On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

Well, that's what I'm calling it, since that art supply shop called it home since before my family moved here to Ottawa in 1985.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/plan-to-revamp-downtown-ottawa-block-sparks-debate-over-intensification-1.7172642

Not saying that the new housing shouldn't be built. I do think the current tenants deserve better-arranged supports, for starters, though...

Yeah, so I truncated my morning walk today. Usually, I'd try to take a longer route to get to my newspaper/grocery-shopping in the morning, but the smoke is still in force here in Ottawa-Gatineau.

We have a working air conditioner, and also two air purifiers working in specific rooms in the house for various reasons. The newest of the purifiers was thanks to cumulative effort re: Air Miles reward points. I need to find where I can buy replacement filters for this one, and probably soon.

If you actually own a house, you need to watch out for this.

It may or may not be confined to Toronto.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/fraudulent-home-sale-1.6710868

My tax paperwork is now in the mail, en route to Sudbury for processing. We'll see soon enough if my calculations are good enough. There's always something I've misunderstood, sometimes corrected to my benefit, sometimes not so much, every year. If I end up repaying something again - it's happened on occasion - I find it harder than many to complain about that, especially after these last two years of Pandemic-era supports.

I do want and will the social safety net to evolve to the better for us all, of course. UBI, at a reasonable monthly level, indexed to inflation...that would be good, I'm convinced.

Housing supports for all, housing for all, that would be good also.

Finally rolling pharma, eye care, dental care, mental health care into the overall medicare system, ditto.

We have to argue for it. Until we win.

More on other topics anon.

Feeling slightly activist tonight.

https://www.change.org/p/let-s-protect-ottawa-s-long-term-housing-affordability/

Yes. This is the true name of a real problem right now.

Listening to a discussion on The Current of how to solve homelessness and being close to that state for more people.

Three jobs applied for today. Tried for a fourth, but couldn't log into the website properly for that company. Still waiting for the password reset e-mail half an hour later.

Oh, I might be looking for a new place for me and my personal library to live starting next January.

"Might?" Probably will be. Long story, not all of it mine to share. Not right now, anyway. Not going to count on lottery money showing up to save anyone's day, let alone mine. But, yeah, this adds a little urgency for unloading some of my collections.

Houses that used to be storefronts. There's ways to look for them, depending on the history of your neighbourhood. Dylan Reid discusses some of them - applicable in Ottawa and Gatineau as in Toronto - over at the Spacing Toronto blog:

http://spacing.ca/toronto/?p=61839

Formerly the Confederation Building, which used to be home to several federal offices...now it's becoming student rental housing! Specifically Theo Ottawa by brand-name.



This image was taken back in February, before the lockdowns started in Canada.

In this age of urban intensification and wanting to live in as small a space you can get away with...well, some of the designs shown in this link caught my attention. I don't know that packrat-me can actually hope to live like that, but it's entertaining to occasionally imagine.