Quote:
Originally Posted by rofina
There is a limit, even to community responsibility.
You first have to take care of your own self, before you can worry about anyone else or the community.
Rental housing, in this City, and this province has not meant stability for as long as I have been in Canada, and that's just over 2 decades.
If myself, a first generation immigrant can figure that out, then I have a little less sympathy for those that have lived here longer than I and never did.
I also don't see it as a community responsibility to have a private, for profit business, provide services that go so far beyond and above, such a move out bonus' for renters, or even having to find alternate accommodations.
I think community services should exist for this, for seniors, disabled, or those generally unable to take care of themselves. I'm definitely not for a dog eat dog world, we do need safety nets.
But I don't feel sorry, or responsible for my peers, 30 something, employed, getting the eviction notice after a few years. That's renting. That's reality. That's not a demographic that should require help finding alternate accommodations - its called adulting, its sucks, but its a prerequisite for even the most modest levels of success.
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Lots to unpack here.
But let's just say that right off the bat, I agree with others' view that your original comments and views (including some of the ones expressed here) are considerably out of touch and just generally lacking in any compassion or humanity.
A lot of the people you're slating off as being
"irresponsible" for still being in the rental market rather than ownership happen to be multi-generational Canadians - which I realize in your mind as an admitted 1st generation immigrant, implies that they should be miles ahead of you already, in terms of their current station in life having had a bit of a "
headstart", ....if we can just call it that....that you yourself didn't have as a young person moving here.
Except it doesn't quite work that way all the time, and it's not as simplistic as all that.
A lot of those 30 something year olds (or even 40 or 50 something year olds) who've been forced into the rental market come from families where their own parents and grandparents before them, owned the homes they grew up in, and probably even hoped to pass down to their kids and grandkids as part of their legacy. But a lot has happened in the last 30-40 years that's made that difficult, if not impossible, for a lot of families and made it harder for them to own homes like those who came before them - and not all of it is (in fact most of it is not) their fault, and has nothing to do with their own levels of "
personal responsibility", their diligence (or laziness).
In many cases you're talking about educated folks, many just freshly graduated from college or graduate schools trying to put down roots themselves but finding that whereas their parents were able to buy their own family home that they grew up in for $50k, 90k or even $120,000, 40-50 years ago, suddenly you need no less than $700,000 to a couple of millions of dollars just to get into the ownership game and buy into a home that's less than half the size of the one you grew up with, and that that simply isn't an option at your current state in life.
We're talking mostly millennials here with good decent(ish) paying jobs, and even on the other end you might have 40 and 50 something year old Gen-Xer's who were in the home ownership but have been forced into rental also for reasons not entirely under their control.
For a lot of these people, THIS is their home (as in Greater Vancouver and BC), and they're not going to be able to suddenly pick up and pack up and move to a more "affordable" town or city in the Prairies or the Atlantic provinces where they have no support system at all.
And I'm saying all this as a first generation immigrant myself, like you.
And like you, and as an immigrant you ought to be aware of the fact that there's some level of privilege to being able to immigrate to another country - by choice - and as a non-refugee immigrant with the kind of support system, that allows one to set down roots relatively quickly and ensconce yourself into the social strata at a decent level and station.
Surely that should behoove you some level of empathy for people like them, in much the same way you (hopefully) have for people that you and I left behind who couldn't afford to immigrate like we did.
I've heard this,....
"if you can't afford to live here, then you should be here" view before, typically (and sad to say) often from immigrants, most of whom immigrated here from relatively well-to-do families and situations and from a certain demographic, and often time forgetting the role their own immigration to this country might be playing into making it more difficult for the native born Canadians. While also conveniently forgetting the reality that if they really can't afford to live here as they observed then they just as likely can't afford to move anywhere else that you think would be more fitting for them.
As Genwhy observed, Burnaby and Metrotown specifically, ignored this problem for the longest time, with many of those in power to do anything about it probably having the same "
personal responsibility" view and approach that you're taking, as they enjoyed the tax and revenue benefits of a runaway red hot real estate market, right up until it drove all of them out of power when the problem ran out of control.
It's not unreasonable to expect that the cities and the powers-that-be under whose stewardship (in successive administrations and regimes), the housing market and situation went out of control, pick up some of the burden of (social) responsibility in trying to help prevent it get even worse.
(read : homelessness, which clearly people here hate even more, and think just magically falls out of the sky as a societal problem happening only to those who '
deserve' it).
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