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less than three
Aug 9, 2007



Fallen Rib

Cold on a Cob posted:

No idea how that sign work in a condo building with a mix of owner occupied units and rented units where presumably many of the units being owned by different landlords

The draft sign says they only rate the common areas, which would be maintained by the strata.

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Cold on a Cob
Feb 6, 2006

i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually

College Slice

less than three posted:

The draft sign says they only rate the common areas, which would be maintained by the strata.

My dream was that landlords with basement apartments would get big scarlet letters pasted to their front door. Alas.

half cocaine
Jul 22, 2019


Or maybe like passover.

Femtosecond
Aug 2, 2003

The worst thing you can call someone nowadays is a racist so of course this is what the yimbys are grasping onto in an attempt to shore up their assertion that SFH are bad.

https://twitter.com/424ds/status/1340371752161984512?s=20

What not settler architecture and development practices would be is left to the reader to come up with.

McGavin
Sep 18, 2012

Femtosecond posted:

What not settler architecture and development practices would be is left to the reader to come up with.

There is the Jonathan Hunt House in the Royal British Columbia Museum.

Lead out in cuffs
Sep 18, 2012

"That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."




Femtosecond posted:

The worst thing you can call someone nowadays is a racist so of course this is what the yimbys are grasping onto in an attempt to shore up their assertion that SFH are bad.

https://twitter.com/424ds/status/1340371752161984512?s=20

What not settler architecture and development practices would be is left to the reader to come up with.

The Senakw development? Also the redevelopment of the Point Grey military base and the old VPD headquarters near Oakridge?

Femtosecond
Aug 2, 2003

Lead out in cuffs posted:

The Senakw development? Also the redevelopment of the Point Grey military base and the old VPD headquarters near Oakridge?

Sure those are indigenous lead developments, though there's nothing about that built form that is in some distinct way not colonialist. They're just tower developments. Are the 90s era yaletown tower developments not-colonialist?

Femtosecond
Aug 2, 2003

look at this colonialist zoning



oh wait this is the capilano reserve whoopsie.

sitchensis
Mar 4, 2009

I don't understand what argument you're trying to make?

Single family homes are probably the least sustainable and most destructive form of residential development there is. Removing any and all zoning that specifically disallows anything but SFH (or "ground oriented housing") is a key component of making cities more sustainable.

And just lol if you think suburban styled homes which are a heavily modified pastiche of English country estates are not indicative of colonialism.

Man. Let me tell you about the fun some remote FN's have had with the imposition of suburban homes and floorplans on their reserves (thanks Feds!) which were wildly inappropriate both on a functional and social level for the needs of the families that inhabited them.

But that wasn't colonialism. Nosiree. A home built specifically to only allow for certain types of family interactions and compositions, that is specifically centered around the concept of a nuclear family with mom at home with the kids while dad drives to work and no one can go anywhere without a car, no ideology, colonialism or agenda behind THAT kind of development.

sitchensis fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Dec 22, 2020

Femtosecond
Aug 2, 2003

My point is that a detached house is just a type of building.

If we're going to assert that this housing form is "colonialist" and should not be retained for reasons related to colonialism then I think this begs for an explanation of what housing forms aren't colonialist and why. What does it even mean for a housing form to be colonialist? In the absence of that followthrough of explanation the accusation of "colonialism!" is purely a "guilt by association" slander. As I said in my first post, a grasp by opponents of SFHs to find another thing to add to their list of why SFHs are bad.

Beyond that, if we're talking about specifically "heritage homes" I think it's a remarkable thing to suggest that we shouldn't retain heritage buildings due to their relation with colonialism as this effectively means that, as a colonial country, we should retain nothing.

Why are we only hearing this criticism around single family homes and not other things? Chinatown was built by immigrants and colonizers of this land. More often than not I'm hearing how Chinatown should be given unesco world heritage status. Shouldn't its unique architectural forms be torn down due to colonialism?

Personally I also think SFHs are unsustainable and shouldn't be entrenched in zoning law, but there's plenty of reasons for this aside from this empty and confusing message around colonialism.

