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Are we preparing to be cranky again? NY Times thinks so

February 24th, 2010 · 18 Comments

Okay, some international media coverage appears that reflects a little more some of the real preoccupations of a significant number of people here.

But I don’t get why even the NY Times can’t get some basic things right. The taxpayers are not carrying $1 billion in debt for the village, at least not the way the NY Times has written it, as though this is a bill we have to pay off over the next 30 years.

They may carry some debt if the condos don’t sell for enough, but not $1 billion. Likely not even $100 million. And why do they write that the real-estate industry came up with the plan for the Olympic village? That was the city’s dream from day one. The city assembled that land, committed itself to building a village for VANOC, and sold it off to the highest bidder.

Categories: Uncategorized

  • Glissando Remmy

    The Thought of the Day
    “Olly, where did all the money go?”

    13 days ago I stopped my opinion countdown at the beginning of the Olly Games. I’ve decided that for the whole duration of the Games I’ll take a hiatus from punching the bloody arrogant rich Olly kid, out of pity and boredom. I intended to resume my commentary on the first day after all this is buried under six feet of first grade snowy BS.
    Just before they raise the monument to Fiscal Stupidity but only after they plant the shrubs on top.
    However, after reading your piece Frances, and consequently the NY Times one, I had an afterthought. This is it:

    “You threw it on red mittens for the plebs,
    On make-up, condotels and bodyguards,
    What did you do with my pay check? Olympic Games, Olympic Games.
    To which Sir Richard The Turd, goofily replied,
    In his traditionally awesome British farts,
    Virginally yours, two years from now,
    I’ll see ya suckers …London upon Thames”

    We live in Vancouver and this keeps us busy.

  • Mark

    I’m reminded of a conversation I had back in 1992 with one of the chaps who regularly posts carping comments on this and other Vancouver related sites. I asked his opinion of the development underway on the Concord Pacific lands. He snorted and said that Vancouver’s economy is just a real estate shell game with no real substance (a sentiment expressed again by the prof from SFU cited in the NY Times article). He predicted with a laugh that the Concord lands would be nothing more than a golf course in 20 years. I suspect predictions of Vancouver’s decline and stagnation post games will prove equally hollow.

  • Sean Bickerton

    Ian Austen has been misportraying Canada in the Times for more than a decade. I’ve never read any writer that could get his subject more wrong. It’s not that he’s critical, its that he’s often wrong on the facts and seldom accurately captures the flavour of the country.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    “The forestry industry, once the mainstay of its economy, has been devastated by a beetle infestation, the collapse of the housing market in the United States and competition from South America. While motion picture production companies and software developers have set up shop here in recent years, they lack the same economic impact.”

    I don’t know if Tourism is now 1, 2 or 3 leading “industry” in our province, but that will be ONE legacy of the games. Whistler’s reputation has been solidified by this venture. TWO will be the Canada Line and, hopefully, the Olympic Line Tram. THREE will be the improved Sea-to-Sky highway. You don’t have to talk to anyone in either Squamish or Pemberton about what the “benefits” have been. The see them every day.

    The Coquihalla Highway produced the most remarkable results not in Kelowna, where growth was a given, but in the areas surrounding like Vernon to the north.

    If there were abuses, let’s track them down.

    Rinehear & Rogoff in “This Time Is Different” (2009) identify over 16 measurements for the effects of a major financial crisis (this is not just the collapse of a U.S. housing bubble that we are seeing, as the NY Times suggests, it is a global crisis of a magnitude not seen in the years following WWII). Among these factors are “Lower Government Revenues” and “Cumulative Increase in Public Debt”, added to unemployment, reductions in GDP or productivity, etc.

    It will be too easy to dump it all on the Olympics. However, the economic recession happened independently of our Olympic bid, and as much as possible we should keep the two separate.

    The Olympic Village is the same kettle of fish as the Games with one important caveat: this one component will be sold, one unit at a time, in the real estate market where prices are more or less transparent. Sooner or later we will know “the numbers”, and as most developers will tell you, the market place can be a bloody mess.

  • Higgins

    Lewis,

    “They”, you know, “The Experts” said that this year, the Olympic Games will be responsible for bringing 700 -800 million dollars to the Tourism industry in BC, and then coupled with logging and other…grow ops, BC will lead Canada in business growth. Oh, yeah Baby!
    …
    While in Whistler, non related Olympic visits are down 50%.
    By the way, these so called “Experts” are the same ones that told us two years ago that there is no Recession coming.
    So, maybe you want to rewrite some of your predictions. 🙂

  • Dan Cooper

    “…why do they write that the real-estate industry came up with the plan for the Olympic village? That was the city’s dream from day one. The city assembled that land, committed itself to building a village for VANOC, and sold it off to the highest bidder.”

