Vancouver Civic Election 2018

[misher]

Originally Posted by bluefox

Kennedy Stewart's campaign manager Neil Monckton is bringing some unwanted negative press to his candidate's doorstep.

Apparently it's "defamatory" to highlight the Vancouver and District Labour Council's endorsements of, and foot soldiers helping out, Kennedy's mayoral campaign, to the point where Monckton bullied two people to delete social media posts with strongly implied threats of legal action. One was taken down but the individual in question later clarified why.

I guess if they felt their lead in public opinion was as strong as it appears they wouldn't have resorted to trying to bully people. Maybe they're not as confident as the polls suggest they should be?

Either way Kennedy's complicity in the demovictions in his federal riding tells me he would be no better than Gregor at "solving" housing (if he'd even want to). We might as well just give the juice guy another term at this point.

https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/2018/10/12/kennedy-stewart-campaign-threat/ (also covered by other media sources - Breaker, CKNW, to name two).

I don't like how unions and big labour are controlling our politics. And Kennedy honestly seems like a mouthpiece than an actual independent thinker. He's a posterboy for a group. Thats why he has no control over what they do. Bullying is a classic union & big labour strategy, they have law firms on retainer. In the end there's a reason unions tend to be strongly associated/connected with the mafia. Unions should definitely be banned from politics. Unions are for negotiations between their members and the company, not as political entities. Otherwise you can't trust whomever is elected whenever the unions backing him are hired over others. Same as I now look down on the NDP because they restricted work to only the unions that backed them which is clearly corruption. Do your really want a government that hires and make decisions based on giving as much kickback as possible to unions? Or one that takes the best quote to maximize your tax dollars. At least if another candidate is elected and a union is hired it'll be less damning.

[bluefox]

Originally Posted by misher

I don't like how unions and big labour are controlling our politics. And Kennedy honestly seems like a mouthpiece than an actual independent thinker. He's a posterboy for a group. Thats why he has no control over what they do. Bullying is a classic union & big labour strategy, they have law firms on retainer. In the end there's a reason unions tend to be strongly associated/connected with the mafia. Unions should definitely be banned from politics. Unions are for negotiations between their members and the company, not as political entities. Otherwise you can't trust whomever is elected whenever the unions backing him are hired over others. Same as I now look down on the NDP because they restricted work to only the unions that backed them which is clearly corruption. Do your really want a government that hires and make decisions based on giving as much kickback as possible to unions? Or one that takes the best quote to maximize your tax dollars. At least if another candidate is elected and a union is hired it'll be less damning.

Oh I agree. I also don't want corporations influencing politics.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

[Tetsuo]

Early voted in Burnaby, will be interesting to see how much the demovictions hurt the BCA

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by Tetsuo

Early voted in Burnaby, will be interesting to see how much the demovictions hurt the BCA

I did as well.

[logicbomb]

I have a few friends that aren't voting. All candidates just seem scummy.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by misher

I don’t think Russia and China is looking to takeover a city council ������

Surprisingly I haven’t seen someone say modular housing is being used as spy faculties/bases for foreign operatives yet.

For $20/vote they sure would. You're quite naive if you think otherwise.

[ssiguy]

It's fairly safe to say that housing is the #1 issue for the vast majority of both owners and renters. Unfortunately for Vancouverites, not one of the single candidates has an effective plan to solve the issue. Yes building more low income housing is an excellent idea and needed in spades but it just skims the surface. The City will never be able to build enough affordable housing to quench the need. This however is not due to population growth as the City, despite what the politicians say, is growing quite slowly. Despite this slow growth, the problem is NOT supply, it's demand.


Ever notice how the most expensive cities for real estate are also the most expensive to rent? There is a consistent reason for that............the higher the real estate, the disproportionate demand is for rentals because you have middle to even high incone people who rent. In short potential condo/house owners who would own in affordable real estate markets are artificially kept in the rental market. In Greater Vancouver you literally have hundreds of thousands of people who would rather buy than rent or move from condos to SFH if they could affoord it but they can't. This of course is extreme in Vancouver due to having astronomical real estate with low income and muniple governments who have absolutely no trepedations about renovictions.


None of the candidates are talking about what is the ONLY solution.........charging huge taxes on housing flipping, taxing at the rate of 20% a year for empty homes, treating house flippers as potential capitol gains income, and an outright ban on all foreign 'investors'. Until this happens it all a waste of time.