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Wait, single family suburban homes are now reminiscent of English country estates? Have you actually seen the country estates you are referring to?

Bi-la kaifa
Feb 4, 2011

Space maggots.

The only thing I can think of that might be considered as not colonial is communal housing, but for that to work there would need to be a paradigm shift of gargantuan proportion towards the dismantling of the insular nuclear family. Chinatown gets a pass because it was colonized by the oppressed, which makes it more acceptable, I guess

Flater
Oct 20, 2006


Ask me about sucking Batman's dick
Why chomp at the bit for multi-family dwellings when you know in this day and age they are going to be the shittiest paper thin walled microapartments?

Lead out in cuffs
Sep 18, 2012

"That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."




I mean, of you want to go full decolonization, that would look like everyone not of indigenous Canadian descent gets up and leaves the country.

But on the flipside, just not trying to build apartment blocks on top of 10,000-year-old Musqueam village sites would be a step in the right direction.

And the article does have a good point in that "heritage houses"in Vancouver are relics of an era of colonization when indigenous people were being actively genocided. Hell, they're also relics of a time of intense exploitation of Chinese Canadians, as well as a general loving over of the working class in favour of the rich.

Poodlebear
Aug 24, 2006

but if y'all put
feathers on a dog
that don't make it
no chicken
Wouldn’t you have to conclude that any building with indoor plumbing, heating and electricity is colonialist by that line of thinking??

Noblesse Obliged
Apr 7, 2012

My house is colonial but that’s just the carpenter ants

Crow Buddy
Oct 30, 2019

Guillotines?!? We don't need no stinking guillotines!

sitchensis posted:

I don't understand what argument you're trying to make?

Single family homes are probably the least sustainable and most destructive form of residential development there is. Removing any and all zoning that specifically disallows anything but SFH (or "ground oriented housing") is a key component of making cities more sustainable.

And just lol if you think suburban styled homes which are a heavily modified pastiche of English country estates are not indicative of colonialism.

Man. Let me tell you about the fun some remote FN's have had with the imposition of suburban homes and floorplans on their reserves (thanks Feds!) which were wildly inappropriate both on a functional and social level for the needs of the families that inhabited them.

But that wasn't colonialism. Nosiree. A home built specifically to only allow for certain types of family interactions and compositions, that is specifically centered around the concept of a nuclear family with mom at home with the kids while dad drives to work and no one can go anywhere without a car, no ideology, colonialism or agenda behind THAT kind of development.

Look at all these words... just call Femtosecond a racist and smugly own him.

RBC
Nov 23, 2007

IM STILL SPENDING MONEY FROM 1888

Femtosecond posted:

My point is that a detached house is just a type of building.

If we're going to assert that this housing form is "colonialist" and should not be retained for reasons related to colonialism then I think this begs for an explanation of what housing forms aren't colonialist and why. What does it even mean for a housing form to be colonialist? In the absence of that followthrough of explanation the accusation of "colonialism!" is purely a "guilt by association" slander. As I said in my first post, a grasp by opponents of SFHs to find another thing to add to their list of why SFHs are bad.

Beyond that, if we're talking about specifically "heritage homes" I think it's a remarkable thing to suggest that we shouldn't retain heritage buildings due to their relation with colonialism as this effectively means that, as a colonial country, we should retain nothing.

Why are we only hearing this criticism around single family homes and not other things? Chinatown was built by immigrants and colonizers of this land. More often than not I'm hearing how Chinatown should be given unesco world heritage status. Shouldn't its unique architectural forms be torn down due to colonialism?

Personally I also think SFHs are unsustainable and shouldn't be entrenched in zoning law, but there's plenty of reasons for this aside from this empty and confusing message around colonialism.

lol everytime you post it's like a game of find what stupid thing he's trying to make sound reasonable. This time it's chinese immigrants are also colonialists. No, they aren't.

Femtosecond
Aug 2, 2003

Grandma Hendrix wasn't a colonialist. Her ancestors were brought over as slaves, and yet her old colonial revival house remains, maintained in good repair with a plaque in front describing her important role in Vancouver's Black community.

I'm sure the house was probably built by some white housing speculator 50 years earlier. The house isn't known for them.

