First a brief translation of the Spanish title for this post: Ciudad Ramera would be best translated as Whore City. This little essay is about my own dear Vancouver. In recent conversations I have found myself referring to Vancouver as the Dumb Blonde of Canadian cities.
Hello? Still there?
Before I really put my foot in it let me reaffirm my undying, never ending, ever-faithful, and eternal love for my beloved city. Vancouver is rightfully ranked as one of the world's most beautiful cities. With our natural setting of mountains, forest and sea and our beautiful and manifold public parks and gardens it would be very difficult to name even one competing city for such loveliness and splendour. This is also a city that destroys not only heritage buildings but beautiful heritage neighbourhoods, replacing historical charming buildings with hulking behemoth monster homes. We do still have some beautiful old buildings, houses and neighbourhoods. They are carefully and meticulously preserved and protected from the bulldozer of developer greed. But they are few. On closer inspection this city Vancouver if taken out of its natural setting is really rather plain and ordinary and in some cases ugly. More like Calgary by the Sea. A rhinestone in a gold and platinum setting. A Dumb Blonde.
We are still ranked as one of the world's most livable cities though we no longer enjoy first place. Our stratospheric housing costs have made this city increasingly unlivable to people on low and modest incomes. And the housing costs increase monthly, weekly. There are many causes and many explanations and destinations for blame: Geography is one of them. We are hemmed in by the mountains, the ocean and the US border. Since we are 1. Not going to build all the way up Grouse Mountain, 2. Not about to pioneer housing experiments with floating condos and townhouses, and 3. Not quite ready to annex ourselves to Blaine, Washington, this leaves developers and planners with little option but to increase density and build up. We also have a huge yummy swathe of agricultural land that has been frozen and reserved in perpetuity (cry me a river, developer scum!) for growing food and all going well that is never going to be used for anything but agriculture. Instead of carefully planning communities that are inclusive, vibrant and affordable our city overlords have given the property developers carte blanche for leveling functional heritage homes, uprooting trees, and cramming into already crowded high-density neighbourhoods soaring condo towers affordable only to high income earners with but a paucity of "affordable" housing reserved for low income earners. Those who cannot endure the squeeze and have not had my good fortune of finding low cost government subsidized housing end up in crowded unsafe low standard housing, lining up at food banks (though many of them work full time), living on the street and in low barrier shelters, or having to abandon the city where in many cases they were born and raised to resettle in more affordable communities elsewhere in the province or in Canada. Dumb Blonde.
Wealthy property buyers and investors, especially from Mainland China, are often blamed for pushing up our property values. While there may be some merit to this argument it is also problematic. Yes, these newcomers do pay the highest dollar and of course, especially for wealthy neighbourhoods this does raise the ante. There is also a risk of lapsing into kneejerk racism. Regardless of where these newcomers are from they are incredibly wealthy and will pay any price to live and invest here. Money doesn't talk, it screams. On the other hand we have a lovely selection of greedy property and home owners who have spent decades investing in their housing security and now stand to reap a cool million or two or three off their housing equity, just in time for a comfy nicely padded retirement.
Who are the real villains here? We live in a capitalist society, not just capitalist in the old sense but a rapacious take-no-prisoners global capitalism that is frightening and dangerous to social cohesion. It is very easy to blame Chinese millionaires who have little interest in actually living here themselves but why is so little said about greedy, usually white, Old Stock Canadian (I really dislike this term by the way) home owners who also happen to be too greedy and selfish to consider accepting a lower price for their homes in order to keep a lid on the market? We also have a provincial government and premier who are doing nothing to help. Our own Christy Clark recently said that the government has no interest in intervening in the housing market because they don't want home owners (their political support base) to lose any of their housing equity. So, Jane or Joe Blow will get only a lousy half million instead of their coveted million dollars for selling their house to an equally greedy foreign millionaire or developer. They will still be getting away with a decent nest egg. Maybe they can't buy a Lamborghini but they could still get a decent BMW or Mercedes. Personally I think we really need to address this greedy business of getting rich off of housing equity. Houses should not be investments. They are places to live and stable housing forms and nurtures positive and healthy communities. This culture of greed has to be delegitimized and contained for the common good and in the interest of Vancouverites of all income levels. Nothing is being done. The government has no interest in intervening. More heritage homes get torn down, more hulking monsters replace them, more phallic condo towers populated by only those wealthy enough to afford them. Everyone else eats Kraft Dinner. Vancouver becomes less livable. Dumb Blonde.
Vancouver is beautiful. So are dumb blondes. Vancouver has even more sushi bars than pizza joints (citation needed). Dumb blondes eat sushi. Vancouver has yoga parlours and gyms and Starbucks on every corner. Dumb blondes love yoga, going to the gym and hanging out at Starbucks. Vancouver has a thriving restaurant scene. Dumb blondes hate cooking. Vancouver has a thriving hipster scene. Some of those dumb blondes wear beards and glasses. Vancouver is multicultural. A lot of women and men from visible minorities dye and streak their hair...blonde.
Meanwhile, we have a history making housing crisis and street homelessness, further exacerbated by housing unaffordability. Our gutless dumb blonde politicians are just too frightened and blonde to offend their corporate masters and investors and this is why there has been no government intervention to correct the housing market which (hello my dear little blondes!) is simply never going to correct itself. Does this make me a socialist? Or worse, communist? And what if it does since I have been called worse things by nicer people, but these are questions I will not dignify with a reply. The average price of a new home in Canada is less than $500,000 (citation needed). So, I call upon our federal government to intervene and decree that no home prices anywhere in this country exceed this sum. Or failing that, to index the cost of housing with people's incomes and to introduce legislation with teeth where housing is recognized as a fundamental human right and that no one earning under $67,000 a year (our national average household income) will have to pay more than thirty percent of their income for housing. It can be done and it needs to be done.
My apologies to all the intelligent blondes who are reading this blog. As for the dumb ones I wouldn't worry about it. You probably don't know who you are.
Please forward this essay to at least five people you dislike (politicians and journalists don't count)
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