[misher]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

It's fairly safe to say that housing is the #1 issue for the vast majority of both owners and renters. Unfortunately for Vancouverites, not one of the single candidates has an effective plan to solve the issue. Yes building more low income housing is an excellent idea and needed in spades but it just skims the surface. The City will never be able to build enough affordable housing to quench the need. This however is not due to population growth as the City, despite what the politicians say, is growing quite slowly. Despite this slow growth, the problem is NOT supply, it's demand.


Ever notice how the most expensive cities for real estate are also the most expensive to rent? There is a consistent reason for that............the higher the real estate, the disproportionate demand is for rentals because you have middle to even high incone people who rent. In short potential condo/house owners who would own in affordable real estate markets are artificially kept in the rental market. In Greater Vancouver you literally have hundreds of thousands of people who would rather buy than rent or move from condos to SFH if they could affoord it but they can't. This of course is extreme in Vancouver due to having astronomical real estate with low income and muniple governments who have absolutely no trepedations about renovictions.


None of the candidates are talking about what is the ONLY solution.........charging huge taxes on housing flipping, taxing at the rate of 20% a year for empty homes, treating house flippers as potential capitol gains income, and an outright ban on all foreign 'investors'. Until this happens it all a waste of time.

You realize most of the land charged the empty home tax is developments waiting for the city to approve their permits which is around 2 years? So at 20% a year any potential development would become unaffordable.

Properties that are under construction, or slated for construction, but their permits are pending, will be subject to EHT.

https://www.cwilson.com/everything-need-know-vancouvers-empty-homes-tax/

Your plan would kill every single new place and massacre our economy and construction industry. Unemployment would rocket up to 20-30% within the first few years and keep rising fast. Also foreign buyers are less than 1% and likely every foreign investor has gone to Montreal because no investor would suffer a loss. Why are foreign investors coming up? I don’t mean to seem critical I mean your plan would kill real estate prices but at such massive expense that we’d become like Detroit. Seriously do you research before saying things? Thank god your not in charge. Sorry for the negative reaction I’m ususually pretty accepting of leftist viewpoints even if I don’t agree but something based on sheer stupidity really annoys me. This guy would bring cannibalism back in style after we lose all our money and become unemployed.


You must admit that when the radical left such as this guy takes over with little education or evidence behind their decisions history has shown that chaos results. I’m ok with some government intervention but it needs to be light to not kill the delicate golden goose.

[retro_orange]

Originally Posted by misher

You realize most of the land charged the empty home tax is developments waiting for the city to approve their permits which is around 2 years? So at 20% a year any potential development would become unaffordable. https://www.cwilson.com/everything-need-know-vancouvers-empty-homes-tax/

Your plan would kill every single new place and massacre our economy and construction industry. Unemployment would rocket up to 20-30% within the first few years and keep rising fast. Also foreign buyers are less than 1% and likely every foreign investor has gone to Montreal because no investor would suffer a loss. Why are foreign investors coming up? I don’t mean to seem critical I mean your plan would kill real estate prices but at such massive expense that we’d become like Detroit. Seriously do you research before saying things? Thank god your not in charge. Sorry for the negative reaction I’m ususually pretty accepting of leftist viewpoints even if I don’t agree but something based on sheer stupidity really annoys me. This guy would bring cannibalism back in style after we lose all our money and become unemployed.


You must admit that when the radical left such as this guy takes over with little education or evidence behind their decisions history has shown that chaos results. I’m ok with some government intervention but it needs to be light to not kill the delicate golden goose.

Why do you continue to introduce falsehoods to this forum? I have lost track of how many times other forumers have had to correct you on these exact statements. You are bringing down the quality of this forum and I have noticed the posts from the credible forumers have gone down recently. I can only attribute this to your dumping of false information on all sections of this forum especially the politics threads by introducing so many polarizing threads and posts. Radical left? You are the 'radical right' with obvious money in the game and clearly practice and represent all that is wrong with our real estate market and politics.

[misher]

Originally Posted by retro_orange

Why do you continue to introduce falsehoods to this forum? I have lost track of how many times other forumers have had to correct you on these exact statements. You are bringing down the quality of this forum and I have noticed the posts from the credible forumers have gone down recently. I can only attribute this to your dumping of false information on all sections of this forum especially the politics threads by introducing so many polarizing threads and posts. Radical left? You are the 'radical right' with obvious money in the game and clearly practice and represent all that is wrong with our real estate market and politics.

I cited a source which is a law company.

You cited no sources yet said my post is lower quality and is false?

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by misher

I cited a source which is a law company.

You cited no sources yet said my post is lower quality and is false?