Since Nana Hendrix's time it has probably passed through a half a dozen families of various ethnicities, in all likelihood many chinese since it's only a few blocks away from Chinatown.

At the end of the day the house is just a home for humans. I dunno what more can be interpreted beyond that.

Femtosecond fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Dec 24, 2020

Hubbert
Mar 25, 2007

At a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
I dunno why you are all so wrapped in colonialist or YIMBY stuff. The original article doesn't seem to make reference to any of this. It's an issue of meeting current "sustainability" standards versus "genuine" heritage representation.

I don't know why YIMBY people would be against heritage preservation - the original tweet is just fundamentally misguided. Heritage powers in land use planning and development are some of the most expansive in British Columbia. A Heritage Revitalization Agreement basically lets you do anything you want, except change an OCP. Vancouver and New Westminster even have heritage density transfer banks, that you lets you "preserve in place" and donate the excess density elsewhere nearby.

Vancouver’s well-intentioned heritage-homes policy appears to be missing the mark - Frances Bula posted:

If the signs on construction sites and the official policies created by the city of Vancouver are anything to go by, many of the city’s older houses are being lovingly renovated and restored to enhance their historic character.

But that’s not true, many experienced developers and builders say.

The reality is that many of those restored homes are, in effect, new houses that merely simulate the shape and look of the old ones, say those who are struggling to reconcile the conflicting city goals that have led to this situation.

And, as a result, two benefits that city policies have identified as part of the push to save older homes – preventing a lot of building waste from going to landfills and providing affordable housing – are not being achieved.

That’s because the city government is trying to do two things at once: save heritage houses and meet new environmental standards.

So it has adopted programs that encourage home owners to preserve Vancouver’s diminishing stock of houses built before 1940. But its building code and other measures require new and even renovated houses to meet 21st-century standards for energy efficiency, accessibility and safety.

This can mean that, by the time the work is finished, the early-20th-century beams may be all that remains of the original house, according to many who work in the field.

“In a lot of our situations, we’re being pulled in two directions, and preserving the heritage building becomes unfeasible,” said Henri Belisle, the president of Burnaby-based TQ Construction, which does renovation and restoration work in the region. “I do feel like the city’s official motivations are good, but the applications tend to be in conflict.”

“It’s just a pretend restoration,” said Elton Donald, a partner at Kerr Construction and Design, a 30-year-old Vancouver company that specializes in new custom homes and renovations. “The policy becomes so onerous that it becomes impossible to retain much.”

And Bryn Davidson, a Vancouver builder of laneway homes and passive houses (which are designed to use as little energy as possible for heating and cooling), said the system caters to an increasingly outmoded idea of white settler culture.

“It’s about preserving the colonial character of neighbourhoods. It’s just sort of an aesthetic exercise. It’s not really a housing strategy,” he said.

Even though the city says the purpose of the character-home preservation policies is to reduce the amount of building material going to landfills, many renovations now produce as much waste as demolitions.

Smaller, partial renovations can also be affected, but the contradictions are the most glaring when the owner of a pre-1940s home is building an infill house.

A city policy initiated in 2017 allows homeowners to build laneway-type infill housing on their lots if they preserve the existing pre-1940s house. But if they want to sell the infill housing through a strata arrangement, the main house has to be upgraded to the current building standards.

(Stratification is a real estate mechanism that involves selling parts of properties separately, whether condos or laneway houses, that are on a common piece of land, without a subdivision.)

The idea of allowing the infills was to provide lower-cost housing in Vancouver’s often out-of-reach single-family neighbourhoods.

But because the cost of upgrading the pre-1940s house to 2020 standards is so high, many owners choose not to add laneway houses, or build them as rentals to avoid having to upgrade the main house.

As a result, it is more often professional builders who redevelop such properties and, to compensate for the high cost of renovating the older house, the price of the infill homes can be the same as every other form of new housing.

Several builders contacted by The Globe and Mail say the conflicting policies mean many houses end up as nothing more than general replicas of older buildings.

Builders seldom raise the topic publicly.

They told The Globe they understand and admire the city’s effort to preserve houses and to emphasize energy efficiency, even if trying to do both is often nightmarish.

