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Comment by johnatwork | Hacker News Reader

Rent is cheap because people are leaving the xenophobic environment. There's always some referendum talk on a 20 year cycle to keep the rates low, 70s, 90, 10s.

So yeah there's a huge Brain Drain from Anglo/English speaking Immigrant populations, as well as people fed up with the corruption.

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Wow, what a take. I seriously doubt that people in Montreal/Quebec are more or less xenophobic than the average North American; if you have data supporting this I'd be happy to change my mind.

Also please be more skeptical of thoughts of the form "X is Y because of hot take Z". Reality is complex and things have many causes. Montreal has a long history of doing city planning differently than other cities in Canada.

While I don't think rent and xenophobia are related, it really is palpable here specially when you're immigrant and specially now during election (Quebec election are happening next Monday)

I know, the CAQ is full of xenophobes, and it can suck not looking white in Quebec (although much less so in Montreal). I'm skeptical that it drives rent prices in any detectable way.

Having lived in Montreal it's probably in the top end of the most inclusive place I have been.

The only thing i feel like parent could be referring to is the language laws, but the reasoning here is that they are necessary when surrounded by english (and has nothing to do with race). Plus language laws are barely respected already.

Having been closely tied to Real Estate and landlords, this is the current understanding of most realtors that deal in English Montreal and its surrounding areas. Sure it may not be the only reason, but it is a definite factor.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-real-estate...

As for examples of xenophobia, I don't know of any other places where they have a separate language police, I know personally of non-white owned stores being harassed and fined for having the wrong accent on their french sign. There are countless politicians who've blamed immigrants for their woes, Jacques Parizeau being a famous one for blaming the Ethnic votes for their loss. CAQ just took a majority, look up Bill 21.

Anglo Brain Drain is a real thing too, and it's the major thing that's on some community's mind https://montrealgazette.com/news/brain-drain-brain-gain

Of all the places I've lived in and visited, Montreal was the only place so far where random people on the street had a problem with me, based on the way I look - got this way around the time the current government was elected. However, one thing to remember with rents is that the city mandates the percent of allowed rent increases plus it's nearly impossible to evict someone, which I suspect has a non trivial effect on rents.

Exactly, I agree with you.

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