Your source was from February, before some details had been clarified. All you had to do was Google the City of Vancouver webpage that answers the questions of what exemptions apply to the Empty Homes Tax.

There you would discover that "A property is not subject to the tax if a property is undergoing major renovations, construction, or redevelopment that causes the property to be vacant for six months where:
•Building or development permits have been issued
•The renovation or redevelopment work is being diligently carried out.

So a developer is expected to find tenants for vacant homes where no permit has been issued - although they can be empty up to six months of the year without having to pay the tax.

And an owner of vacant development land also doesn't have to pay the tax: "A property is not subject to the tax if it is a property where:
•There is no existing dwelling unit
•Permits have been applied for and are under review
•The application is being diligently pursued.

You're welcome.

[Tetsuo]

Guys give Misher a break, he's fresh out of High School earning a cool $15/hr in the Real Estate industry

[Alex Mackinnon]

Under the Redevelopment exemption, if a property is empty for more than 180 days because it was undergoing major renovations or redevelopment and all the necessary permits were issued, EHT will not apply. However, the construction work must be carried out diligently and without unnecessary delay for this exemption to apply. Properties that are under construction, or slated for construction, but their permits are pending, will be subject to EHT.

A pretty simple answer would be to not vacate a property before it's permitted for redevelopment.

What Holborne did with Little Mountain should not have happened. They demolished, what a 100 social housing units? Then the property stood vacant for a decade. That right there is benefits lost. Don't vacate and demo until the ducks are all in a row.

[ssiguy]

I love it how real estate companies, developers, and politicians go out of their way to say that foreign buyers are an insignificant amount of buyers and are not responsible for the sky-high prices but conversely when a ban on foreign buyers is brought up, they scream it will devastate the market and with plunging values.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

I love it how real estate companies, developers, and politicians go out of their way to say that foreign buyers are an insignificant amount of buyers and are not responsible for the sky-high prices but conversely when a ban on foreign buyers is brought up, they scream it will devastate the market and with plunging values.

Also while advertising their new developments directly overseas.

[EastVanMark]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

I love it how real estate companies, developers, and politicians go out of their way to say that foreign buyers are an insignificant amount of buyers and are not responsible for the sky-high prices but conversely when a ban on foreign buyers is brought up, they scream it will devastate the market and with plunging values.

You noticed that did you? It’s funny how that works, isn’t it?
Must be a coincidence I’m sure

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by Tetsuo

Guys give Misher a break, he's fresh out of High School earning a cool $15/hr in the Real Estate industry

Hey not cool, Misher has assured us he doesn't work his real estate. I think his mom might tho'...

[misher]

Originally Posted by EastVanMark

You noticed that did you? It’s funny how that works, isn’t it?
Must be a coincidence I’m sure

I love how even with less than 1% foreign buyers after the tax people will still blame foreign buyers, with less than 2% empty homes they will blame empty homes, with statistics showing flipping is rare with little impact on prices, and with expert opinions saying speculation plays little role, people will still continue to ignore the root causes and cast blame. No one accepts that prices went up because of economics. No one accepts that they were idiots for not buying when the market was cheap. Where everyone said it was smart to invest in a home. Instead there's corruption, illegal money, foreigners, etc. No one looks at statistics or research, instead they read propaganda that gives no numbers, statistics or research. And everyone that disagrees is of course part of the conspiracy. I cite the below but I know you will deny it and cover your eyes while screaming its foreigners and speculators! Believe it or not I want prices to fall. But through the right methods, right now we're just adding taxes ontop of taxes in an effort to kill our economy without addressing our supply shortage. Maybe you'll insult me and say I am part of some conspiracy to keep prices high or the sources I cite are bad. Despite the fact that the guy who is writing it was "co-author of Public Money Private Greed, a best selling book on the a major Canadian real estate scandal surrounding the collapse of three Ontario trust companies in 1982"

CMHC concluded that the urban housing markets in Toronto, Vancouver and other cities are in the grip of dynamic geographic and economic transformation brought on by local, national and global trends that, in the end, require more research.

Instead of trying to sort out the mysteries behind Vancouver’s housing sectors, the Globe came up with an attack on real estate developer practices based on classic egalitarian themes and the populist belief that prices are somehow rigged and manipulated by insiders and other grifters.

The idea that flippers are messing up the market and depriving people of affordable housing is unsupportable

https://business.financialpost.com/opini...ncouvers-condo-market-is-pure-flapdoodle

Honestly there are a lot of similarities between current propaganda and the Nazi propaganda machine which blamed the Jews for the bad economy.

