Yep.

Go on craigslist part time and see how desperate save on foods and retail are for people. Starting Wages have risen 20-25% over the last year or so and yet demand is much higher than supply.

The thing is, all these places you mention that you’d expect to be effected by this current situation are all busier than ever. None of them close or have limited hours, very few I’ve ever run into where understaffing seems to have effected the level of service etc.

Menial jobs like these can’t be expected to live where you work. Just cause your a barista at Robson and Granville or a dishwasher at hawksworth doesn’t mean you should have a right to live 3 blocks away in your own appartment. Those are entry level jobs and not just within their industry, within the entire workforce.

I do agree though that if it becomes the type of situation where all these types of people can afford is east of Abbotsford then we’ve got a problem.

However, I think rental buildings being built by prominent developers can be a solution long term if there is enough investment in that sector.

Let’s face it, owning any sort of “home” is a pipe dream for most now.

Or we can go the american apartment route and do leasing

TBH, strata concept is retarded

Property Managers are overworked and cannot focus on issues with buildings
Strata are power hungry cheap fucks
Developers are like car makers nowadays, make sure its all good for the warranty period

These insane house prices are still relatively new, and the way condos and townhouses are skyrocketing in the last year or so is only going to make it worse. So while it may seem like everything is working at the moment it'll be interesting to see where things are 10 years from now if nothing changes.

Off-topic, but I remember taking the 99 B-Line from Broadway Skytrain to UBC for 5 years of school and how everyone would be huddled in the rain, shivering and miserable, waiting to get on the bus. But once the majority of people got on, they took up all the space, refused to move to the back of the bus to let everyone else on, faked being asleep or ESL to avoid giving their seats to pregnant people or elderly people or people carrying a lot of items, because fuck 'em. The implied justification was "I got here first and I was waiting longer, therefore I deserve it more".

Welcome to human nature. Where the memory of the "haves" regarding their "have-not" former lives is shorter than a housefly's.

The majority of people who already own homes are no different. The housing market is no different. The politicians who are supposed to put Canadians first are no different. Do you really think Gregor Robertson cares about affordable housing when he flipped his Point Grey home for almost $2 million? Or the baby boomers who have zero savings and rely on the equity from their homes to get by? Or the $20-dollar-an-hour ballers who are up to their eyes in debt but have managed to delude themselves that they "made it" because they're renting a 1-bedroom condo in Yaletown for $2200 a month?

At the end of the day, people don't give a flying fuck about bad things happening unless it's happening to them. Yes, I know I'm cynical.

Couldn't agree more

I can't see a person living in a multi million dollar home having a minimum wage job pouring a latte at starbucks or chef at a restaurant pumping out 80$ plate dinners and barely getting by with rent. Sure he could bold and try to open up his own restaurant as many people here seem to have the idea that going out and making more money is as simple as snapping your fingers... but where will he do so? There's nowhere to rent here that would help him get started unless he takes a massive loan out and then finds out that his restaurant isn't able to keep up with the bills and now has debt beyond belief. Or should he go to a smaller town with less people where he wont have enough traffic to stay afloat.
Who do you expect to fill these positions that you take for granted? 15-20 year old kids?

You either have group A complain about not being able to afford or you have group B complain about group A. Not my fault people have invested every single penny they could and have taken on huge amounts of debt in the hopes that their 1.2 million dollar home will soon be their 2.2 million dollar retirement fund.

If a barista at Robson and Granville has to spend an hour in public transportation every day and have a good portion of their wage go to transit is it even worth working there? They may not need the right to live a few blocks away but living in the same city may be helpful.

Historically, yes... most minimum-wage jobs are (and should be) worked by students or young adults living at home as an entry-level job while they are trying to build their skills or certifications to find a better job.

The problem is, in Vancouver, there aren't very many "better jobs", especially compared to other "world-class" cities such as Toronto, Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, etc. Which is a huge and overlooked part of the problem IMO.

It will only be compounded by the fact that less and less people are choosing to raise families in the Vancouver area, and the supply of young workers for these jobs will decline in the next 10-20 years. If I'm living in Surrey, I'd much rather work at a Starbucks in Surrey than one in Vancouver...

BrokeBack

Interesting point. Do we really need immigrants if we have a higher minimum wage?
:badpokerface:

I would like to see the anger and frustration manifest itself into a real movement for political change. Not just people who take the easy way out and rant/post memes on Twitter/Reddit/Revscene. If half of the under 40s in the Lower Mainland are under-housed, underemployed, etc., that should be significant enough for some group to tap into that anger and frustration and challenge the mainstream political parties. Surely, there must be someone or some group of people who are media savvy, articulate, and camera friendly/charismatic who can take this on. That's why boomers and Gen Xers don't give a shit about millennials - they don't want to put in the time and the work.

