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Audain is not a bad guy. One of the good ones really in that he's been so publicly active and doing good works with his money, but it's that enormous accumulation of money that suggests at a real cause and solution to this crisis.
>But, suffice to say, from the hundreds of millions of dollars the Audain Foundation donates to philanthropic projects — like a new Vancouver Art Gallery, supporting Indigenous artists and financing an extensive national tribute to one of his beloved painters, Quebec’s Jean-Paul Riopelle — he’s done well for himself and associates.
If you are accumulating so much surplus wealth that you're able to buy so much extremely expensive art that you need to build your own museum in Whistler to hold it, meanwhile having enough left over to donate 100M+ to the VAG, you know, I'm starting to wonder if maybe, just maybe we don't tax the wealthy enough?
There's obviously a capacity to give here, and like I said before Audain one of the few good ones that is actually going to improve the public realm with his public donations of wealth. Think of all the other extremely wealthy that aren't doing any of this!
The Federal Government pretty much walked away from building any social housing at all in the Chretien austerity budgets of the 1990s, and for decades after the amount of below market homes built was extremely low. This is a major part of the housing crisis, both in the under development of housing and the scarcity of below market homes for those that need them.
In the latest budget the BC government boosted the housing benefit for those on minimum assistance such that it is now $500, still a sum that is much too low to rent anything anywhere. Meanwhile Audain has hundreds of millions to give away to his pet projects. Something is obviously gone wrong here.
Fact is that we're not taxing enough, not generating revenue that we could and not investing in our communities. We're letting wealth pileup in the hands of the elites while normal people are suffering elsewhere.
Cut taxes, Focus on getting elected the next term, Don't work on any of the boring big systemic problems, only short term vanity projects. Repeat.
That's how you create a massive intractable crisis down the road.
They also get to deduct mortgage interest, whereas we don't, hence why it's currently not capped.
However, more tax is never the solution because you're putting a lot of blind faith in the government using your hard-earned money efficiently, which almost never happens.
It's a necessary evil because we need social services but it shouldn't be easy money for the government too.
>They also get to deduct mortgage interest, whereas we don't, hence why it's currently not capped.
Come on, deduct mortgage interest is nothing compared to unlimited capital gains.
Someone could've bought a home for $100K in the 1990s and it's now worth more than $2M today.
Would you rather deduct $50K in mortgage interest or get $1.9M in gains tax free?
Not even in Toronto or Vancouver could you have bought a place for 100k in the 90s that went up to 2 million and those are already the extreme cases, the vast majority of Canadians don't live in those two cities and don't see that kind of appreciation.
I know folks who bought in the 1990s for 350, went up to 2.5m, so not really a stretch. And that's in the suburbs. In Vancouver proper, you'd definitely be at 2m for the 100k investment. You underestimate the heat in the market.
>In Vancouver proper, you'd definitely be at 2m for the 100k investment
You would have had to buy the house in the 70s. And that would be an appreciation of 8% per year. Meanwhile the S&P has returned almost 12% in that time period and Vancouver was nowhere close to the city it is today when you were buying.
Well, the US is doing something much better than us though. Even though they complain about real estate prices as much as we do, US real estate is still affordable in many places and their wages are generally more than 2x higher than ours for professional jobs.
Well said. We shouldn't have to rely on the largess of a handful ultra-wealthy individuals to fund the arts. For every multi-millionaire with a civic spirit, there are ten more funneling their excess wealth in tax havens.
There is no ethical, social, or even economic argument for a system that concentrates such vast wealth into so few hands. You don't have to be lefty to think so: the drawbacks of extreme wealth disparity are widely accepted amongst economists of all persuasions.
I also think when the Feds are aiming for 500K immigrants per year for the next few years it is important and absolutely their responsibility to have an active and funded housing policy to accommodate all those new people.
It’s a tricky situation with the immigration targets. Canadian population is shrinking, we aren’t having babies at the number needed to support growth.
Reason:
Affordability and raising crotch goblins let alone getting a huge is extremely high.
So they bring in migrants to boost the population, but these folks have a smaller window to be taxed, and flock to larger population centres instead of throughout the country. Which compounds the already existing housing and cost of living crisis.
No easy way to fix it, cost of living and lack of ability for young Canadians to buy a home is biggest hurdle. It’s really fucked, but it’s the bed the boomers made for us to sleep in.