At least one says that, as problematic as the policy encouraging the retention of character-houses might be, it provides one crucial benefit – more housing in neighbourhoods that usually oppose any new building that isn’t a single-family home.

“It’s the only program that allows densification without controversy,” said Marianne Amodio, an award-winning architect who has worked on heritage buildings that include the recently renovated Hollywood Theatre.

The conflict between heritage and modern standards comes up in any renovation of an older home. Even a small alteration to a space can trigger a requirement to upgrade a whole room or floor, which can force the owners to toss out mouldings, casings, doors, stairs and more.

“We have to do everything or nothing in a room,” Mr. Belisle said.

But the conflict is the most acute when the owner hopes to stratify and sell.

The retention policy applies to the standard residential zones that cover most of Vancouver, called RS-1, and the specialized zones in older areas such as Mount Pleasant, Kitsilano, Strathcona and Grandview-Woodlands that have many pre-1940s homes.

City staff developed the incentive program after years of objections from heritage advocates – and many residents of the west-side neighbourhoods that are among the city’s most expensive – over the rate of demolition in the past 20 years. Those advocates called the demolitions an environmental disaster because thousands of tonnes of still-good building material was thrown out.

But under the new building code, original stairs, doors, lighting, door handles and other fixtures can’t be retained.

Doors in older homes are typically 28 inches wide. The new requirement is 30 inches. Antique doorknobs have to be replaced by handles for accessibility. Many older houses must have new insulation if the siding is removed, which can reduce the size of the rooms.

The cost of the renovation can run from $600,000 to $1-million, builders say.

Between that and the approximately $500,000 cost of building the new infill – along with the reduction in value of the main house because it no longer has as much land once a lot has been stratified – builders say a homeowner has little incentive to go that route.

Mr. Donald said a west-side resident recently enquired about constructing an infill but, when she found out how much it would cost and how little of her main house would remain, she backed off.

“You can’t sell the infill for enough to cover the costs,” he said. And she did not want to get rid of the old features of her house.

City officials quietly acknowledged the difficulties in a memo in June, 2019, and a briefing this summer to city councillors. In both, it was clear staff were concerned about why more people were not taking advantage of the program and why so little was being retained during renovations.

“Character-home projects provide a good model for the addition of housing choice in neighbourhoods,” the memo said. “The outcomes are generally supported as a good fit with existing low-density neighbourhoods. “However, the level of building retention achieved is low due to building code requirements and market expectations.”

The city plans to evaluate how much is retained in character-home renovations, but to keep the existing policy. (The memo is the only response from the city that was provided to The Globe on this topic.)

Builders themselves don’t always agree on how to improve the situation.

Mike Bruce has renovated eight older houses around Vancouver, recently turning two in Mount Pleasant into three stratified units apiece: two in the original older house and an infill “coach house” in each case.

He retained little of the original houses beyond the studs.

“You get the old frame, you keep the shape of it, you can’t go outside that, and you keep the roofline and then essentially you build a new home around that,” Mr. Bruce said, standing in the yard of the 1910 Massey House, a former rental that he rebuilt into a side-by-side duplex out of the main house and a coach house in the back, each selling this year for about $1-million or more.

He said some buyers like the look of heritage but not the inconvenience. At one of the recent re-developments, he retrieved and reinstalled the old porch pillars that had been thrown into the basement, along with one banister post. But he did that out of personal interest, not because of any requirement.

But another builder thinks the city should let owners forgo the full renovation and still build infill if that’s what they want. For those, says Bryn Davidson, only cosmetic changes should be required on the main house to keep the cost of the new homes within reach.

“As soon as you trigger the upgrade, it’s just luxury.”

Hubbert fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Dec 24, 2020

linoleum floors
Mar 25, 2012

Please. Let me tell you all about how you're all idiots. I am of superior intellect here. Go suck some dicks. You have all fucking stupid opinions. This is my fucking opinion.
I really hope all the low income landlords out there are going to survive this Christmas :worried: .