Generation Squeeze is only a quarter way there - they're good at getting some quotes in the newspaper, but that's it. There are small pockets of activism, like in Chinatown, but considering the anger and frustration out there, you would think this should be widespread.

I'd have to disagree with you here, Hondaracer. I primarily do the bulk of my grocery shopping at Superstore and Safeway -- probably 50% @Superstore, 25% at Safeway, and the rest at wherever. Over the past few years, I've seen first hand the level of service decline at Superstore in terms of re-stocking. Metrotown Superstore is especially bad. Marine Drive Superstore is a bit better. And Grandview Hwy / Rupert Superstore a bit better again.

From a consumer's pov, a lot of the shelves still haven't been restocked by 9am. Some stuff are still missing at 10am. A big box like Superstore runs overnight re-stocking. Why is this happening?

I get off work and arrive at Superstore at 5:30pm. Much of the sales items have already been picked apart and I'd be lucky to find a few battered and bruised leftovers. Baby food and toilet paper are especially bad with this. If it is adult food I can deal with alternatives. But baby food, not so much.

Let's say I didn't get to Superstore until after dinner. Fruits and produces are either all gone, or have been badly picked apart (or only the super $$$ varieties remain). The meat sections have been raided and only the shxtty looking leftovers remain. The discounted yogurt have all been raided clean. The on sale items at the cheese section is the same thing. Sometimes the on sale breads only have a few loafs remaining. Superstore closes at 11pm. I'm talking 8 - 9pm here.

Superstore has been trying to hire restocking staff. I don't think that has been going very far.

Safeway is not nearly as bad, but their meats and bread sections still get raided.

And why is all this happening? It is exactly has Westopher has said -- this entry level type of work requires lower wage labourers to fill. If they have to drive / transit all the way there from Coquitlam, Maple Ridge, or Surrey, they're not going to do it. A big box like Superstore can deal with it to a certain extent by hiking wages, but smaller stores do not have the luxury to do that. And if they can't find staff, their operations -- or worse, their business -- are gonna be affected.

Activism requires time and passion (anger). Much of the working middle class are already stretched to the limit on that. Those in the lower wage working classes who understands the difficult are probably working more than 1 job to try and make ends meet.

When you look back into history all over the world, most types of meaningful and result-driven activism are either driven by the poorer classes and/or university students. But nowadays, even some of the post secondary students who would have been involved in activism is probably working a part time job on top of their studies to pay for living expenses and tuition.

Sorry, I didn't write what I was trying to say haha

I was trying to get at who would fill the positions when nobody can live here and has to move elsewhere to survive but I wrote it out backwards. Would you want to go to an upscale restaurant and eat a 80$ plate dinner made by a 17 year old newly hired and who's previous cooking job was flipping burgers at mcdonalds.

If you live in surrey of course you'd want to work in surrey. That's not always the case. With the amount of people moving here on a yearly basis taking up any job they can, lower wage jobs will have more and more people applying for them. Take what they can get. Pass up on a job and you may not know when the next position will appear that requires 0 skill for entry level. They're not applying for a single position with 3 other candidates they're applying with probably 50+ people.

And they're mocked at being called poor and told to leave the city if they can't afford it here. Glad to see there's such nice people in this city.

Everyone is obviously going to have some concerns for their personal wealth, rightly so. Those who recently saved all their pennies for their first place will probably have the strongest feelings. The hard work put into a downpayment for your own roof is to be commended and not snuffed at. Especially when numbers are as high as they are now. But continuation at this pace is ludicrous. Prelude guy on the other page said toughen up, I did. Obviously your concerned for your own well being. But honestly think about what is going on.

You want kids? Have kids? Do you want grand kids? Do you want them to live in this part of the world? Sadly rolling over and going with it isn't going to help you out then. Well, not until you die and pass down your house. But good for you for being strong, being slightly financially mature and saving some money.

This is our country, why are we not standing up and protecting it?

Sometimes I have trouble debating this topic as I have a good paying job. My fiancé, who recently finished up 11 years of post secondary also now has a well paying job. I saved when I was in my early 20's. Moved back home after 5 years. I left Ontario where I was working to BC to my mom's spare room. I was lucky to 1) Have a cheap place to stay 2) Keep the same job w/ decent wage, despite moving. Once I finished paying off that 30k in student loans I started saving for my downpayment.

Put down my initial downpayment at 23 y/o without financial help from my parents. I had my shit together. Luck, timing and determination.