The people were looking for someone to blame, a way to recover and a way to forge ahead from the economic crisis at hand... Regardless of the campaign chosen, a sacrifice needs to be made:

"Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, used his profound oratory skills to manipulate the German people into following his regime’s propaganda. The people were looking for something to improve the economic situation caused by the depression. The Nazi Party had a great propensity to purvey “mythical nationalist beliefs”; in 1933, they began deliberately blaming the Jewish population for the economic disparity in Germany (van Evera, pg. 8). The fact that the Jewish population was targeted as scapegoats would now be seen as blatant prohibited discrimination; however, the Nazis persuasively qualified their argument. The Nazis told people to blame the Jews because many Jewish citizens were still wealthy while everyone else was monetarily suffering, using economic inequalities to agitate relations between groups. This began to fuel the anti-semitism that the Nazi Party endorsed. Another reason to blame the Jewish, as advertised by the Nazi party, was their collective refusal to fight in World War I, argued to have caused ergonomic depression in Germany. In a state of ubiquitous anxiety, the once disjointed Germans unified under a government that provided comfort and security, a new state that would take control and help Germany become a rising hegemonic power. This newfound nationalism was built around a common enemy: the Jewish people. The people were blinded by these newly instilled nationalist beliefs, coerced by their superiors to believe that the Nazi way was the right way. The government was telling the people to represent and preserve national interest first and foremost...the people followed their government whole-heartedly because their faith in their previous government, the government where they had lost their possessions and valuables, had been compromised. "
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~ghost20j/clas...%20Holocaust%20German%20Nationalism.html


And just to help prove my point, look at what happened to prices after the foreign buyer tax, they went down for a bit then right back up again. The only reason prices are a bit down now is increased mortgage rates which has been seen across the country, not any rules or taxes. If anything housing is less affordable than when we started pre-tax just because its much harder to get a mortgage.




All I can say is, if your not familiar with economics or the statistics, can you just shut up and go read up before screaming that someone/something is to blame? Ty.

[Alex Mackinnon]

Originally Posted by misher

I love how even with less than 1% foreign buyers after the tax people will still blame foreign buyers, with less than 2% empty homes they will blame empty homes, with statistics showing flipping is rare with little impact on prices, and with expert opinions saying speculation plays little role, people will still continue to ignore the root causes and cast blame. No one accepts that prices went up because of economics. No one accepts that they were idiots for not buying when the market was cheap. Where everyone said it was smart to invest in a home. Instead there's corruption, illegal money, foreigners, etc. No one looks at statistics or research, instead they read propaganda that gives no numbers, statistics or research. And everyone that disagrees is of course part of the conspiracy. I cite the below but I know you will deny it and cover your eyes while screaming its foreigners and speculators! Believe it or not I want prices to fall. But through the right methods, right now we're just adding taxes ontop of taxes in an effort to kill our economy without addressing our supply shortage. Maybe you'll insult me and say I am part of some conspiracy to keep prices high or the sources I cite are bad. Despite the fact that the guy who is writing it was "co-author of Public Money Private Greed, a best selling book on the a major Canadian real estate scandal surrounding the collapse of three Ontario trust companies in 1982"

Honestly there are a lot of similarities between current propaganda and the Nazi propaganda machine which blamed the Jews for the bad economy.

....

All I can say is, if your not familiar with economics or the statistics, can you just shut up and go read up before screaming that someone/something is to blame? Ty.

Godwin's law. You just lost the argument.

[Changing City]

I'm not sure that (as seems to be the case so often these days) references to "the Nazi propaganda machine which blamed the Jews for the bad economy" has very much, if anything, to do with the soon to be decided civic election. In fact municipal governments can't do much about prices of housing - even the foreign buyers tax was provincial legislation.

If you are going to post charts, at least post up to date charts. The tax was introduced in July 2016. While foreign buyers are only one factor affecting the price of residential property in Greater Vancouver, with mortgage rates and stress testing of mortgages playing, I would argue, a greater role, you can't argue with the fact that prices rose consistently until July 2016, and they've plateaued from there until they started to fall consistently over the past 4 months.


[source; CTV News]

As another news piece noted "A chart produced by BMO chief economist Douglas Porter in January 2017, showed that Greater Vancouver home prices were yanked down compared to other cities across Canada following the introduction of the tax.

At that time, Vancouver was the only region with a foreign buyers’ tax. The measure didn’t apply in Victoria, and a tax hadn’t yet been introduced in Toronto.

Prices just kept climbing in those cities." [source: Global TV]