACTUAL work so unless I get it again with the actual sunset I doubt I'll be editing more like this. Psyched for the final piece tho! 🪶

Three pelicans diving after sunset, with a sailboat and a tanker in the distance, 2 terns also fly, the pelicans are shown in their dive motion

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Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 6d

Right, I think the natural conclusion of the tightening you suggest would be that saving would become something done for idiosyncratic reasons, and not the baseline expectation of rational household budgeting. I get how that is an improvement and also how much of a change from the status quo.

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 6d

Would savings be reserved simply for additional future income above a guaranteed baseline by taking away from current disposable income, and if so, why not just choose to pay into the pension fund?

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 6d

The arguments make sense but since CDs and treasuries are relatively stable/safe/predictable/accessible, what’s the argument or interest for individual consumer savings? If the amount earned on money saved is more or less fixed, why not just fold it into public pensions?

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 6d

dang the AWS outage took down my last medium post and today was the day I was gonna finally hit the 18 views milestone

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 10d

Relatedly: I yearn for normal job descriptions tailored to the skills of banal workers. A lot of us are.

Reconstructionist @unavaleable.bsky.social · 10d

Hustle culture is fundamentally reactionary

Matt @tiredgenerally.bsky.social · 10d

just an observation but it does seem like the entertainment class of tiktok lifestyle influencers and reality stars is going to be way more right wing than actors, directors, and tv/movie writers.

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Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 10d

Hey since they want to put Copilot in Excel, has anyone thought to ask it to calculate the chances of Scott Steiner beating Samoa Joe, at Sacrifice?

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 10d

There’s no place like (your) home

Through many of the same mechanisms as there being no such thing as non-market housing, there’s really no place like home.

medium.com

1 3

Reposted by Adam Mongrain

Regime Accountant, CPA ☠️🎢 @regimecpa.bsky.social · 10d

"Coworker hearted your message in Outlook!" Ok but why can they do that

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Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 12d

@alexbaca.bsky.social, to a room full of planners in 2021: you are planning with your own selves in mind

Four years later, we finally got it in writing

A picture of a page. The last sentences are the highlight:

lLnd use planning is a creative exercise: we envision and design environments in which we see ourselves-and which inevitably reflect our own values and sensibilities. It simply comes with the territory.

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 12d

Good recommendation, thanks.

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 12d

The Toronto model of having a lot of rental supply in the secondary market that gets financed by deposits on condo development is probably more unsound/less sophisticated than the general nuts and bolts of just figuring that you can get your margin from a relatively full building kept at 3% indexing

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 12d

I would say they aren't much different from other places! People in Québec are more likely to rent than in other provinces, so if the internal math works, builders will put PBR on the market. But they don't plan for uncapped rent increase to make the math work.

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Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 12d

Not a huge sample because that developer just recently moved into PBR since MLI financing is a lifeline to keep development alive, and it could be the case that more experienced builder-operators work differently. But the basics seem sound enough: get your margins covered from day 1, or don't build.

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 12d

So, I heard back.

In projects that were delivered since 2022, they planned for a 3% yearly rent increase after construction. In projects that target a churnier clientele (downtown non-permanent residents and students), the vacancy rate is so high that they can't increase rents at all.

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Reposted by Adam Mongrain

Émilio Gonzalez @res260.bsky.social · 12d

🏗️ J'ai travaillé fort avec des gens de Construisons Montréal pour sonder les partis municipaux sur leurs propositions pour construire plus de logements. Jetez-y un coup d'oeil!

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Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 14d

When land is sold at a premium, the industry moves to a low-supply, high-value strategy, because the build price puts the product out of the reach of most households. Plus even with a reactive city, infrastructure might not be in place. And demand from tourists!=demand for stable housing.

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 14d

The short version is that demand shocks don’t necessarily lead to more housing, as we’ve seen in high demand like SF and NYC and Vancouver. The owners get the price signals, the cities don’t always increase zoned capacity, developers have to pay a premium for land because of pent-up demand.

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Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 14d

This opportunity ends up bleeding into prices generally, as documented in this pretty elegant study.

mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/96131/1/MPRA...

Which would be only half bad if rent pressures meant more supply, but we know from experience that cities will tolerate almost infinite RE appreciation.

mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de

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Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 14d

In tourist destinations (a lot of big cities), putting a 2 bedroom unit for 150$ a night is an interesting bet if the average monthly rent in 1500$.