Not everyone has the luck, timing or even the determination to do that. The argument of I did it, so everyone else should is BS. Good for you, you worked hard. Not everyone is the same. Not everyone was dealt the same cards your dealing with. But have some heart for christ sakes. Lazy ass people shouldn't be getting homes, I agree completely. But your average working Canadian should be able too.

Defending outside influences is really silly and honestly pretty damn self centered.

You're talking about life and death scenarios.
I don't think moving out of your home city to own your own home sustainably is the shittiest choice to have to make. Matter of fact, it sounds like a no brainier to me.
If people don't want to make that compromise, that's fine. Their prerogative, their outcome, not mine.

We're talking about the private sector, yes? The government is under no obligation to interfere with the free market.
In fact, it's my opinion that it'd be better if they didn't.
You say it's become a problem for all bc? Look what happened last year. Government imposed 15% foreign tax in metro Vancouver. Had minimal effect and only in high bracket neighbourhoods. What it really effected though was property in the Fraser valley. Where prices shot up. Those were affordable neighbourhoods that first time buyers needed. The last chance really at a detached under $500k.
Or how about the interest free first time home buyer loan? I don't think I need to explain why that's a terrible idea.

The problem is the government either doesn't know what to do, or isn't interested in losing revenue. Or both.
And Trudeau can just go ahead and put that housing plan on the shelf right under his promises for a balanced budget and clean drinking water for reserves.
Not that it would help. Supply doesn't seem to be the issue. And 2500$ a year? In a market as over inflated as Vancouver's? Over ten years?


Hey I get it. I was born and raised in East Van. But if I thought I was entitled to owning property there just because of it, I would never have been able to get my piece of dirt.
People can protest till the cows come home. It's their right of course. But while they're doing that, the price of anything affordable outside of metro Vancouver will just keep climbing.
Implementations will be made to cool the market, making it harder to buy, which we are already seeing.
I'm not saying it isn't upsetting. But I just think it's silly to demand or wait for someone to make it happen.
It may not be ideal, but anything is better than nothing. Just my opinion

Its not about people being entitled to own property anymore though. The point is people can't even afford to rent here. As you know how economically socialist my ideologies are, I still agree with you that the young bank teller shouldn't be able to buy some new build in the west end 2 blocks from the beach, but they shouldn't be scrounging to rent some bedbug infested bachelor shithole in southeast vancouver if they are working full time either. People that argue the "deal with it or move somewhere else" side of the argument seem to think that those of us on the other side think everyone deserves an air-cooled 911, and granite countertops. I literally just want entry level workers to be able to afford a clean place thats habitable, HEALTHY food, and a bike or a bus pass to get them to and from work in this city.
The big issue is that it keeps getting worse, and I feel for the kids that are 16, 17, 18, etc coming from lower income households, because what do they even have to strive for if it keeps getting further and further out of reach every year.
Economic disparity has negative effects on mental health, which leads to physical health issues.
It leads to crime.
It leads to a place that is no longer a nice place to live.
I fucking like it here, and I just want people to have the opportunity to be safe, happy, and live fulfilling lives in this community.

Gosh... This discussion (with you, Welfare) is really getting tiring. Of all the points that I've already made in my previous post, you simply chose to avoid any direct replies -- for whatever reason you might have -- make some smart aleck remarks that sidesteps the issue, and then in a subsequent post re-iterate the same stuff where I've already presented the counter points to...

As far as housing is concerned, BC pretty much only has private sector housing. The non-private housing sector is so small here that it barely makes a blip. So yes, we are talking about private sector housing.

As many of us have already mentioned, a completely free market is a bad thing. It leads to massive inequality and wealth disparity. It leads to mental and physical health issues (and then the government would have to spend more $$$ on healthcare). It leads to crime because people are pissed and/or out of options, and then again the government needs to hike public safety funding. It turns the city into a shxtty place to live.

So no matter how you look at it -- be it numbers and dollar amounts, be it citizen satisfaction index, be it easy of governing and/or public order, the more generally content citizens are, the lower the governing and operating costs for a society. And when people don't even have / can't even afford a stable and secure place to live, people get antsy and pissed, and that adds costs to society.

The idea situation really is, you want a mixed group people all living in the same society because they all support one another in some way. You have renters and you have home owners. You have rich people, middle class, working class, and barely getting by class all sharing the same society (although not necessarily in the same community). You want the government to only provide a minimal amount of interference to the otherwise free market when the balance is off. We may not know where the optimal balance point is, but I think the majority of people in the Lower Mainland and elsewhere in BC can tell you that right now, we are very, very far off from the optimal housing balance point. As you may recall, affordability -- including home affordability -- was a primary issue of concern in the previous provincial election.

