Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire
The reality is that they will pay for this privilege, as the market values of their condos will adjust to the fact that virtually no non-Mandarin speakers will be interested in buying units in that complex... they will effectively be limiting the pool of buyers drastically. Maybe they don't care; that's their call to make.
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Doesn't this make the scenario much worse for people who find that the condo complexes they buy into change over time? Not only does the language of operation change in a difficult to predict way, pressuring them to leave, but those who leave also end up selling at a loss***.
Keep in mind we're also balancing this out against the cost of the fix, which in the worst case is for people to pay for translation services in the condo. Or to expect immigrants to at least have a proxy who can understand one of the two official languages, which I think would pay a lot of dividends in terms of integration and economic outcomes. That is not exactly a high bar.
In BC the ESL situation has actually been getting a little worse because of funding cuts. I think anybody here should be entitled to free ESL courses. Good ESL training for newcomers prevents most of these problems from happening in the first place.
*** This is generally untrue right now in Vancouver. The Chinese non-English-speakers often have a lot of money and they have been fuelling huge increases in real estate prices in areas like Richmond.
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