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mikepmoffatt.bsky.social
Co-Host, "Missing Middle". Husband. Father. Brother. Son. Economist. Housing guy. I used to do other stuff.
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Posts 16 Comments 34

Writing a thing. I find that the federal government doesn't quite understand that, fundamentally, the GST has the same impact on housing construction as municipal development charges. Instead of inventing Rube Goldberg-like incentives to lower DCs, just cut the GST on housing!

submitted 20 minutes ago • 1 comment

Over the last 100+ years, governments have put thousands of rules dictating residential neighbourhood design. But have those rules made neighbourhoods better? I'd say it's made them objectively worse. I'll take a World War I-era neighbourhood over any post-WW2 design any day.

submitted 7 hours ago • 4 comments

Latest by me at the Toronto Star. I didn't choose the title, but I love it: "Ontario’s housing crisis is more like three housing crises in a trench coat" Sadly, we're falling down when it comes to all 3. www.thestar.com/opin...

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

Zoning in theory: we need land use regulation to keep homes away from sources of pollution. Zoning in practice: the only places you can build new housing are right next to the highways and high-traffic streets that are your city’s largest sources of pollution.

submitted 2 days ago • 6 comments

Today's piece: Most Ontario municipalities explicitly assume that doubling development charge rates will yield twice the revenue. However, both theory and practice show that this isn't true. It's why Coke doesn't charge $1000 a can. Read here: www.missingmiddleini...

submitted 3 days ago • 3 comments

In the early 2010s, about 20K more people per year moved out of the GTA to other parts of Canada than moved in. Today it's 80K. GTA = Toronto, York, Peel, Halton, and Durham.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Today's podcast episode talks about everyone's favourite subject... development charges! If you tax something, you get less of it. Ontario taxes the heck out of new housing so we get... less new housing. Full episode here: www.youtube.com/watc...

submitted 4 days ago • 7 comments

This seems to be the answer, or at least a major part of the answer. Thanks, everyone! This has been very useful to know.

submitted 5 days ago • 3 comments

If this is the reason then, yeah, I can't blame people one bit. It's a totally reasonable stance to take.

submitted 5 days ago • 3 comments

Q: Does Bluesky's algorithm penalize links to Substack? We're getting 10x more traffic to our Substack from Twitter than we are from here, 10x more from LinkedIn, and 30x more from Reddit. But whenever any of us post a Substack link here... nada. It's weird.

submitted 5 days ago • 9 comments

New piece! A lack of family-friendly housing in our cities is causing an exodus of young families to surrounding communities. And those communities aren't planning for it. Today we look at the City of Ottawa and Lanark County. Read here: www.missingmiddleini...

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

Here's a quick guide to when family-sized homes became unaffordable to Canada's middle class. Details in this piece: www.missingmiddleini...

submitted 6 days ago • 2 comments

When did housing become unaffordable to Canada's middle class? A: Depending on where you are, it was either 2016, 2020, 2022 or... it's always been unaffordable. We break down the numbers here: www.missingmiddleini...

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

You’re doing some fascinating work re: housing affordability. The best part of shovelling my driveway yesterday was putting on CBC’s Day 6 podcast and hearing you explain math on the radio, which is not an easy thing to do!

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Spoiler for a piece coming out in a couple of hours. Middle-class housing didn't slowly become less affordable. Instead, unaffordability hit Canada in 4 distinct waves with very different regional impacts.

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Something that needs more attention: The province has set housing targets for municipalities to keep pace with population growth. However, cities are completely ignoring these in their Official Plans, DC Background Studies, etc. Cities are creating housing scarcity.

submitted 7 days ago • 5 comments