Is This A Conspiracy?

I am really getting sick of this.  Ever since before Epo 86, when the world came to Vancouver and didn't go home we have had problems with homelessness, increasing poverty and displacement.  Now, thirty years later, our own people are being displaced by Chinese millionaires.  I am not blaming the Chinese.  They come here because they know they can only offer their kids a crappy life in China.  I am blaming our governments, all levels, civic, provincial and federal.  There is a growing exodus of people moving out of this city, people who like me were born and raised in Vancouver and people who unlike me haven't been able to luck into subsidized or social housing.  When I walk through the wealthy neighbourhoods of Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale there seems to be a disproportionate population of Asians compared to other parts of the city, except perhaps Richmond and Marpole.  They are not bad people.  Some I have found to be quite pleasant and friendly.  But I really question how much they are aware or care about the impact that they are inadvertently having on the social fabric of this city.  I mean here, wealthy Chinese who have recently moved here, not those who came over from Hong Kong and certainly not those whose families have been here a few generations.

I really wonder if these wealthy Chinese are themselves being used as unknowing pawns by our governments in an experiment of social cleansing.  I am beginning to wonder if this has all been planned in advance, to the utmost detail, to make life so difficult and so impossible for low income earners that they will have to leave, making all the more room for rich people to enjoy the beauty of this city.  I wonder if this is why the BC Liberal Party in 2002 engineered our crisis of homelessness by throwing vulnerable people off of welfare and onto the street.  I wonder if this is why our federal government dismantled its public housing strategy and why very little new social housing has been developed anywhere in this country but especially in my province.  I wonder if this is the real reason that our corrupt and useless elected officials shrug and make the same old lame excuses about the real reasons that property values are still soaring past the stratosphere and doing absolutely nothing to solve this nor are doing sweet Fanny Adams to keep housing affordable to those who need it most.

Gentle Reader, you might well wonder just why I am agonizing about this, given that despite my poverty and the fact that the health care provider that employs me (I dare not mention their name here because they are legendary for being thin-skinned and vindictive) keeps me and my colleagues at a measly wage well below a living wage with no raise in more than six years and absolutely no hope of one happening in the future.  I still am reasonably well off.  I live in affordable housing and because I am good at budgeting and able to make sacrifices I do get by okay.  Well, ever hear of survival guilt?  Because this is exactly what afflicts me and if it did not I would begin to seriously question what is wrong with me.

I also wonder if the paucity of social housing that has been provided both by Mayor Moonbeam (aka Gregor Robertson) and his friends in Victoria, is but a cosmetic and nothing else to help deflect criticism (hasn't worked)  I mean, come on Moonbeam!  You based your electoral platform on ending homelessness in 2015.  It is now 2016 and our sidewalks are still choked with people without a place for the night.  You call this a noble effort?  Gregor, you have cheated and betrayed the people who voted you into office along with those who did not.  You do not deserve the privilege or the responsibility of being mayor of this city.  Do the honourable thing, Moonbeam, and resign!  I know that you have a very thin skin and don't like being called Moonbeam.  Well, SUCK IT UP, MOONBEAM!!!