Adam Mongrain
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adammongrain.bsky.social
Adam Mongrain
@adammongrain.bsky.social
Director - Housing policy | Directeur - Habitation, Vivre en Ville
Montréal, Québec
EN/FR
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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")
Opening Doors | Publications | Carrefour Vivre en Ville
Consultez notre publication « Opening Doors ». Carrefour Vivre en Ville
carrefour.vivreenville.org
Reposted by Adam Mongrain
uk news is like “prime minister matt yglesias states that labour will pass a law defering criminal sentencing to local hoa boards who may send those convicted of wrongthink, amongst other crimes, to prison for up to 2 years without the possibility of appeal. his approval hovers around 4%”
November 26, 2025 at 12:37 AM
In Toronto for a talk tomorrow and I just discovered with significant delight that you can just walk into City Hall.
November 25, 2025 at 10:08 PM
Just reading this post and replies made my palms sweaty. Didn't even click the video yet.
i am afraid of heights on a cellular level and the opening scene where he struggles climbing up onto the boards at the top always makes me have to hit the restroom
anyway my favorite channel of late is the BBC Archive. they don't make lads like this anymore youtu.be/NKPApAsJbj4...
November 25, 2025 at 3:47 PM
Reposted by Adam Mongrain
Wow! This systemic problem is really structural and far-reaching. Anyway, here are three tips for how you an individual can fix your conduct
November 25, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Reposted by Adam Mongrain
I honestly find the MensWearGuy inspirational for what I think a good kind of cultured humanism can look like. This is the sort of presence I would like to have in the world.
A friend who teaches theology shared with me a post about CS Lewis's Mere Christianity, which discusses foundational Christian logic across denominations. It reminded me of Dale's tweet below, and I wanted to share some thoughts here regarding modesty and respectability, which are often hot topics.
November 24, 2025 at 8:12 AM
the ,) is so good god damn it jerry
MAMDANI: i'm going to cast the One Ring into the fiery depths of Mount Doom :)

SAURON, THE DARK LORD: no problem my guy. i'll keep an *eye* on you ,)
November 21, 2025 at 11:28 PM
This is my favorite bit of writing on the matter. More questions than answers but the right questions I think. cc. @buddyyakov.bsky.social

www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/def...
November 21, 2025 at 1:47 PM
Reposted by Adam Mongrain
Quebec City is beefing up its bike share (called àVélo) in areas most affected by construction of the upcoming tram project.

àVélo is a fully electric public bike share service that saw 2 million trips in 2025, which I believe is higher than Vancouver’s Mobi!
àVélo sera bonifié autour des travaux du tramway de Québec
L'ajout de stations aidera à faciliter les déplacements dans les secteurs affectés par les travaux, comme Laurier et René-Lévesque, espère Marchand.
www.journaldequebec.com
November 20, 2025 at 1:23 AM
Right. I think it was from @peark.es that I read the quote "nothing like a price to change a sentiment" and I think we have to be extra thorough when we account for revealed preferences in housing, accounting for price dynamism and non-fungibility. This is how we broach the subject in the book:
November 19, 2025 at 3:48 PM
Katelyn is an essential voice and I have learned so much from her work. My Canadian friends in particular would do well to read some reporting on the culture war fronts that are being imported wholesale from the US into our lives and the lives of our friends and families.
I am only 142 paid Patreon members from hitting my end of year goal. I'd like to get there this week.

To entice you, I am offering 20% off your first year on annual memberships all this week. Can you help me hit this important milestone?

patreon.com/katelynburns
Katelyn Burns | Patreon
creating LGBTQ journalism
patreon.com
November 19, 2025 at 2:09 PM
Good thread and this is one of the particular wrinkles we're trying to iron out. The measure we try to put forward is that vacancy rates should be high enough that rent growth falls under inflation.
issues:

1) a "healthy" vacancy rate is often a long-run average -- SF has never had a healthy vacancy rate in my 28 years
2) to fix housing you need to run above average vacancy rates for an extended period of time.
3) estimates of unmet demand often assume prev period was healthy. not so!
November 18, 2025 at 9:22 PM
"Just like mice go away when you remove their food sources, maybe young single people will go away if we remove the kind of housing they need." Insightful work again from Addison.
You can’t immiserate and deprive people to success and abundance. You can’t help people climb a ladder by sawing off the bottom half. But that is precisely what we have done, intentionally or not, with the housing market in America. thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/are-roomma...
Are Roommates The Answer To The Housing Crisis?
Or, are consumer preferences infallible?
thedeletedscenes.substack.com
November 18, 2025 at 4:26 PM
Reposted by Adam Mongrain
Haven’t read the report, but the photo of three-dimensional modules being craned in with double-hung windows kinda sums up the problems with Americans trying to pursue industrialized construction – it’s an advanced topic and we haven’t mastered the basics.
Center for American Progress Housing Plan:

Take down barriers that make it harder to build homes.
Build more affordable homes at a lower cost.
Protect consumers and lower other housing costs.

www.americanprogress.org/article/buil...
Build, Baby, Build: A Plan To Lower Housing Costs for All
CAP’s plan would focus federal efforts on building homes and lower housing costs.
www.americanprogress.org
November 17, 2025 at 2:05 PM
In the Louvre of Bluesky, I believe we have found our Mona Lisa.
November 17, 2025 at 12:25 AM
Reposted by Adam Mongrain
Small thing, but I like that European electrical codes aren’t so prescriptive about where outlets are placed. In this bedroom in the US, you’d need one duplex outlet per wall, inevitably placing one (and only one) on the wall of the bed, but behind the bed frame rather than next to it
November 16, 2025 at 11:49 PM
Reposted by Adam Mongrain
We are phasing out the terms “extant” and “extinct” from our exhibits and will now refer to species as either “Darwinners" or “Darlosers.”
November 15, 2025 at 4:42 PM
Good thread.
I don’t talk about this that much but when I was young I had severe OCD that went unaddressed much longer than it should have. For a while, it wrecked (among other things) my gpa; for instance, I’d keep rewriting over and over my name at the top of my math homework (b/c the brain tells u it is…
A lot of education discourse is at root an inability to decide whether the purpose of our education system is to 1) teach material and measure learning 2) reward students who work hard 3) separate the smart kids (destined for smart guy jobs) from the dumb kids (destined to serve the smart guys)
November 15, 2025 at 7:15 PM
Reposted by Adam Mongrain
Look if you're trans, you have to live. Do whatever you need to do to make it.
November 14, 2025 at 1:15 PM
from what I picked up reading posts this week I think they’re solving this problem for future generations
What a terrible day to know how to read
November 14, 2025 at 7:12 PM
This was the inevitable end point of the inclusion of immigration into housing discourse.

It was predictable because it makes intuitive sense to game out the math of housing demand in terms of persons and housing supply in terms of units.
you could fact check this — there aren’t 30 million illegal immigrants and there is no evidence that the presence of an immigrant in say houston has any impact on housing in madison, wisconsin — or you could note straightforwardly that this is just nazi rhetoric
JD Vance: "A lot of young people are saying housing is way too expensive. Why is that? Because we flooded the country with 30 million illegal immigrants who were taking houses that ought by right go to American citizens."
November 14, 2025 at 12:43 AM
Reposted by Adam Mongrain
you could fact check this — there aren’t 30 million illegal immigrants and there is no evidence that the presence of an immigrant in say houston has any impact on housing in madison, wisconsin — or you could note straightforwardly that this is just nazi rhetoric
JD Vance: "A lot of young people are saying housing is way too expensive. Why is that? Because we flooded the country with 30 million illegal immigrants who were taking houses that ought by right go to American citizens."
November 13, 2025 at 10:12 PM
Reposted by Adam Mongrain
IT GOT BETTER

📍Central MN
November 12, 2025 at 3:05 AM
This feels so extravagant that I’m anticipating a @besttrousers.bsky.social thread detailing how I don’t actually understand what a median is.
THE MEDIAN AGE OF A U.S. HOME BUYER NOW SITS AT A RECORD HIGH OF 61 YEARS, PER NAR.
November 11, 2025 at 4:09 PM
Reposted by Adam Mongrain
Single-Stair Sickos might like to learn that a lot of European cities used to produce detailed books on their built environment, including complete floor plans.

Here's a snippet from Hamburg und Seine Bauten (1914)
November 10, 2025 at 11:31 PM