The problem with the examples you mentioned is in the execution. The foreign ownership tax was hastily implemented after ignoring the housing affordability problem for extended periods of time. It has not been thoroughly thought out. The cause of the housing unaffordability was caused by at least multiple issues, some of which are beyond the provincial government's control. You can't fix a multi-cause issue with a single focus solution. Now, I still think having it implemented was better than doing nothing, but what was really needed was a multi-prong approach to tackle as many of the causes as we can. The provincial government did not do that.

The first time home buyer loan was nothing more than a pre-election last ditch effort to buy some votes. It was not designed to be a proper affordability intervention tool. It was only a vote-buying tool masquerading as an affordability intervention tool. Surely you are smart enough to see that from miles away?

Anyway, this cynical old fart is rambling on and on again... for that, I apologize.

Yes I liked it too. Before it became what it did. IMO, EV is not even the same anymore. Feels more like kitsilano now.
Not that there's anything wrong with kits at all. It's just not what it was tho.
Not trying to cheap shot it either. It actually breaks my heart. But it really was inevitable. Beautiful city at the ocean and mountains at your doorstep, in a beautiful country? C'mon man. How long did you think that would remain sustainable?

Hey I'm just trying to offer my advice for what I see as a situation that is not going to get better. I honestly do not believe Vancouver will ever be affordable to people making an average wage. A bold statement, I know. But that's what I think. Or at least, the probability is not something I'd bet my future on.
I know I come off as a condescending dick sometimes, but believe it or not, I'd rather see people do well for themselves than not.
Moving Eastward worked well for me. I was extremely fortunate to get in last summer before the new rules and even greater market value increase.
Believe me, I'm very grateful. Because I see how hard it's getting now. But it's not going to get easier. That's why I'd do it again tomorrow in a heartbeat. No regrets at all. Less traffic. Nice people. Peaceful. Simple. And above all, it's well within my means.
Heck, I'd move to Chilliwack if that's what it would take. We're still living in a beautiful corner of the world. And beauty like this doesn't last if you don't seize the opportunity.
But hey, that's just the way I feel about it. To each their own

sorry that bus analogy is terrible

i'm far from where I want to be but I don't forget where I was.

i'll contribute to those standing in the cold doing coin drives...i'll give back to bursaries that made the difference of staying in school after max'ing out loans even if I still have a large debt myself.

those who made it are happy with one or two bedroom values shooting up? Great if you see yourself living the bachelor life forever or is okay with living your family in bird cages like it's Hong Kong. The gap between condo and th/detached will just be amplified.

i'm also okay with people having different views on this hot topic...how boring would this thread be without it

if you feel the need to make personal attacks regarding how old the other member was when still living with parents or comment on the size of their apartment...you're just proving the point of the increase in our socioeconomic gap

Up until two years ago, condos (not detached) were still affordable to the average working person so the sky-high prices are still a relatively new phenomenon. Now even a 1-bedroom in Burnaby/New West/Coq (Surrey will catch up soon) is completely out of reach to young adults (unless they get a handout from their parents). We will see some major social disruption in this city going forward in the next few years and it will be interesting to see.

It amazes me how some people will comment on the job market in this city, without any actual knowledge of what they are speaking about.

I manage a large number of different association groups in many differing industries in this city. What is the number one complaint my customers have? The lack of ability to fill jobs. I regularly have conversations with business owners who have roles posted for months on end, unable to find applicants. The issue is getting worse year by year.

We have a serious brain drain going on in this city, and this housing rental crisis is the catalyst creating this domino effect.

Our local government in a rush for greed through property and real estate has essentially cut its nose off to spite its face.

As westopher said above, great, you made an $800,000 profit off the sale of your condo, that's nice. But when the business economy tanks in this city, and you cannot visit the establishments that were once there, what does it even matter?

This isn't an issue of entitlement, it's an issue of sustainability.

Ask them what they are paying and what they are demanding :fullofwin::badpokerface:

So many ads asking for 5+ years experience for introductory pay.

Can't fill entry level jobs with minimal wages if entry level workers can't live here. If I have to move further east towards Mission or Abbotsford I won't consider a shitty wage job an hour away. If that's the case I'd prefer a job out there but with it being a smaller city I'm guessing jobs are a bit scarce.

Was looking at the province website today and one of the first headlines I see - Vancouver considers 'restricting property ownership by non-permanent residents'. Lol like they'd ever do that...

How much did you manage to save for a down payment in your early twenties? Seems like everyones saved over $100k by the time their 26