Rental Amenities and the Stability of Hedonic Prices: A Comparative Analysis of Five Market Segments

The current paper applies the hedonic approach to five rental submarkets in the Quebec region, namely Quebec City, Vanier, Ste-Foy, Beauport and Charlesbourg. The databank consists of information obtained from property owners via a yearly survey; some 32,000 rental units and nearly 3,300 buildings are included in the study. Data provide detailed information on building and apartment size, age, location, services provided, quality of premises and type of occupants; vacancy rates can also be derived from the bank. In addition, resorting to a regional geographic information system permits integration of neighborhood effects into the analysis. Findings suggest that significant differences in implicit prices do exist across market segments. However, while consistent results are obtained for major rent determinants, collinearity clearly emerges with respect to some rental attributes. Using a regression-based paired comparison approach, it is possible to identify stable hedonic prices for main rental services; the coefficients thus obtained are then forced back as constraints into the service-adjusted model, thereby improving its overall consistency and practicability.

Building Affordable Rental Housing in Unaffordable Cities: A Canadian Low-Income Housing Tax Credit

Many Canadian cities are short of affordable rental housing. Waiting lists for low-income housing are years in length, and new-build construction of rental housing has fallen over the last two decades. This study proposes a better way to build more low-income housing in expensive Canadian cities. A made-in-Canada Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) could leverage private sector expertise in site location, building, and management to build more and better low-income rental housing.social policy, Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, social housing

Retail Concentration and Shopping Center Rents - A Comparison of Two Cities

This study aims primarily at testing whether, and to what extent, retail concentration within regional and super-regional shopping centers affects rent levels as well as the differential impact it may exert for various goods categories and sub-categories and in different urban contexts. In this paper, 1,499 leases distributed among eleven regional and super-regional shopping centers in Montreal and Quebec City, Canada, and negotiated over the 2000-2003 period are being considered. Unit base rents (base rent per sq. ft.) are regressed on a series of descriptors that include percentage rent rate, retail unit size (GLA), lease duration, shopping center age as well as 31 retail categories while the Herfindahl index is used as a measure of intra-category retail concentration. Findings suggest that while, overall, intra-category retail concentration affects base rent negatively, the magnitude and, eventually, direction of the impact varies depending on the nature of the activity and the market dynamics that prevail for the category considered.

Testing the Temporal Stability of Accessibility Value in Residential Hedonic Prices

Purpose – This paper bridges the gap between, on the one hand, supply-driven (urban form and transportation networks) and demand-driven (action-based) accessibility to urban amenities and, on the other hand, house price dynamics as captured through panel hedonic modelling. It aims at assessing temporal changes in the valuation of accessibility, while ordering households’ priorities among access to labour market, schools and shopping outlets. Design/methodology/approach – Several indexes are built using a methodology developed by Thériault et al. (2005, published in Journal of Property Investment and Finance). They integrate car-based travel time on the road network (using GIS), distribution of opportunities (activity places) within the city, and willingness of persons to travel in order to reach specific types of activity places (mobility behaviour). While some measure centrality (potential attractiveness considering travel time, population and opportunities) others consist of action-based indexes using fuzzy logic and capture the willingness to travel in order to reach actual specific activity places (work places, schools, shopping centres, groceries). They summarise suitable opportunities available from each neighbourhood. Rescaled indices (worst - to 100 - best) are inserted simultaneously into a multiplicative hedonic model of single-family houses sold in Quebec City during years 1986, 1991 and 1996 (10,269 transactions). Manipulations of accessibility indexes are developed for ordering their relative impact on sale prices and isolate effects of each index on the variation of sale price, thus providing proxies of households’ priorities. Moreover, a panel-like modelling approach is used to control for changes in the valuation of each property-specific, taxation or accessibility attribute during the study period. Findings – This original approach proves efficient in isolating the cross-effects of urban centrality from accessibility to several types of amenities, while controlling for multicollinearity and heteroscedasticity. Results are in line with expectations. While only a few property-specific attributes experience a change in their marginal contribution to house value during the study period, all accessibility indexes do. Every single accessibility index has a much stronger effect on house values than centrality (which is still marginally significant). When buying their home, households put more emphasis on access to schools than they put on access to the labour market, which in turn, prevail over accessibility to either shopping centres or, finally, groceries. The ordering is rather stable but the actual valuation of a specific amenity may change over time. Practical implications – Better understanding the effect of accessibility to amenities on house values provides guidelines for choosing among a set of new neighbourhoods to develop in order to generate optimal fiscal effects for municipalities. It could also provide guidelines for decision making when improving transportation networks or locating new activity centres.

La responsabilité de la mère pour le préjudice causé par son enfant

Dans le présent texte, l'auteure aborde les questions suivantes : comment le droit de la responsabilité pour autrui voit-il le rôle de la mère gardienne, éducatrice et surveillante de son enfant ? Le rôle de la mère est-il valorisé ? S'harmonise-t-il avec son mandat de travailleuse à l'extérieur de la maison ? Comment se compare-t-il aux obligations parentales du père ? Et, plus généralement, comment l'obligation parentale est-elle analysée par rapport au rôle de la société dans la protection et l'éducation des enfants ? Après un rappel historique et un résumé de l'état du droit en matière de faute présumée des parents, l'auteure examine la jurisprudence des 20 dernières années au regard de certains éléments de la critique féministe. Elle constate que les décisions étudiées rendent souvent le travail de la mère invisible, répartissent les tâches différemment entre père et mère et, finalement, imposent un modèle rigide de la mère idéale. L'auteure critique aussi la privatisation des risques créés par les fautes des enfants et l'absence de reconnaissance de la responsabilité de la société à cet égard. Enfin, l'auteure évalue des modifications législatives possibles, soit l'élimination de la présomption de faute ou son remplacement par un régime de faute qualifiée. Elle conclut que ces réformes pourraient être inutiles à moins qu’une conception égalitaire du rôle parental ne soit élaborée par les tribunaux.The author addresses the following questions : How does the law of liability for damage or injury caused by another consider the mother in her role as guardian, educator and surveillant of her child ? What value is given to the mother's role ? Is this role in harmony with the mother's working life outside the home ? How does this compare with the role-obligations of the father ? More generally, how does parental obligation stand up to analysist in relation to society's role in protecting and educating children ? After a brief background and summary of the law in matters of presumed fault of parents, the author examines the case law of these past twenty years in light of certain feminists' critiques. She notes that the decisions under study often render the mother's labor invisible, divides tasks differently between fathers and mothers and lastly, imposes a rigid model of an ideal mother. The author also criticizes the privatization of risks created by children's faults and the absence of recognition of society's responsibility in this respect. Finally, the author reviews possible legislative amendments, namely the elimination of the presumption of fault or its replacements by a regimen of qualified fault. She concludes that these reforms could prove useless the courts develop an egalitarian view of the parental role

An Evaluation Model for Non-Governmental Organizations Engaged in Advocacy

The article proposes a model to evaluate the effectiveness of NGOs that engage in advocacy for compliance with international human rights and civil liberties standards or constitutional rules. The model draws on the analysis of social movement effectiveness, ombudsmen’s roles and the literature on the evaluation of human rights NGOs at the international level. It establishes ways to measure the legitimacy and effectiveness of advocacy NGOs. In particular, it suggests that transparency and independence must be constantly demonstrated, that factual accuracy must always be sought and that legal compliance must be shown to have moral and public interest resonance. The article also discusses the choices between short term and long term strategies

Could the Asian Crisis Have Been More Accurately Predicted? Improving and Early Warning System Model

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