Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

Post by sdl » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 8:06 PM UTC

goldbrick wrote: post #70

iheartmemcache wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived in Boston, DC, NYC and London for extended periods of time, and spent a stint in Berlin. It's tech scene is awesome - if you find the right group of people it feels like CCC year round. It's art, music and food scene was an amazing value for the money when I was there circa 2011. I'm guessing the equivalent of their hipsters got wise to it and drove up prices a la the gentrification you saw (compare the be…

CCC?

Post by sureshv » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 8:09 PM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #255

curveship wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it discourage long-time owners from selling, thereby limiting supply and raising prices?

In theory, yes. In practice, if you own a currently 4+ million dollar home built in the 50's, you are paying at least 15-20k on it anyway. Here's an example currently for sale: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Los-Altos-Hills/27446-Black-Mounta... They are paying 18.2k. If it was reassessed today, they'd be paying 40-45k. If they do what most people who have lived in a home forever do, and are downsizing to something smalle…

Post by Nicholas_C » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 8:13 PM UTC

mahyarm wrote: post #236

msvan wrote: post #82

It seems like many major cities of the world are experiencing this problem, and no city has been able to come up with a good solution. It always leads to displacement and newspaper articles about displacement, but no real solutions. Here are a couple of solutions: 1. Build really tall. Hasn't worked out all that great in Hong Kong, though. 2. Rent control. This is often unfair and inflates price of non-rent controlle…

Whenever I look at hong kong on google earth, I see a lot of empty green space that tall buildings could be built on. I also see an area in the north that isn't really dense, large open sports areas and green areas on the south island. HK the territory seems to be much larger than HK the city and it smells suspicious that prices are high but land is not being used. And don't say, we need parks! I'm fairly certain tha…

Post by infinite8s » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 8:17 PM UTC

edwinnathaniel wrote: post #145

rubiquity wrote: post #68

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Ding ding ding. We have a winner. While I've never ever considered moving to Vancouver, I get recruiter emails several times a month for companies in Vancouver looking for Senior programmers to move there and only offering 80k to 110k CAD at the most. That is not nearly enough money to live in Vancouver. Enough to exist but not enough to live. The problem as I understand it is that a ton of Vancouver's housing is occ…

I know a company that pays fresh-grad $70k-$75k base salary with 10-15% bonus almost guaranteed base on company performance (there's a calculation behind it but the bonus amount is part of your package). Microsoft, Amazon, starting salary was 85-90k to 100k+ 2-3 years ago for 2 years - 5/7 years of experience. Salesforce Intermediate/borderline Senior SDET (SDET typically make less than SDE) starts from 100k base wit…

Post by biot » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 8:19 PM UTC

gorkemyurt wrote: post #211

One of the main reasons of the housing crisis in the Bay Area is Prop 13 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197... ) Prop 13 basically keeps the property taxes constant (or 1% increase) as the value of your house increases (doubles or triples). Your tax gets re-calculated only if you sell your house and the new owner starts paying potentially multiples of what the previous owner has been payin…