    Perhaps “they” see the real-estate folks, as a group, and the city government as essentially unitary, or at least working hand-in-hand. Be it noted that I am not speaking to my own opinion, but just talking about “them.” “They” may have noted all those campaign contributions, cruises, sports events seats, and other little perks flowing from party A to party B. Such things have raised comment in the news media a number of times in the past.

  • MB

    @ Lewis + Higgins. A little off topic, but related still.

    While there are regional differences and variations, it is important to note that the entire global economy is underpinned — some would say shackeled — to the price of oil.

    There is a direct correlation between the recessions experienced over the last half century and the price spikes in oil that preceded them. This is a matter of simple dependence on fossil fuels, not of some archaic, overly complex and calculated post-recession justification by insecure economists, and it is turning out to be globalization’s Achilles heel.

    The last and the most devastating recession to date since the Thirties immediately followed a sharp increase in the price of the world’s Number One commodity (to $148 / barrel). The US banks and multinationals were already weakened by foolishly high debt-to-asset ratios, and the sudden spike in the price of oil tipped them over.

    The best way to predict not only when but how deep the next recession will be is to watch the price of oil. It behoves us to make our cities, economies, institutions and households more resilient to oil dependency and related economic downturns.

    Jeff Rubin is not the only economist who gets it, but he seems to be part of a minority.

  • MB

    I’ve never been impressed by Kennedy Stewart. He is so Old Economy and seems parochial in his comments on the Big Smoke in particular.

    If even a third of the major BC sawmills would reset their equipment to larger metric dimensional lumber, they’d capture a significantly larger portion of the Chinese housing market that has opened up to wood frame construction since their devastating recent earthquakes toppled poorly-reinforced concrete and unreinforced masonry structures with a great loss of life.

    The loss of vast tracts of pine forests to beetles is rooted in planetary climate change, not in failed urban economic policies. It is a matter more for provincial — and I would argue federal — purview, especially in developing ways to respond and adapt. Has anyone heard Gordo of Steve say they are interested in funding large-scale research into developing silvicultural practices to help adapt forestry to climate change in BC? No. The hewers of wood have already done their work, and the government prefers leaving the land to erode or evolve into dry rangeland.

    Vancouver real estate prices are high because the value of a finite area of land has increased under population pressure. Sure, we have a few Coal Harbours, but most of our land base is still based on low density large lots. The ideal response to rising urban real estate prices is to use the land more responsibly and develop comfortable higher densities and innovative housing choices, not to waste precious air knocking the city of Vancouver as though it has any control over the attraction of the entire SW Coast as a decent place to live.

  • landlord

    New York? A hell-hole. We don’t need any lessons in how to manage an economy from the wizards of Wall Street.

  • Urbanismo

    To add some over confident opinions on subjects of which I have no expertise . . . following these current posts . . .

    The essential world economic problem is fractional reserve banking wherein every unit of currency lent-out results in more debt than money in circulation. Ultimately debt overwhelms every thing. Given responsible governance, this could be solved by a stoke of a pen . . .

    MB: “Vancouver real estate prices are high because the value of a finite area of land has increased under population pressure”

    Vancouver real estate is over priced by speculation. Speculators are bailed out by a never-ending supply of main land Chinese money: which will be constantly replenished by escapees from China’s going fiscal disaster.

    Absentee landlords are able to hold onto titles indefinitely because of a local supply of tenants unable to buy into the “Canadian dream”, but nevertheless in need of housing.

    Look closely, there are too may empty units for these destructive habits to continue. No problem for speculators . . . lotsa problems for local tax bases . . .

    Mindless ideology will ensure continuance of this economically destructive habit.

    The pine beetle thrives because of immature and non-existent Silviculture policies. Climate is always changing: anthropogenic hubris just over states human capabilities in a solar system that gives not one iota about our presence.

    landlord: ” We don’t need any lessons in how to manage an economy from the wizards of Wall Street.” Well, I’ll drink to that!

    Watching all the mindless yahoos running amok celebrating the current “games” is evidence that we need lessons and guidance from one or another mature economic overseer: indeed lessons in responsible human behavior . . .

    There will be no huge cathartic epiphany from which we could learn valuable lessons. Incompetent civic governance, lacking vision, has minimal effect.

    Just continuing human folly, ever deteriorating living conditions.

