Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

> My solution would be to jack up the real estate inheritance tax and allocate that money for public transportation and affordable housing.

In Silicon Valley product management there's the saying 'for every yes, there's a thousand no's."

In housing politics for every good idea, there's 100k people who will complain and sue.

The only policies implemented usually fall under the following categories

1) Irrational populism.

2) A backroom deal pushed by lobbyists and their political allies.

Sensible ideas usually don't fall into those categories.

There's virtually no religion or guns in Seattle. And I'm not sure what race you're talking about, but I can only guess Asian (since Canadian isn't a race!) and even growing up in the 80s half my friends were Asian.

We're not talking about Oklahoma here.

As someone who moved from Vancouver to SF 4-5 years ago:

1. You can drive across a bridge to the east bay and find housing that is half price in semi decent neighborhoods. You can drive out for 2 hours and find housing that is the standard american price. In vancouver, driving for an hour just gives you a 100-200k discount on housing that is already over $1 million, there are no real affordable places to escape to unlike the USA.

2. Nobody in vancouver makes an income over six figures unless you're in the standard professions that make that much, such as doctors, high level managers and successful business owners. Only a very small amount of people are in those professions, and those jobs are not concentrated in any specific area. You could go be a doctor in quebec, alberta or some other small town and still make a similar income but have a far lower housing cost. There is nothing unique or high powered economically about Vancouver, it's not the center of anything. Vancouver's economic climate is NOT desirable.

3. This affordability issue has been a problem for almost a decade, and the provincial & federal governments show no real signs of having any desire to fix it. The only thing that makes it pseudo-affordable is the fact that rent is usually half price to a current mortgage. Housing has increased in vancouver 1:1 with the GDP of the city last year, which is freaking insane. People who have owned houses have gained more than their incomes for years! For comparison, the crazy SF Bay Area is something around 1:6 with (house value increases):GDP.

4. If you're stuck in canada, then there are better places to go to as far as money:price ratios go.

I could go on and on about this, but you get the general idea. Vancouver is pretty much dead to me economically and it saddens me that it will never be a good idea to move back at this rate.

A lot of fresh grads (from UBC) in Vancouver are living around Kitsilano where you can get a one bedroom place for Previously to that in Vancouver I lived in the heart of Yaletown in a 550sqft studio costing about $1300/month, and started living there on a salary of about $62k.

I've never had financial struggles living in Vancouver with salaries ranging from $42-85k, and have generally had enough disposable income to afford to travel quite a bit, ski at Whistler every weekend, and eat out and go out regularly.

That said, it's totally a renter's market. It's unaffordable for me to buy anything that I'd want to live in for the longer term, unless I go to Surrey or somewhere else in greater Vancouver, which would completely take away or hinder a lot of the benefits I see to living in Vancouver.

Well, as someone who's considering Australia and NZ as potential destinations, both language and visa situations are big hurdles to clear for moving to Berlin.

Maybe you have an European or U.S. citizenship, but they're harder towards South Americans. Also, software development salaries weren't something to write home about last time I checked (that was some a long time ago admittedly).

Edit: According to Glassdoor, Berlin Software Engineer Salary: €48000 (average)

Sydney Software Engineer Salary: $80000 (average)