Thirty Per Cent

This is what they have calculated to be a fair proportion of income relative to housing.  No renter or home owner should have to pay more than thirty percent of their monthly income for rent.  The reality is sadly out of sync with the cipher.  Not only do we find more than half of home owners and renters in this city paying more, often way more, than thirty percent, but a growing exodus of middle income earners fleeing Vancouver for cheaper communities.

A friend and I did the math the other day in a coffee shop.  We discovered that if the tenants occupying any given apartment building roughly represent the economic demographic and if everyone paid a measly thirty percent of their monthly income rather than a set inflated figure for rent, the collective sum of rent taken in would actually be higher.  Higher income renters pay more, but still have enough money in the bank for an annual fancy vacation and a dandy retirement nest-egg.  Lower income renters, with extra subsidies whenever appropriate, will never have to darken the doorway of a food bank and might even have enough in the bank for dental care or even a budget holiday.

The only people left crying are the property managers and real estate developers as they weep into their vintage scotch since they can no longer afford that fourth Lamborghini even if they can still console themselves with a new BMW.

Everyone knows that this is not going to happen, or at least not yet.  Maybe not in my lifetime but you're innocent when you dream.  The greedy douchebags who control real estate in this city have already bought our mayor and our premier so they are going to dance to their tune no matter how many of the people who voted for them end up turfed onto the pavement or having to move to other parts of the country.

We have bartered our lives, as voters, to wealthy sociopaths, and now we are governed by parties and individuals who care not a steaming, foul smelling mound of hooey for us.  Compulsory voting is not the answer because no matter which way we slice it we're always getting the same baloney.

Convincing greedy landlords, greedy anybody that housing is a human right and not a source of profit is going to create a huge learning curve and the apprenticeship is going to be neither quiet or enjoyable.

Renters are going to have to take matters into their own hands.  Tenants are going to have to start organizing.  No tenant will be required to pay more than thirty percent of their monthly income for rent, no matter where they are living and renting.  That's right.  Civil disobedience.  As renters organize together they will become a powerful and unstoppable force to the corporate greed that is destroying our cities.  We will pay the rent that we have decided to be just and the landlords/property managers are going to have to put up and shut up and accept it.  If they try to evict us we will stay where we are.  When the police come to remove us, others will occupy the unit in our place to continue stating the terms of their rent: no more than thirty percent.  It is going to be a long, ugly, noisy, perhaps even violent and bloody process but this is what it is going to take to return affordability to rentals in Vancouver and a sense of social justice and fairness towards especially lower income tenants.  I am not advocating violence and I would prefer passive resistance but unfortunately, the police are not particularly fond of Ghandi nor are they well versed about Martin Luther |King.