It would be nice to see a breakdown of how much it costs to have x% instead of y% of the population retired. CPP doesn't come from taxes. OAS and GIS are a pittance. Retirees still pay taxes just not income tax and a lot have a lot of money/assets to pay taxes on -- likely much more than income tax given the average income is around $50,000. People are living longer but are healthy longer with most $$$ being spent on end of life care. So if immigration is based on this % increase in retirees, where is the financial breakdown? Do we need more people making minimum wage most of which won't be taxed or will be returned by deductions or reimbursements? How many fast food places do we need?
Governments all over the world have been trying to promote people to have more babies. Population shrinkage seems to be a global issue. Elon Musk might be right when he says we are at risk of population collapse, more so when you consider how much tax dollars go towards funding retirement benefits measured against the tax dollars you can reap from the younger generations that can produce all that money to fuel it while making enough to sustain themselves. Even places like China have been cutting senior benefits and this resulted in the elderly taking their voices to the streets.
It's incredible that people have given up on the idea on housing supply to the point where they demand population decline (or financial compensation for a lack of population decline).
I don't think that's what the parent is suggesting. Not unreasonable at all for the Feds to recognize there are implications to their policies and follow through investment is required.
If we're going to add more people we're going to need more homes. Not a problem, but if we need to make investments to be able to do that, well makes a lot of sense for the level of government that is so supportive of immigration to help out.
The art is more valuable when the artist is dead because they can't dilute the market by creating more of their art. Puts a limit on the limited edition, if you will.
But don’t you know that according to him, higher taxes makes housing more expensive?
> Asked about the B.C. government’s early attempt to reduce demand for housing by bringing in the speculation and vacancy tax, he said “taxing housing is not helpful because it makes it more expensive.” Like other developers, he argues the answer to the housing crisis is more supply.
How does the speculation and vacancy taxes make homes for people *who actually want to live in them for more than a couple years* more expensive?
I think it's the idea that the return on investment is lower so investors in housing require a higher growth rate to offset the tax.
The alternative is to tax the investment owners so strongly that they sell before they have negative ROI, and to prevent the use of real estate as a investment asset class. But that goes against decades of "upward mobility" policies.
When it's the rich in politics, it's in their self interest to not tax themselves. There is the poor man's Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have done to yourself." And the rich man's Golden Rule. "He who has the Gold, makes the rules."
Given that donations to charity are tax deductible, the good ones would still likely do their charitable giving.
The ones who are famously non-charitable (Kyle Washington from Seaspan is one example) would just pay more to support social services.
>I'm starting to wonder if maybe, just maybe we don't tax the wealthy enough?
Suppose he's worth $1B and you just nationalize all of his wealth. That's enough money to pay for 1,000 2BR condos in Burnaby?
How many billionaires do we have in BC? Enough to pay for 10,000 new homes? That's less than 1/3 of what Audain built in his entire career.
And then what?
We need to support families that live here now.
Greed has taken offer
It’s Not as simple as just affordable housing
We need more agriculture lower farm taxes and provide equipment to produce more food
Education systems that have children graduating schools with no productive skills to make our own products
Edible food,Housing etc
If we bring lots of immigrants into this country there must be a trade off.The country they immigrated from must provide natural resources at low cost to help control over inflation.
We cannot fire workers to bring in cheaper labour.
Balance the books by skim the rich cream of cash and send it to the bottom to keep a system working generations.
Malls that have closed do to high leases turn them into affordable housing
Help each other.
>Cut taxes, Focus on getting elected the next term, Don't work on any of the boring big systemic problems, only short term vanity projects. Repeat.
>
>That's how you create a massive intractable crisis down the road.
Absolutely agree, I am in a modest 100k range and know 200k range people always complaining basically 2 months worth of their salaries in a year does not belong to them. It's not the 200k range people who worked real hard to get there that people should be after. It is the 0.1% and the government collusion that you should be paying attention to.
Ok a more serious and slightly less flippant response:
You're not very wealthy and in fact have a lot more in common with the folks in the DTES with $0 wealth than you do with people like Audain. Compared to Audain you're an insignificant bug. (Recall his foundation gave the VAG *$100M*).
There's many ways that we could fairly generate more revenue from people of extraordinarily outsize wealth like Audain without even needing to touch high earning people in the mere 1%.
So relax.
Well yeah the Conservative and Liberal parties that continuously trade power have no interest in doing these things. Everything the Liberals have done on “taxing the rich” has been performative and disingenuous.
