Quote:
Originally Posted by blankall
In Vancouver there's this mantra that the high cost of living/real estate is due to what a world class city Vancouver is. As a result there's no way to make it actually affordable. That line of thinking also states methods like re-zoning, increased transit infrastructure, etc are a waste of time and only disrupt the good aspects of the city. It's basically the NIMBY mantra.
The tweet is pointing out the falsehoods with that, and that Vancouver is actually just filling with people who can't afford to survive there.
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I mean, Vancouver is nice in a lot of ways and has redeeming qualities. There is a reason why so many people move to the area. It definitely has warts though that are starting to make the redeeming qualities not worth it for a lot of people.
The problem in Vancouver is just a magnified problem with North America in general. Houses are seen as commodities to gain wealth, and house ownership is even sometimes like a business for people. This isn't the case everywhere in the world.
Talking about world class cities, I posted a couple of videos somewhere in this thread about Vienna (sorry for being a broken record, I am just really onboard with how they do it there). They have taken the position that housing isn't a commodity for people to profit from, but they are homes and it is a basic right to have an affordable home. Zoning and development, and strict market control tools are applied to ensure the residents can rent and purchase affordable homes. Developers can't just go and build luxury condos all over the place and then sell them to investors, and people can't just buy up multiple properties to rent them out to other people. There is a system set up that you can basically rent to own your home and a 30% capital gains tax on homes to deter people from buying and flipping. Something like 70% of the population qualify for the housing programs and the system is actually profitable for the city overall.
Spoiler tags just because the videos were already posted and I don't want to clog up the page.
There is no reason why North American cities can't do this, other than being a really greedy society, which Vancouver is probably one of the worst examples of. People treat buying a home here like a money making scheme.