Femtosecond
Aug 2, 2003

quote:

Three offers for large Mount Pleasant duplex
629 E. 13th Ave., Vancouver
Asking price: $1.388 million
Selling price: $1.451 million
Previous selling price: $750,000 (2011)
Days on market: six
Taxes: $4,902.68

Listing agent: Mary Cleaver, Re/Max Select Realty

The action
The sellers were the original owners of the duplex built in 2010. The young family wanted to move into a detached house closer to where their children attend school. The buyers were a young family moving from a condo unit. The seller’s agent received three offers. The sale completed Nov. 17.

What they got
This spacious duplex has 1,647 square feet of living space, with three bedrooms and two bathrooms, radiant in-floor heating, a gas fireplace, hardwood floors and large windows overlooking a south-facing front yard. The unit has a front porch and garage and is steps to Robson Park in Mount Pleasant.

The agent’s take
“The duplex offered most of the advantages of a detached home without the price tag,” listing agent Mary Cleaver said. “We weren’t surprised to get a lot of interest in this one. I wish we had five more just like it.”


1.4M "cheap" for a duplex now. Boy I sure hope no one around here was waiting for SFH's to drop to $500k this whole time when they could have bought a condo and exploited that equity.

RBC posted:

This time it's chinese immigrants are also colonialists. No, they aren't.

Because?

Femtosecond fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Dec 27, 2020

Tsyni
Sep 1, 2004
Lipstick Apathy

Femtosecond posted:

1.4M "cheap" for a duplex now. Boy I sure hope no one around here was waiting for SFH's to drop to $500k this whole time when they could have bought a condo and exploited that equity.


Because?

I think we need to decolonize housing prices.

linoleum floors
Mar 25, 2012

Please. Let me tell you all about how you're all idiots. I am of superior intellect here. Go suck some dicks. You have all fucking stupid opinions. This is my fucking opinion.
Sounds a lot like... Reverse racism

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Thread got bad. At least, worse than it was.

RBC
Nov 23, 2007

IM STILL SPENDING MONEY FROM 1888

linoleum floors posted:

raze conrad blacks house and build high density townhouses for the poor

Femtosecond
Aug 2, 2003

Foreign buyers Remote workers are loving things up.

quote:

Small towns in interior B.C. and Alberta face intense housing crunch

Amy Makortoff says it’s hard not to take the rejections personally after spending nine months looking for a rental home in Nelson, B.C.

She said she rarely got to even hear a landlord’s voice on the phone before their property was snapped up in interior B.C.’s competitive market. The lifelong Nelson local and one of her daughters slept for months on a mattress on a floor while they were housesitting and searching for a rental home of their own. All of their essentials were packed in a plastic tub, and Ms. Makortoff’s optimism was almost gone.

This week, she finally moves in to a new home, although the house comes with the caveat of being more than a 30-minute drive from town.

Ms. Makortoff has a job lined up and has lived in the city for years, but landlords will often cite simple things – or even her children – as a negative.

“Children seem to be a big factor for people which is really insulting and upsetting,” said Ms. Makortoff, adding that tenants are forced to sell themselves as if they were applying for a job.

“I’ve never as a renter had this much trouble. … Right now I feel homeless, I have all my things in a storage locker.”

Ms. Makortoff is one of many who are struggling to find affordable homes during a housing crisis throughout interior B.C. Realtors, residents and politicians say COVID-19 has only worsened the situation as more Canadians look to work remotely – and in turn increase competition and prices for limited stock in scenic communities such as Nelson.

Adding pressure is the resurgence of natural resource industries such as manufacturing, forestry and mining after they initially faltered during COVID-19. Such companies look for employees in exactly the kind of interior municipalities that are already grappling with supply and don’t have the capacity to house additional workers.

Nelson CARES Society, a community organization, said in its annual report that the city currently has a 0.4 per cent vacancy rate, and rising prices mean half of renter households pay 30 per cent or more of their income toward their lease.

Interior B.C. realtors in Fernie and Revelstoke say the situation is similar, and there was a noticeable uptick in remote workers from out-of-town looking for housing this year.

“People are definitely finding interior B.C., and they’re saying, ‘Wow, this is a great place to be,’ ” said Lori Russell, a realtor in Fernie.