    We will continue to be governed by myopic detached organism unable to empathize because they are removed from life at ground level . . .

    Such is life . . . QED

  • MB

    @ Urbie: “Vancouver real estate is over priced by speculation. Speculators are bailed out by a never-ending supply of main land Chinese money: which will be constantly replenished by escapees from China’s going fiscal disaster. ”

    I used to think that too, and that speculation led to a real estate price bubble. But we’ve observed ove the last year that prices dipped only marginally during a massive recession (is it over yet?) and then rebounded to an even higher level. Turns out there was no bubble to pop and the value was real.

    The story about many vacant Concord suites owned offshore is not a new one. But does anybody have some accurate current stats on just what the percentage is? I suspect it was more of a pheomenon of the 90s, because I remember long lineups of locals buying them, especially the less expensive non-waterfront tower developments downtown.

    It is a slap-in-the-face reality that the price of an average detached home is higher than an average family’s income in Vancouver and many of the suburbs. But average people are still buying and allowing the mortgage to suck up a larger portion of their income. But higher interest rates will thus put a lot of people in a precarious position, and many will probably be forced to assess whether they really need 3,500 square feet or if 1,800 will do.

    This is why we really need to explore market-based alternatives like lane houses, granny flats over garages, fee simple row houses, live-work in low and mid-rises on arterials, condos for mingles, rental units within condos, and co-housing and other sweat equity housing developments. These forms of housing not only respond to a market with higher real estate prices, but use land more efficiently and sometimes foster a community spirit of cooperation.

    The gods aren’t making any more land, but more and more people sure want to live on the land we have.

  • Michael Geller

    “This is why we really need to explore market-based alternatives like lane houses, granny flats over garages, fee simple row houses, live-work in low and mid-rises on arterials, condos for mingles, rental units within condos, and co-housing and other sweat equity housing developments. These forms of housing not only respond to a market with higher real estate prices, but use land more efficiently and sometimes foster a community spirit of cooperation.”

    MB, I completely agree. We are not ‘running out of land’…we just aren’t making very good use of the land we already have.

    But now the question is, who is going to write a letter to the NY Times to correct the misinformation spread by Mr. Austen? I would like to see it come from the Mayor, since he is the one who said 14 months ago that Vancouver taxpayers were on the hook for a billion dollars!

    Now that he knows this is not really true, perhaps he can share the truth with the rest of the world. Furthermore, the NYT may be more likely to publish a letter from Gregor than any of the rest of us!

  • gmgw

    @MB:”It is a slap-in-the-face reality that the price of an average detached home is higher than an average family’s income in Vancouver and many of the suburbs.”

    That’s some slap in the face, all right. How many “average families” do you know whose annual income exceeds $500,000??
    gmgw

  • landlord

    What is wrong with a city full of high-income earners? It’s not all grow-op dollars. High incomes are the result of highly-skilled, highly-productive people and the profitable businesses they own and run (and which employ so many hard-working people).
    Public and private charity can only address a part of the limitless needs of those with nothing to offer and a lifetime of making bad decisions, but we all have to face the fact that life remains fundamentally a question of survival of the fittest.

  • MB

    Gmgw, most families we know are in the mid to -high five figures (single income), and low 100,000s (two incomes). Most who have bought detached houses in Vancouver bought at least eght years ago before the really steep increases began. About half bought condos. A few plowed inheritances into buying or renovating their houses.

    Only one couple we know bought a detached home recently. They are retired. They never did have a huge combined income, and never went to university. They had one child, now grown and out of the house. The difference is, they worked at steady jobs in the trades for four decades, bought & sold several modest houses along the way, and here they are, mortgage free in a million dollar house.

  • Urbanismo

    @MB . . you obviously don’t realize it . . . but you have just made gmgw’s post 13 point . . .

  • Mike

    From what I can see, Vancouverites are losing month-to-month everything that made that city appealing: cheap, easy access to nature. Full-stop.

    You can find expensive housing, traffic jams and shitty little condos in most parts of the world. Congratulations Vancouver, you’re almost world class.

  • Sharon

    There was plenty of good things that were ignored as well. Vancouver is a fabulous mix of neighbourhoods. As far as the media is concerned, Vancouver begins and ends at Robson Square. The opportunity to showcase our city, our diversity, our inclusiveness never happened. What ever happened to those great video segments of the host community like they had in Lilihammer?

    Access to the media center and the unaccredited media was extremely difficult for those who did not have a press release indicating a crisis of monumental proportions.

    The DTES is not the only group/issue that got lost in the shuffle.