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Adam Mongrain

@adammongrain.bsky.social

2.1K followers 3K following 820 posts

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

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Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 14h

Something that doesn't get discussed enough on Bluesky is that Québécois French has a ganbatte equivalent that goes "lâche pas la patate", i.e. "do not drop the potato".

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 14h

Something that doesn't get discussed enough on Bluesky is that Québécois French has a ganbatte equivalent that goes "lâche pas la patate", i.e. "do not drop the potato".

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 15h

This book *can* kill, apparently.

The cover of "Governing Canada - A Guide to the Tradecraft of Politics" by Michael Wernick.

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 18h

Delightful.

Paul Kelleher 🎃 @paulkelleher.net · 19h

A kinda related story: My grandfather played the lotto every week and the morning after a draw he and his buds would go to the convenience store where they bought tickets and check their numbers together over coffee. Then word came that someone had bought the winning ticket from that store. 1/

Richard Pettigrew @wiglet1981.bsky.social · 22h

If you have an inkling you might win a Nobel prize, do you feel some urge to ensure you’re in a really noteworthy inaccessible place when it’s announced so you’ve got a good story about getting the news. ‘So, it was as our submersible rose from the Mariana Trench when my phone started pinging…’

Reposted by Adam Mongrain

Paul Fairie @paulisci.bsky.social · 1d

A Brief History of Men are Becoming Less Manly

🧵

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Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 1d

[redacted]

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Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 2d

Boooooooo

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 2d

It is an important piece. Again this is stuff I already believe but we try to anchor all of our advocacy around the idea of residential mobility (instead of affordability) because the point of an ideal, affordable residential stock would be to let people choose where and how they live.

A screen capture of a part of the linked article. It reads: "The seemingly clear barrier between putting down roots and moving around suddenly becomes very difficult to pin down when you reframe this all a little bit. Localism might not have very much to do with staying in place. Moving forms, spreads, and grows cultures, ideas, and groups. And crucially, as Fong and Appelbaum note, these communities that form as a result of mobility also enhance places for those who stay. Those who move are not doing so at the expense of the communities they leave behind. When all’s said and done, such mobility is to the benefit of those receiving and losing residents. Suppressing the movement of people can also backfire: the housing/mobility crisis also makes it difficult for many people to stay in communities and put down roots, because of high housing costs. Ironically, making mobility easier will also make sticking around easier."
The last two sentences are highlighted.

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Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 2d

A bit of rhetoric I put in my presentations is that climate policy also is housing policy. The point of having a livable climate is the first part - having somewhere to live.

The object of climate policy isn’t « the climate ». The climate is going to be fine after we cook ourselves alive.

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 2d

Housing policy is climate policy.

Jason Thorne @jasonthorne.bsky.social · 2d

The Venn diagram of urban density and average household GHG emissions is pretty much a circle. Interesting study on “Mapping household GHG emissions in the Greater Golden Horseshoe” from the University of Toronto School of Cities schoolofcities.utoronto.ca/mapping-hous...

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Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 5d

I don’t take pictures of strangers on public transit but on this train one of the passengers looks to have been thoroughly by Michael Wernick’s book on trade and policy.

Like as haunches over as someone can be, book over their head.

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 5d

I think it was from Hitchens that I heard "I don't *have* a body; I *am* a body" and it really stuck with me. I believe he was medidating on his chemo treatments?

(Necessary disclaimer that Hitchens had bad opinions to which I no longer subscribe.)

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Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 5d

What's the best theory we have on why it's still unsigned? Worries about electoral backlash from the surburbs or LA (so suburbs or suburbs lol)?

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 27d

I know that the California constitution is a mess but even then I am kinda confused about the number of times that SB79 is up for review/passage/debate. How many more steps?

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 5d

"disapproved of loose women who turned him down"

They say an image is worth a thousand words but sometimes 8 words is also worth a thousand words

ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 5d

anyway already seeing this classic make the rounds once more

“Major Major's father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” he counseled one and all, and everyone said, “Amen.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 5d

After 16 years since the last one, a new Protomen album is here.

I'm probably gonna post a bunch about their first two albums to make sense of how excited I am for these new songs.

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 6d

in january i turn 39 and you guys i will miss this place so much

mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 6d

Hard to think of a topic more tailor-made to the peculiarities of Bluesky's demographics than gifted kid discourse - seemingly everyone's a former gifted kid who's exactly 38 thus is likely to now have gifted kids of their own.

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 7d

I had the time of my life thanks to this post.

Oregon Zoo @oregonzoo.bsky.social · 7d

let the gourd times roll

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 9d

Like one of us must have argued about WoW with Stancil at some point, I feel it in my bones.

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 9d

I suspect one of the people I spent all of my time arguing with on forums between 2001 and 2007 went pro in the posting leagues.

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Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 12d

As I’ve been saying

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · Apr 15

Reclaiming YIMBY from boneheads is I guess what intestine factionalism is to communists, but for guys who wear dress shirts. Yes that guy is saying the things we're saying but he's saying it wrong and we all hate him.

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 12d

That would seem logical but it’s not as clear cut as that. @resnikoff.bsky.social has a wonderful piece detailing how builders can in fact be agnostic or ambivalent about YIMBY policies.

www.thenation.com/article/soci...

A YIMBY Theory of Power

Pro-housing advocates offer an analysis of class relations that is more sophisticated and has more explanatory power than the one held by many critics of the “abundance agenda.”

www.thenation.com

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 12d

My friend I have been invited to speak in front of developers, by developers, about a hundred times. Your adversary is landlords, not builders.

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Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 12d

High prices in the existing market can induce a doom loop because the buyer pool for new construction will shrink through the disconnect between land prices and median incomes. One way you get an edge in is lowering hard costs through reforms. The other part is social housing as a supply strategy.

Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 12d

The YIMBY platform I’m pitching to electeds countrywide is 25% about using social housing and nonprofit models to flood the market in order to keep vacancy rates high enough to put the screws on land and rent prices.

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Reposted by Adam Mongrain

Ed Granter @edgranter.bsky.social · 12d

Even worse when it's your own paper

Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 13d

Love when I find a paper that perfectly supports my argument, until the last paragraph where they take it all back

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Adam Mongrain @adammongrain.bsky.social · 13d

I don’t have a lot to go on but my take is that a lot of online/reactionary misogyny is sustained by men’s resentment of their attraction to women.