“Sales have been very brisk during COVID. Lots of things that come on the market … if you don’t pounce on it the first day, it’s gone.”

The situation leaves people such as Ms. Makortoff with mixed feelings. She shares custody of two of her children with their father, so she can’t simply relocate to another city.

“It’s frustrating because I know that people are moving here because it’s a better life, and that’s why I’m here,” she said.

She believes anybody should be able to enjoy the way of life in Nelson. “But I’ve felt that sentiment a tiny little bit: Stop moving here, I need a home, house our local people first.”

Ms. Makortoff said there were stark differences in her search for a home this time compared with a couple years ago. The two-bedroom house she left in 2019 cost $1,450 a month. She’s had to adjust her budget to $1,800 a month, but many of the listings she found were as high as $2,600.

Nelson Mayor John Dooley said the city faces a slew of challenges when it comes to expanding affordable housing, including a shortage of available land, the high cost of delivering building material, and the complicated task of laying foundation on a mountainside town with many waterways.

But Mr. Dooley says people who work in Nelson can look to surrounding communities that are a half hour drive away, as Ms. Makortoff did.

“It’s very reasonable to live in this area within 30 minutes of Nelson,” Mr. Dooley said. “But if you want to live in the core of our city, there hasn’t been a lot of [single-family dwellings] built in the last 20 years.”

He called the drive along mountain highways “therapeutic,” unlike commutes in bigger cities such as Vancouver or Toronto.

But Trevor Jenkinson, president of the West Kootenay Landlord Society and a property manager in Nelson, said rental markets in smaller communities are also facing pressure.

“The way I describe it is Nelson is the peak of the tentpole,” said Mr. Jenkinson, who manages nearly 100 properties in the area. “When the prices in Nelson go up, it pulls up the other areas.”

He says apartment listings in Nelson will often receive 40 or 50 responses, and smaller markets such as Castlegar or Trail are becoming competitive markets as a result.

Further east in Alberta, mountain towns are facing similar problems.

Banff and Canmore initially experienced a significant spike in vacancies at the onset of the pandemic, but the rental market is starting to pick up again.

Canmore councillor Joanna McCallum said she’s concerned about the advent of people working remotely in desirable towns such as hers, and the impact it will have on the community’s decades-long issues with affordable housing.

“Right now we’re seeing a lot of people become homeless or struggle with housing in general more than ever, which is really scary and shocking,” said Ms. McCallum, adding that the issue makes COVID-19 an even more substantial problem for vulnerable people.

“Now that people can work from home more easily and acceptably, I wonder if those folks are going to put even more pressure on our housing market and continue to squeeze local people out.”

She said the town has identified housing as its number one concern for years, and is working to help develop apartment buildings and tweak residential laws to allow for higher density.

Two hundred and fifty rental units will come on the market in the next six months as two new buildings are completed, and Ms. McCallum says council will look closely at whether that has a substantial effect on stabilizing rental prices.

Dan Sparks, a realtor for 20 years, says Canmore has also seen a rise in housing sales.

Housing sales plummeted in April – one the region’s busiest months for transactions – with only 12 properties sold in 2020 compared with 76 the year prior.

But sales were back to normal by June, and rose sharply in July with 81 houses sold compared with 53 in July 2019. Sparks, a former member of the Canmore Community Housing board, believes the numbers are a direct result of people wanting to live in lower density communities with ample recreation after experiencing the pandemic in cities such as Calgary.

Banff has been spared from such housing activity, partly because its location in a national park means that residents have to prove a need to actually reside there, such as a full-time job.

As a result, councillor Grant Canning estimates Banff’s vacancy rate is at 15 per cent, up from zero before the pandemic. The rise in vacancy is a result of so many local jobs being directly tied to tourism. At one point during the first lockdown, Banff’s unemployment rate reached an astounding 85 per cent according to a local MLA.

He expects that a rebound in the housing situation will be in sync with a rebound in the tourism industry, although the city isn’t projecting full economic activity to resume until 2023.

In Canmore, Mr. Sparks said the town will likely join interior B.C. in its rental woes when tourism returns to normal in the post-COVID world.

