I build disposable homes

I don't care about the quality of what I build anymore and neither does anyone I work with. Not my coworkers, not my boss and certainly not the developer that hired us. Whats the point? Sometimes the homes we build get left empty sometimes they just get flipped a bunch of times and sold to a foreigner. As long as it looks good when the buyers walk by everybody's happy. We may as well be building movie sets. I don't build with love anymore I build with hate, hate for the rich bastard who hired me to build a mansion just so he could sell it and make a bunch more money, hate for the system that has facilitated this kind of a market, and hate for myself that I have no choice but to continue to build poor quality luxury homes no one can afford to live in. I'm sorry really I am. Please don't buy anything built in last 10 years. Try to find one of those post-war homes that haven't been torn down yet. At least they were built by passionate tradespeople not broken hearted self-hating profiteers.

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Funny story

Jun 19, 2018 at 6:48pm

Two days ago, I told someone that post-boom Vancouver reminded me of a Potemkin village (historical reference).
The hodgepodge of residential developments and soulless shopping destinations, with no social cohesion or cultural identity... Fake as a Hollywood movie set.
Also probably why Vancouver film is such a big thing. Why build sets when they already did it for you?

She told me of all the shoddy construction and ugly problems in brand-new structures.

I quoted a real estate insider I knew briefly, who said the developers were basically writing themselves a check.

I rent a detached house in the burbs, built before 1980. Not planning to move until I leave Canada (few more years).

No need to apologize. We all have to pay the stupid high Vancouver bills.

Sorry you're vocation has been ruined

Jun 19, 2018 at 6:48pm

I work in mental health and addictions, I can't tell you how many builders / carpenters / constructions workers I treat who have some sort of substance use disorder and feel the way you do.I'm not suggesting you have any substance use problems. However, I have been told that not only do many no longer care, they tend to build while high.....not a good thing.

I often think how you men and women are building homes that you can't afford. There is something deeply wrong about that. I'd say try to reconnect to your love of the job, but I'm struggling with doing the same for myself.

Record setting

Jun 19, 2018 at 8:33pm

Maybe the most honest Confession here in a long while.

I want to rescue a Vancouver special and clean it up but keep the house as built. I'll be working a lot of underpaid part time jobs in the job desert before I can make that happen.

The development game in Vancouver is a shell of respectability in business to shield what is all just making free money on a city that hadn't been exploited until recent decades. From top down absolutely all of it is done just to satisfy an illusion. The victims beyond the Vancouverites who are watching their city devolve into a metropolis sized pied a terre for the pretentious and their service workers are the people who actually invest into these buildings and pretty much need to rebuild the whole thing again themselves within a few years.

I really hope I can afford a Vancouver Special before they all get knocked down and turned into shitty glass towers with a Starbucks at the street level. I'd sooner leave Vancouver or keep renting before I throw my money into anything built after 2003 in this town.

jennfur

Jun 19, 2018 at 8:51pm

then lay off the crack pipe

Yup

Jun 19, 2018 at 9:34pm

This is why I stopped doing landscape architecture. It's all "shrubbing up" ugly townhomes with Laurel and boxwood. People are either flipping, or they're getting 30 year mortgages on a POS house that will fall apart within 10. It was gross. I would be drafting and realized I was only allowed to use like 6 different plant species. Most of the projects had only a shallow amount of topsoil and would just be rolled with turf. That turf would usually just die after the landscapers installed it anyway because the soil was so poor. Gross, gross gross. This is why I am renting in a 90s concrete condo with mature trees and cabinetry made of actual wood (not wood grain decal over mdf).

Wow

Jun 19, 2018 at 9:59pm

That’s terrible....and bad Karma
We bought a home 10 years ago (it’s about 50 years old) my husband works hard to pay the mortgage and we are finally at a place where we can totally gut it and add an extension etc it will be our forever home, why would you do that? So sad really. I feel confidant with whom I’m working with, and I hope he’s not as fake and angry as you, I don’t need that energy in my new home. Maybe find another career, why be miserable?

I have...

Jun 19, 2018 at 10:27pm

... a family member who is addicted to "nice finishes," but she has no idea how to identify real quality tradespeople or materials---they take advantage of her, but she cannot be stopped. It's sad. So far she has nearly destroyed a c. 1920 heritage home with tacky fixtures that won't last more than a decade, if that.

@wow

Jun 20, 2018 at 5:27am

You really have no idea whats happening here in. Vancouver do you. Because it's not happening to you you seem to have the blinders on. There is no future for middle class Canadians here anymore. There is poor and VERY wealthy. Thats it.

@Wow

Jun 20, 2018 at 6:17am

“Fake and angry”?

More like honest and beaten-down. From having fulfilling the cheap home-ownership dreams of people like you.

Thanks for confirming

Jun 20, 2018 at 7:35am

I live in a Condo, rental thank god. I do feel sorry for the people that built this 750,000+ piece of shit. I know when the neighbour changes the channel. It's that bad. I grew up poor. In an old townhouse, it was no where near as bad as this for quality. Nice appliances though, like morons look at the wrong things full stop. There needs to be a grading system so people know the quality they are buying. Eg. thickness of and space between shared walls, floors, ceilings etc. ad infinitum. Building to code I get, that's a given, but the code needs to be upped. I am quite sure builders can deliver the quality if it's demanded and dictated.

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