Straight Talk

Cooperative houses are hard to find in East Vancouver, say renters

by Charlie Smith on September 9th, 2015 at 10:50 AM
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      Six roommates in the Commercial Drive area have discovered how grim the housing situation is for them after their rental dwelling of 10 years was sold.

      They placed an ad on Craigslist hoping to create a new cooperative house with the help of “lefty community-minded folks” who have property in East Vancouver and who don’t want to sell their big old house to “wealthy gentrifiers that are pushing regular people out”.

      But they haven’t had a nibble of interest.

      “In our case, we have a lawyer, a scientist, and a professor among the housemates looking, and even as working professionals we can’t find anything decent and affordable in the neighbourhood,” one tenant, Naava Smolash, told the Straight. “If people with salaries are being priced out, how on earth are people earning minimum wage supposed to find homes?”

      Smolash produced a chart from Landcor Data Corporation that showed the average sale price of a house in the Grandview area spiked near $1.4 million in June, up from around $800,000 in January 2013.

      She noted that the City of Vancouver is three years into its housing-and-homelessness strategy but claimed nothing is being done to stop people from being evicted from “collective houses”.

      “The cooperative-ownership model works for a neighbourhood like this,” Smolash stated.

      Comments

      2 Comments

      Tara Sundberg

      Sep 9, 2015 at 3:38pm

      The City of Vancouver needs to get creative with it's property tax regime. Offer incentives to homeowners willing to rent affordably. Implement immediate surcharges on property owners who AirBnB.
      The key to vibrant communities is DIVERSITY, not homogenous areas filled with upper middle class people. Our whole local economy depends on workers of all varieties, and they have every right to live near their places of work as anyone else.
      The only way to get landlords on board apparently is for there to be something in it for them, how about a discount in their property taxes?

      Jim Cliff

      Sep 10, 2015 at 9:48am

      Wait there are people who are out there in their post twenties that want to live with five other people? Need to take a long hard look in that mirror if you still living with 5 roomates at that point. For Real.