Slightly off topic, but is the supply significantly higher than the demand out in Vancouver? I've always wondered how companies could get away with the abysmally low salaries for dev roles vs anywhere on the east coast relative to living costs.
Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town
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Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town
#22Where does the youth diaspora in Vancouver lead to? The suburbs? Other cities in Canada or the US?
Suburbs of Toronto for me and several of my friends from my time at UBC. A lot of us were transplants from across the country, tried to hack it professionally in Vancouver before eventually being driven elsewhere by job and housing prospects.
Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town
#23I'm curious how this problem is unique to Vancouver. Berlin's real-estate values have risen some 40% in just the last 7 years or so. New York City, in the 10 years I lived there, had an enormous escalation in what you get for the same rent payment, even adjusted for inflation. Big cities deal with this all over, so how do they deal with this "problem," or is Vancouver somehow unique in other ways?
Berlin is in a pretty unique situation. It was a city where most buildings stood empty and with few jobs, especially in the high paying sector. The only pull factors were low cost. This changed only slowly after it became the capital again.
Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town
#24Slightly off topic, but is the supply significantly higher than the demand out in Vancouver? I've always wondered how companies could get away with the abysmally low salaries for dev roles vs anywhere on the east coast relative to living costs.
Yes many people love Vancouver because of the weather (esp relative to the rest of canada) and the proximity to nature there are also a lot of recent ubc/sfu grads and kids from other Canadian schools who find van desirable. This combined with few roles to begin with gives you the current situation
Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town
#25Where does the youth diaspora in Vancouver lead to? The suburbs? Other cities in Canada or the US?
Loads go to the US. TN is easy to get and you can get close to (or more than) 50% higher salary (not including exchange rate, before tax).
Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town
#26Where does the youth diaspora in Vancouver lead to? The suburbs? Other cities in Canada or the US?
After ubc I went back to the states along with everyone else who got the chance - otherwise calgary, Toronto and montreal, or asia. Kids in Asia who have ubc/northamerican degrees are treated like golden children from what I hear. A former roommate from jakarta said he applied to langara cause even that's prestigious lol
Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town
#27Come to Montreal! It's great here. No way would I want to pledge the rest of my life to a bank in exchange for the right to exist. Rent controls here.
It's odd: it's like the state understands that banks are bastards.
Montreal has some issues with organised crime but nothing compared to the organised crime of banking / money laundering through land. I don't have to pay some gangster $1MM for a shack.
Leave the boomers to their trinkets kids. Walk away. They need your labour, the rest is just paper.
Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town
#28I'm curious how this problem is unique to Vancouver. Berlin's real-estate values have risen some 40% in just the last 7 years or so. New York City, in the 10 years I lived there, had an enormous escalation in what you get for the same rent payment, even adjusted for inflation. Big cities deal with this all over, so how do they deal with this "problem," or is Vancouver somehow unique in other ways?
That was going to be my question. I mean, look at the Bay Area. They command some of the highest rents in the country, and many tech-sector workers are able to "get by" because of higher salaries from their employers. Of course, if you're not in the tech sector, you're forced to live in more affordable outskirts, like East Bay. In NYC, they have fantastic transit, so if you don't live in Manhattan, you can still get…
On a weekday, Caltrain stops going south between midnight and 5 AM. Bart going east shuts down around the same time.
In Manhattan, subways run all night to the different boros, Metro-north, the LIRR, PATH, NJ transit etc. run through the night.
People say NYC is expensive, and living on the upper east side or west village can be expensive. But plenty of safe, cheaper places are a 20 minute train ride from Manhattan, and even more are a 30 minute train ride (and so on). You don't get options like that in the Bay Area.
Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town
#29> There are already enough houses and condos in the city with no lights on because no one actually lives in them. To me, there seems to be a pretty obvious public policy response. Institute a very high property tax, which is abated on some kind of curve according to the amount of time the owner or tenants spend living in a property, with no tax being due if the property is legitimately occupied for more than, say, te…
This is normally done via a "Homestead" tax exemption, where if your vacation home is assessed at $100K, you get taxed on all $100K, but if you live on it, you only get taxed on $100,000-N, where N is the exemption. This is meant to encourage owners occupying their homes, which is a great thing. I don't know if they have it in Vancouver.
In California, the exemption is a measly $7000. Which is essentially nothing, given home prices in the Bay Area. What they need to do is increase that number 10-20X or make it a percentage of the home's value. This would greatly help solve the problem of foreign "investors" buying up all the housing, leaving it vacant, and essentially just treating homes like bars of gold in a safe.
And don't even get me started on Prop 13, which is essentially mechanism to transfer wealth from younger, newer residents to older residents.
Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town
#30I'm curious how this problem is unique to Vancouver. Berlin's real-estate values have risen some 40% in just the last 7 years or so. New York City, in the 10 years I lived there, had an enormous escalation in what you get for the same rent payment, even adjusted for inflation. Big cities deal with this all over, so how do they deal with this "problem," or is Vancouver somehow unique in other ways?
I'm in London now but used to be in Auckland. 40% over 7 years sounds blissfully slow after the insanity of Auckland - a city facing a very similar situation to Vancouver.
Berlin is unique in that this city has some very tough housing laws. You're better off being a renter than an owner. Because of that flippers and investors have shied away.
I can't remember where I heard but the city controls the rental rates. Don't want to pay more for a property than you can recoup. And you don't want to leave it unoccupied less you come back to find it squatted; and they have rights as well.
Because it is so highly regulated its not a great investment.