Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town • Hacker News Board

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#101

Post by ghshephard » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 4:28 PM UTC

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…

Singapore has a pretty good solution for this sort of thing. Socialize Housing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_and_Development_Board), and then drop 10s of thousands of new units onto the market continuously, subsidize citizen ownership (with further subsidies if you live close to your parents), and further, create a culture of constantly wiping out the older (20-30+ year) apartment blocks that were lower density, and replacing them with taller, higher density buildings. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_En_bloc_Redevelopmen... )

Pricing has stabilized, and, even is dropping a little bit.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#102

Post by gabbo » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 4:29 PM UTC

TragicJam wrote: post #89

api_or_ipa wrote: post #55

As someone who just moved from Vancouver to the Bay Area, it's obvious the issue isn't housing. It's income. My apartment in trendy yaletown was $2350/month for a very nice 2 bed, 2 bath place within 10 mins of anything in downtown. Try finding something even remotely as nice around Silicon Valley. The issue we should be tackling is the low wages seen in the area. The same developer who could make $100k USD in the va…

I've always considered Vancouver (tech) salaries to be fairly competitive compared to the rest of the Canada. (I'm a Vancouver dev)

In other words they're quite low vs. comparable American cities :)

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#103

Post by johnatwork » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 4:30 PM UTC

branchless wrote: post #27

Come 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 boomer…

- It has some ridiculous language issues. We have the OQLF which goes from business to business to fine anyone not adhering to the French language laws. We once got fined for having the accent the wrong way in our signage, and again for having the wrong verb conjugation in our tagline.

- Dumbfounding Bureaucratic issues. Once when I went to University, I was able to prove to the Provincial Gov, that I lived in Quebec, but the same documents were not accepted by the Federal Gov to prove that I lived in Canada. Meaning I could prove that I lived in Quebec, but not that I lived in Canada.

- And it was named the most corrupt Province in Canada. http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-most-corrupt-province...

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#104

Post by Apocryphon » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 4:30 PM UTC

branchless wrote: post #27

Come 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 boomer…

How's the tech scene in MTL?

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#105

Post by Tistel » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 4:32 PM UTC

This is me. I left Vancouver for Toronto 5 years ago. What is not mentioned (that I saw) is that salaries in Vancouver are also much lower than Toronto for the same job. Montreal is even cheaper than Toronto and is probably more fun (if you are bilingual)

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#106

Post by darryl42 » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 4:33 PM UTC

fiblye wrote: post #80

api_or_ipa wrote: post #55

As someone who just moved from Vancouver to the Bay Area, it's obvious the issue isn't housing. It's income. My apartment in trendy yaletown was $2350/month for a very nice 2 bed, 2 bath place within 10 mins of anything in downtown. Try finding something even remotely as nice around Silicon Valley. The issue we should be tackling is the low wages seen in the area. The same developer who could make $100k USD in the va…

The problem there is the >90% of people in Vancouver who aren't in high paying tech fields. It's pretty difficult to say "just triple their wages and they'll afford houses no problem." The real issue is property owners know someone will eventually come along and pay whatever they're asking. If wages were to dramatically increase, they'd never stop and think, "Yeah, I think I'll cap rent at $3000/month because I'm a n…

"Eventually" Looked at three houses a couple of weekends ago, all sold by Monday. Two were unlivable, one nice, but way over budget, all out in the burbs.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#107

Post by pfarnsworth » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 4:36 PM UTC

Nothing has changed in the last 20 years. House prices are still high, and salaries are still low. There is no real industry in Vancouver except tourism.

At least the rents are somewhat affordable, tho. The gap between house prices vs rent prices is immense, compared to a place like San Francisco. You can rent a 2 bedroom in the West End for ~$1500.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#108

Post by cgh » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 4:37 PM UTC

hellofunk wrote: post #2

I'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?

Vancouver is unique simply in the degree of unaffordability. After Hong Kong, its housing is the most unaffordable in the world.

The elephant in the room is why this happened. Everyone talks about "foreign speculation" but in fact most of it is not speculation at all. In mainland China, Vancouver is widely viewed as a nice, quiet small city, good for students and the elderly. It's not a place for "real" work. So they buy homes there to live in part-time. It is quite normal to have the mother and child live in Vancouver while the father continues to work overseas. They pay almost no Canadian tax as they have no Canadian income. With their child in school, the parents can eventually claim permanent resident status thanks to the family reunification program and they can expect to retire in Canada. It's a big win for them and they see nothing wrong with it.

To summarize: introducing vast income inequality has distorted the Vancouver housing market and drastically altered the demographics of the city, making it unaffordable for the people who actually work and pay taxes there.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#109

Post by onion2k » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 4:39 PM UTC

jseliger wrote: post #42

cdnsteve wrote: post #19

Vancouver real-estate is like buying gold for foreign investors, without paying tax. "suggesting the typical wealthy foreign family buying Vancouver real estate pays little or no income or capital gains tax" http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/ho...

This is the best response I've seen so far. Real estate is actually a great export for cities and countries, at least properly considered: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/billion_to_one/2013/1... . Seattle has a bunch of similar articles about "outsiders" supposedly driving up housing costs. Which is absurd: steel frame construction and elevators are very old technologies that allow humans to build just about…

London has had an influx of foreign property investment over the past 20 years. Now you need an income in the region of $120,000 and a $150,000 deposit to buy your first home. Even our members of parliament are struggling to buy anything[1].

Foreign property investment is very bad for the long term prospects of a city.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/feb/12/tory-...

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#110

Post by jpambrun » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 4:46 PM UTC

Tistel wrote: post #105

This is me. I left Vancouver for Toronto 5 years ago. What is not mentioned (that I saw) is that salaries in Vancouver are also much lower than Toronto for the same job. Montreal is even cheaper than Toronto and is probably more fun (if you are bilingual)

Salaries are also much lower in Montréal. If you are willing to learn French, you will be very welcome.