Housing woes

While I find the rental market in Vancouver awful now, I confess that I'm terrified of how much worse it's going to get. A friend of mine rents in New York city, and pays over $2000 a month for a 250 square foot apartment. San Francisco is nearly impossible to afford because of the tech boom and the ensuing demand for housing by wealthy Silicon Valley employees. Though I don't perceive Vancouver to be as "world class" as SF or NYC, the city politicians and developers certainly want it to be seen this way. Who's to say that the going rate of a mediocre 1br apartment on Main or Fraser or the Drive won't be $2000 in the next 5-7 years, with wages being as antiquated as ever? I am truly afraid that the bubble will never burst, and that there will soon be no place for me in the city that I love to hate, but love deep down.

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I had a chance at

Nov 23, 2015 at 4:43am

Having a home wat's a home if there is ownly one person living in it looking for sumone is not easy but yes finde homeless every where maybe she is the dimend in the ruff I was at one time eye think I should take a looksy down town my princess could Be there I was saved from that place; long ago haf not bin down that rode for over 18 years not looking for a gold digger just sumone to share wat I do haf thats all is that tomuch to ask.

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100%

Nov 23, 2015 at 10:08am

Agreed. I fear that if I ever have children they will experience a COMPLETELY different Vancouver than I did. It's horrifying, actually, the price of living in the city & even some surrounding areas.

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100%

Nov 23, 2015 at 10:08am

Agreed. I fear that if I ever have children they will experience a COMPLETELY different Vancouver than I did. It's horrifying, actually, the price of living in the city & even some surrounding areas.

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Well...

Nov 23, 2015 at 2:11pm

The bubble never will burst. People just don't get how (a) shitty Asia is and (b) how much more money Asia will produce over the next 100 years due to carbon rationing schemes---China can continue to _build industry_ and still have a low per capita CO2 figure where Canada can't build much industry without driving up its per capita CO2 figures. China alone has nearly 1.4 billion people, and if you have lots of money in China, do you want your kids to live in China, or do you want them to live in Vancouver? China has enough millionaires to totally gobble up all of Vancouver's detached homes at twice the current prices.

As for a place in the City, we should have learned from the Indians. It's only a few generations ago that the colonials kicked them off Kits beach, etc. Heck, until about 1915, iirc, you could camp as much as you wanted on all of Vancouver's beaches, so we kicked everyone off the beaches! In the summer, everyone used to go camp. Then the population grew and it got too messy. Such is life.

What's world class about Vancouver is its air quality and water quality. People who've been born and bred here simply don't realize how these things we take for granted, they are luxuries to much of the world. You can live in a clean rural area with no employment or a filthy City with marginal employment---that's the reality for many people the world over.

Finally, if you want to fix this problem, what is the Vancouver you grew up in? The Vancouver I grew up in, even at a poor east-side elementary school, almost all of the kids lived in detached row houses. Now those houses are all worth over a million bucks. About the only way that could ever happen again is some seriously populist/nationlist program of resource redistribution---it would take a revolution spearheaded by the Natives, you know, the people who were born here, not the ones who bought plane tickets here?

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I agree!

Nov 23, 2015 at 6:20pm

I like the original posts comment. I mean really 950 for a basement suite in Vancouver with no view? And people pay it. When I moved here in 2001 I had a GREAT apartment for 550 a month. It got robbed twice so I had to move. So then I moved to another place and the rent was 590 a month. Then I got ren evicted. And now I pay 650 for a place that I have to share the bathroom with another person. It is awful and they changed the rules that they can increase your rent EVERY year and it used to be every 2 years. If you only make 10.45 an hour (with no possibility of a raise ever) and they only schedule you 25 hours a week how can you get by? Rents need to stop at 975 and not go any higher.

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Indeed

Nov 23, 2015 at 9:01pm

I agree, it is worrisome. But it is unlikely that rental prices will get anywhere near NYC/SF levels. Rents tend to be more tightly tied to fundamentals - that is, incomes. And there simply isn’t the salary base in Vancouver to support dramatically higher rents.

I suspect what is going on at the moment is that the housing bubble (driven by easy availability of credit) has given owners an incentive to try to jack rents on vacant units. But renters are responding by staying put and refusing to move, as annual rent increases on occupied units are capped. This would explain the current pattern of spiralling rents and dismal selection in the rental market. Over the longer term this will likely normalize - time, chance, and reversion to the mean happeneth to them all.

And by the way, the advertised “rent” is always negotiable. Provided you look halfway respectable, you can usually shave 10% off the listed price. Decent tenants are hard to come by and a lot of landlords are barely hanging on.

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Mitch

Nov 24, 2015 at 3:10pm

Get out to New West as it's getting cool .... settle in so the rent shock won't be nearly as bad.

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I suppose

Nov 25, 2015 at 12:41am

We'll all be living in favelas out beyond Hope in a little while. Maybe we should move our universities out there where students can afford to live. Maybe.

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@Well...

Nov 25, 2015 at 10:24am

you obviously have never been to China before.
You will find that China is nothing like you are thinking because you are uninformed and probably a bit racist.

Chinese cities have more modern luxuries than ANY canadian city. It also has great infrastructure and above all great food and great peoplle.
Not only that but it also is vast and has regions that are right out of Avatar (the movie which incidently was filmed in China).

Chinese people like Vancouver because its cheap and allows immigration from China.

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