“Once the borders open up and we have international tourists coming up, eventually that’s going to be absorbed and we’re going to need more rental units,” Mr. Sparks said.

“We’re cognizant of the fact that affordable housing will always be an issue in Canmore.”

Realtors and city workers throughout the region agree there isn’t an easy solution to the crisis, but many say there needs to be more incentive to build affordable rental units.

“Any small little desirable town, I’m looking at you Rossland, Fernie, Nelson ... they’re all struggling with this question of people coming [from] outside their community and taking up some of their housing, and then there’s not enough housing available for local people,” Ms. McCallum said. She’s concerned that what’s left for locals usually doesn’t match local salaries and is sub-standard.

“It just keeps happening.”

Ms. Makortoff, the single mother from Nelson, said the only units she was able to see toward the end of her search were run down, with only one bedroom to house herself and her three daughters. But at that point, people made her feel ashamed for turning them down.

“It’s almost like people forget that I’m a human who has a right to a normal home,” Ms. Makortoff said.

“People just think, This is the world now, you’re not going to find something in your price range.’”

Cold on a Cob
Feb 6, 2006

i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually

College Slice

Femtosecond posted:

Foreign buyers Remote workers are loving things up.

Lol gonna remember this the next time someone tells me I shouldn't whine about the housing prices in the GTA because I could just buy a house in the sticks.

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane
Yes, "small towns" like Nelson, the large town we would go to in order to buy things when I was growing up in an actual small town.

I wonder how many people are looking for places to live in Slocan, Winlaw, Silverton, New Denver, Rosebery, Hills, Nakusp and so on.

McGavin
Sep 18, 2012

Won't somebody think about Spuzzum?
:qqsay:

abuse culture.
Sep 8, 2004

PT6A posted:

Yes, "small towns" like Nelson, the large town we would go to in order to buy things when I was growing up in an actual small town.

I wonder how many people are looking for places to live in Slocan, Winlaw, Silverton, New Denver, Rosebery, Hills, Nakusp and so on.

Salmo owns. Castlegar is ok too.

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

Femtosecond posted:

1.4M "cheap" for a duplex now. Boy I sure hope no one around here was waiting for SFH's to drop to $500k this whole time when they could have bought a condo and exploited that equity.

The underlying thesis is still correct. There is no connection between wages and costs and the price of housing has been perverted by multiple factors that in a rational market, a correction would be expected. What we were all wrong on was the extent to which the Canadian government will backstop real estate by printing insane amounts of money through crashing interest rates.

When you look at debt levels in this country, we are in real trouble. Subnational debt is crazy high, personal debt is off the charts, and our industrial base is completely marginalized. We don’t produce enough of anything and we want the best of everything. Cheap debt is all that is keeping us afloat and the loonie will never be the world’s reserve currency. Oil is toast and money laundering isn’t that far behind either.

How anything other than financial chicanery justifies a duplex at $1.5 million is beyond me. How that constitutes ‘cheap’ is enough to make my head explode.

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

McGavin posted:

Won't somebody think about Spuzzum?
:qqsay:

Look, I’ve got the real estate market in Usk cornered, so you stay the hell away.

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

abuse culture. posted:

Salmo owns. Castlegar is ok too.

Castlegar is like the scene from the Simpsons with the new transfer student who says "there's a weird smell here, and you're all probably used to it... but I'm not."

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

McGavin posted:

Won't somebody think about Spuzzum?
:qqsay:

spuzzum is busy thinking itself about whether it wants to destroy an artifact

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Crazy for Kaslo here

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

qhat posted:

Crazy for Kaslo here

Avatar+post combo.

There's a PT6A family Easter Egg hidden somewhere in Kaslo... somewhere the average tourist to Kaslo may well have seen.

Femtosecond
Aug 2, 2003

Kaslo is cute af. If it wasn't slightly too far away from everything it'd probably be the next hipster hot spot now that Tofino is old news and only for millionaires.

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane
I resent Kaslo, it’s too big for its britches.

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McGavin
Sep 18, 2012

Kaslo is old and busted. Sointula is the new hotness.

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