For many people, the news that house and condo prices are dropping and that developers are even offering things like mortgage payments for a year, discounted mortgage rates or free upgrades on finishes is great. But the reality is that, even though prices are softening, they still haven’t — and won’t — drop down to […]
The crash doesn’t mean housing is suddenly affordable
October 10th, 2008 · 2 Comments
Tags: Uncategorized
The first civic election debate: Experience versus leadership
October 2nd, 2008 · 17 Comments
It’s hard to believe some people chose to go to a hockey game tonight when they could have been sitting with all of us at the Vancouver Public Library talking about municipal policy. A loss for them of 90 minutes of action-packed excitement, but fun for the 300 or so of us there. Okay, kidding […]
Tags: Uncategorized
Why are there no more apartments being built?
August 24th, 2008 · 1 Comment
After I posted my little vignette about the trauma of renting my basement suite (hundreds of calls from desperate people), I got a couple of comments from people who went through similar experiences recently, at either end of the rental trauma. I also got this question from regular correspondent RossK: “Sure would be interested in […]
Tags: Uncategorized
The affordability crunch hits home
August 18th, 2008 · 5 Comments
I write a lot about housing, affordable housing, homelessness and the rest, something I got interested in ten years ago when it was a blip on most people’s radar out here. So I think I know what the situation is. However, every so often, something happens that drives it home to me what’s really going […]
Tags: Uncategorized
The continuing story of the empty suites
August 11th, 2008 · 3 Comments
In the last episode of this ongoing story, I had given all of you the history of the mythical 18,000 empty condos in Vancouver — a factoid that keeps going around and around. (A blog reader pointed out to me that COPE Coun. David Cadman, as reported at a recent meeting, even said the 18,000 […]
Tags: Uncategorized