Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

I can't help but to quote the full song Modern Man from Arcade Fire's album The Suburbs -- which basically was an entire album chronicling this sort of issue in San Francisco.

So I wait my turn, I'm a modern man And the people behind me, they can't understand Makes me feel like Makes me feel like

So I wait in line, I'm a modern man And the people behind me, they can't understand Makes me feel like Something don't feel right

Like a record that's skipping I'm a modern man And the clock keeps ticking I'm a modern man Makes me feel like Makes me feel like

In my dream I was almost there Then they pulled me aside and said you're going nowhere They say we are the chosen few But we waste it And that's why we're still waiting On a number from the modern man Maybe when you're older you will understand Why you don't feel right Why you can't sleep at night now

In line for a number but you don't understand Like a modern man In line for a number but you don't understand Like a modern man

Oh I had a dream I was dreaming And I feel I'm losing the feeling Makes me feel like Like something don't feel right I erase the number of the modern man Want to break the mirror of the modern man Makes me feel like Makes me feel like

In my dream I was almost there Then they pulled me aside and said you're going nowhere I know we are the chosen few But we waste it And that's why we're still waiting In line for a number but you don't understand Like a modern man In line for a number but you don't understand Like a modern man

If it's alright Then how come you can't sleep at night? In line for a number but you don't understand Like a modern man

I'm a modern man I'm a modern man I'm a modern man I'm a modern man

In a Law of Rents sort of way, I can't help but to think that these phenomena are self indictments. If land prices are driven by those who can extract the most value from them, and the result is that wealthy people land-grab property that even remains vacant in some cases, or otherwise is a living space for a twenty-something working in finance, law, or medicine, who will eventually move away and be replaced by some other twenty-something in finance, law, or medicine, this seems to say a lot more about failures on the part of the wealthy members of older generations to innovate. If the best a use of that land is dormancy, sitting like gold in a vault, instead of being a place where a working class father inspires a child or where a mother teaches her son or where an artist, like what David Byrne did in the Talking Heads days in New York, transforms a space into a freeing creative studio ... isn't this embarrassing to them (the wealthy older generations)? It's basically an admission that, with the huge wealth endowment and peaceful world they were handed by their parents' generation, they managed to squander it to the point where the best use of land, the most inventive thing they can do with their money, is ... nothing. You've got two options: pour your money into consumer variation bullshit startups, or park it into assets like real estate that deprive younger generations of opportunity. It seems that wealth and a half century of the position of passively dominating in Western-led proxy wars has stripped away any sense of civic duty, or even basic shame at their failure to use capital to do anything.

Back in the mid/late 90s as Hong Kong was returning to China, the spike in prices started. I recall Condos in Kits for $200k or so, new build later in the 90s was still sub $300k. The victorians around there were still reasonable as well.

In a few short years it went nutty and prices spiked and they've only been going up since.

Those retiring age sold their places in Van, moved to the Okanagan and prices there spiked as well.

Weather is maybe part of it, setting and scenery certainly are too. Easy access to the Pacific Rim is also part of it.

This!

The tech salaries are absurdly low. The tech CEOs who pay poor wages and are complaining about their inability to retain talent are the same ones blaming real estate.

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 occupied by children of mega rich people from Asia (mostly China) who are rich enough to not care what rent costs which drives rent up for everyone else. There's such a huge l mismatch between housing costs and salaries in Vancouver.

CCC?