Quote:
Originally Posted by whatnext
If the Feds hadn't let foreign money flood into our real estate market these people wouldn't be in this state. As doctors and lawyers were pushed out the West Side the pressure on the cheapest rentals elsewhere meant the most vlnerable ended up on the street. Look no further than the Metrotown Massacre of cheap walk-ups to see what helped cause this problem. The same thing happened all over Vancouver with rooming houses and cheap basement suites that weren't registered.
Not surprisingly, you don't see that as a problem.
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I never said that's not a problem, but it only becomes a major problem when the local population simply can't compete or keep up with the wealth of the world: something the Federal government did not fully understand at the time of implementation. The Province and this City could do a lot in the early days to cushion the impact but nothing was done, as taxes form property purchases are the most lucrative revenue from the most highly priced commodity in this province: land. Successive provincial and municipal governments benefitted from this. If commerce and industrial developments, including the uplift of the local population to become more financially competitive, the flow of vast amounts of foreign money could keep in tandem with the growth of the local economy, and the earning power of the local population. Alas, this place prefers to be a backwater and this is the result: an expensive bedroom community deprived of more sophisticated urban and economic developments.
FYI, the massacre of cheap wooden shacks in the West End to be replaced by the more expensive walkups and apartment towers from the 50s to the 70s allowed West End to become one of the most affordable neighbourhoods west of Main Street. The lack of this kind of development all over Vancouver is what causing the housing crisis we are having today. What's happening in Burnaby is just a natural progression of things: an event recurring in the history of human settlement-building, and precisely what is helping to make housing more affordable in the future.
Or would you rather we still live in caves? They are free dwellings I believe.