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Archive for January, 2010

Vancouver real estate is completely out of whack

January 28, 2010 - 10:26 am | 0 Comments Posted by Jonathan Ross

This kind of a space for $750 seems ridiculous to me, even if it is located downtown.

I watched Councillor Raymond Louie on the news a couple of nights back speaking about the upcoming microlofts that Council gave the go ahead to in 2008.  He spoke about how this was the direction that the city was heading in and that creating new rental housing in the downtown core was a positive thing.

And, I suppose I cannot argue with that.  Just like I believe that communities that have a publicly funded component to them must have social housing in the mix, I also feel that downtown – particularly one that is as residential as Vancouver’s – must have a range of living options.

Additionally, it seems as though groups like the Tenant Resource and Advisory Council have been swept along with the paradigm shift that has occurred in Vancouver over the past decades.  Namely, that new rentals properties of any size are a welcome phenomenon amongst the Vancouver real estate landscape, and that density within the city is positive and on the cutting edge of innovation (microlofts, laneway housing, etc.).

But for the life of me, I cannot fathom how a space smaller than two parking spots is worth $750 per month.

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Sat Mar 20, 2010

FACT OF THE DAY

An article titled Vancouver Politics by Paul Tennant in The Vancouver Book (1976), describes the entry of TEAM onto the civic political scene in 1968. TEAM, wrote Tennant, “sought to be a moderate reform group appealing to persons of all political ideologies.”

On their left was COPE (the Committee of Progressive Electors), also formed in 1968, and on their right was the NPA (the Non-Partisan Association), which had been a power in city politics for nearly four decades, and which “held that the affairs of the city should be run by those with the necessary knowledge and experience, i.e., those with a professional-managerial background, in order to run the city in a business-like way.”

The reformers, on the other hand, “felt that civic decision-making should be open to the public, with leadership coming from a cross-section of the population, and rule going to the working class majority. This group was concerned about land use, they advocated city control, and preferred to structure politics around the neighborhood concept.”

Quote OF THE DAY

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