An interesting debate broke out at Metro Vancouver’s planning committee meeting last Friday, which I followed up on this week. It started with a report on affordable housing or, rather, the startling lack of it in the region. There are lots and lots of apartments being built, theoretically enough to house all the newcomers who […]
Many cities around Vancouver region pondering impact of “dark houses/condos” and foreign or investor capital
November 12th, 2015 · 5 Comments
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What data is it really that we’re looking for in Vancouver’s housing market?
November 4th, 2015 · 30 Comments
It’s been a remarkable couple of days this week, for those who are interested in the hot topic of Vancouver housing and how much foreign money is flowing into it. A study by UBC adjunct prof and planner Andy Yan was the latest to set off the fireworks, with his stats on 172 sales in […]
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And now for something completely different: A restaurant tour in the Mission district, San Francisco
November 3rd, 2015 · 6 Comments
A nice break of an assignment for me. An editor at Western Living asked me to do five restaurants in San Francisco. But I said our vow was to eat only at restaurants we could walk to in the Mission. So he let me narrow the scope. The trick was picking only five. There were […]
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Part 2: Why just looking at info on “Chinese” and “income” in a few areas is no way to understand anything
November 2nd, 2015 · 15 Comments
(Continuing from last week’s post …) We all jump to conclusions quickly. Journalists are the most famous for it — three of anything within a week is a trend. But, in fact, we all do it, journalist or not, in an attempt to understand the world’s complexity. So it’s normal to look at a few […]
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Why you should be wary of stories saying “census proves rich Asians live in mansions and pay no taxes”
October 29th, 2015 · 45 Comments
Someone sent a question to my blog a few weeks ago, asking what I thought of the then-recent news stories saying that census information indicated that areas with wealthy Asians were reporting low incomes and/or housing costs exceeding their incomes and therefore must be avoiding taxes in some illegal way. (And maybe even collecting welfare […]
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Why I’ll miss the viaducts if they go
October 25th, 2015 · 53 Comments
I’ve been accused before of judging the city on the basis of looks, rather than function. This is another example. But how the city looks sometimes does have a bearing on how it functions. How it looks is the physical representation of us, the people who live here, and what we value, who we are […]
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What do the federal elections results mean for this region? Your say
October 20th, 2015 · 75 Comments
The floor is yours. Thoughts? I personally would like to know who the Liberal replacement will be for Colin Metcalfe. For those who aren’t up on the arcana of local federal politics, this former campaigner manager for mayor Sam Sullivan became the Conservative point person in B.C., running the local office and co-ordinating Conservative interactions […]
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At long last, B.C. reaps some bonus profits from Expo land sale. And now Vancouver wants it.
October 20th, 2015 · 3 Comments
A delicious find in the Vancouver viaducts report going to council today. (That would be Tuesday, Oct. 20, the day after the federal election and when the world started spinning in a different direction.) Which was: Long ago, when the province sold the Expo lands to Li Ka-shing for what many called a fire-sale price, […]
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As Metro Vancouver grapples with homelessness everywhere, new-style winter shelters spread to suburbs
October 20th, 2015 · No Comments
Fall. The leaves fall, the days get shorter, the City of Vancouver and Housing Minister Rich Coleman get into a tug of war over how much money for winter shelters for the region’s homeless people. This year, things are a bit different. The minister is spending almost a million dollars to fund the Vancouver-style shelters […]
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Live in a super-dense neighbourhood? You won’t get a Conservative MP any time soon
October 14th, 2015 · 26 Comments
I did a fun wonk and water-cooler story in today’s Globe, based on stats analyzed by Andy Yan at BTA Works, all about how our voting preferences correlate with density. The numbers show a dramatic difference in the types of ridings that Conservatives win, compared to Liberals and New Democrats. Liberals win in some of […]
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