Closing The Divide, 1

Gentle Reader, now that I am back from my trip I am going to get serious again. I haven't exactly suspended the series on collective trauma, but I do wish to integrate this theme into this burgeoning crisis of social and economic inequality we are all having to reckon with these days. Today, I am going to write about real estate. Like many of us over the last two years or so, or those of us who live in my fabled city of Vancouver, anyway, I have felt a growing concern for the out of control real estate market here and how this is affecting our general quality of life and the liveability here. Property developers are given carte blanche by our politicians to wreak havoc on old established and affordable neighbourhoods, tearing down lower cost market apartments and houses for condos, townhouses and monster homes affordable only to the very wealthy. Since there is going to be a surplus of the new hog homes, as I would like to call them, and given that there are always going to be limits on the proportion of wealthy members of our society, all the surplus units and homes are taken and flipped or shadow-flipped and resold over and over again to wealthy foreigners with no intention of living in them and every intention of skimming massive profits off the escalating property values as they are resold three, four or five times. Of course, this pushes skyward all real estate value, squeezing out people on low and modest incomes and making this city liveable only to the well-heeled. While trudging through our wealthy neighbourhoods today I was giving this matter a lot of thought, as I usually do when visiting rich areas. Why do I go to those places, you might be wondering. Because they are quiet, beautiful, and tranquil and make excellent urban hiking routes. For me that is the one single value of the wealthy. They can afford to provide beautiful and peaceful neighbourhoods that the rest of us poor folk can still enjoy walking in, provided, that is, that they don't end up hiring the kind of obnoxious security guards I have had to reckon with in similar neighbourhoods (but much uglier houses) in Costa Rica. There were of course real estate for-sale signs up everywhere, and, because they were obstructing the sidewalk, I even knocked two of them over with my big golf umbrella (So sue me, Faith Wilson!). Then I did a prayerful meditation on the subject, which brought me to the following conclusion. There is a collective blame that can be applied with five distinct parties involved, but it is a pyramid, or hierarchy of culpability, and this must also be reckoned with. At the top, the apex of the pyramid, I place our elected governing officials: prime ministers, premiers and mayors. They are the ones elected and charged with the care and wellbeing of our persons and the resources of our country, province and city. They are also the ones who have invited in this monster of greed that has wreaked havoc on the liveability of our country, province and city, by accepting bribes and offering kickbacks to wealthy property developers. These same prime ministers, premiers and mayors have grievously betrayed us, the people who voted them into office, because they have essentially sold us up the river in the name of corporate and real estate greed. They have completely defaulted on their most sacred responsibility of governing with justice, fairness and accountability, kowtowing to the free market. When oh when is this socially destructive and reprehensible nonsense that was spouted by Milton Friedman and his school of greed, going to be shelved once and for all? It is not the economy, stupid. It is the people, and the people are the economy, just as the economy is the people. No matter how much money gets generated through investment, it all goes to the top and the rest of us are left with nothing, increasing the divide and creating conditions of growing stress, struggle and misery for the rest of us. I hope to live to see the day when those same prime ministers, premiers and mayors all have their day in court and end up having to serve hard time for corruption and money laundering. Even though this is never likely to happen, short of on the heels of a revolution, one can only wish and dream and keep singing, screaming and shouting till our voices are finally heard and the walls of this obdurate Jericho come a-tumbling down. In the meantime, in the words of Tom Waites, yer innocent when you dream. Next post: the home-owners and their precious equity.