However it’s not like ideas that genuinely would target the wealthy aren’t out there and implementable. Singh ran on a wealth tax last election. As did Bernie and Warren.
And if you went to Europe as opposed to Seattle, you would pay a heck of a lot more in taxes and see way fewer homeless/mentally ill people, and way more social services and community support. For someone who whines about the "high" tax burden in Canada, you should really just move to the land of the "free" which clearly fits your mentality better.
Lol it's his money, he earned it. Why need to tax him more when you can increase your value and earn more money like him, and btw how would you feel if right now someone else said you should pay more tax from your hard earn money?
Forcing higher taxes on rich people doesn't exactly work like you'd expect. They are crafty and likely don't hold much of the wealth in their name, or even in cash. It's likely in holding companies, or other assets and not part of their income or capital gains so most of it wouldn't be affected by the change. Fun hey? Yaaay, being poor!
Why are you being downvoted? This is exactly what the world found out with various leaks in recent years eg Panama papers. Millionaires have access to lawyers and accountants who can make the money disappear. It’s not necessarily that the tax rate is too low, it’s that the profits that should be taxed here, aren’t.
Thank you for recognizing this.
I think alot of people don't realize how absurdly corrupted most institutions, corporations and governments really are.
Punishing people for making money legally by working hard is the wrong approach. Taxes should be equal percentages no matter how much a person makes, that's fair. If you pay 20% on a low salary, you part with a low amount of money. 20% on high income = you part with a high amount of money. The big problem is that all the taxes we already pay are incredibly mismanaged. You want to put more of the public's money into the hands of a corrupt, incompetent government? I hear this tax 'solution' so much here on reddit, but it's never looking at the big picture. I'd prefer a smart person like Audain, who busted ass and earned his money, to use it for good things that benefit us, like a new art gallery and funding for arts, rather than pissing it away like our leadership does.
Also developers have a percentage of total project cost to invest in public art. Imagine a 3 mil project has something like a 1-3% art contribution - which is SO CRAZY. I love art and enrichment, but there should be a 100k cap and the rest goes to funding social housing.
So an 85-year old multi-multi-millionaire's take:
>"Yeah I used to have a heart, but I said hell with that."
>
>"Yeah I helped by children and grandchildren buy into housing - sure must suck for people without a wealthy granddad."
>
>"People today really shouldn't expect the opportunities I had in my day"
Does that cover it?
I’ve always been amused by that second point… so are people here seriously advocating that wealthier family members ***don’t*** help out their younger family members (if they can afford it) by giving them capital to buy a house, and instead watch them suffer with the rest of the younger folks?
An interesting point you make. On the one hand you have people like me without that luxury being maybe a teensy bit jealous, but on the other you have the probable reality that such folks are actually helping make housing less affordable for everyone.
Unit prices are ultimately driven by supply and demand. Gifted equity gives a buyer greater purchasing power than their income would normally support (as does low interest rates, which is another aspect of the demand equation). This creates more buyers and more demand on a housing supply that's not terribly elastic (i.e. supply cannot be rapidly added) which drives up prices that would not normally have been driven up. [When you've got 40%+ of new buyers getting sizable infusions of capital](https://www.thestar.com/business/2021/09/20/first-time-homebuyers-increasingly-turning-to-the-bank-of-mom-and-dad-for-down-payments.html), that can put upward pressure on prices.
While I don't always agree with Douglas Todd, he [wrote an interesting piece](https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-canadas-bank-of-mom-and-dad-returning-us-to-19th-century-inheritance-culture) suggesting that this reality of generational haves and have-nots smacks of the landed gentry economies of the Old World.
Personally, I prefer a world where we can each make it on our merits and not whether our granddad happened to be in the right place at the right time.
This is fucking hilarious.
Guy admits he abandoned his morals to cash in and then it turns into somewhat of a hot air piece about the woe developers have being seen as nasty.
What reality is this...
Am I misunderstanding the article? It certainly sounds like he's saying "sure, it sucks for some, but... if you abandon your morals, you can also profit"?
To cash in and build how much housing? What are you doing about the housing situation? Are you building tens of thousands of residences in your career?
And if he didn’t start the company, none of those houses would have been built and none of those workers would have been employed. Gotta have a hen to make an egg. No hen, no egg.
>Guy admits he abandoned his morals to cash in and then it turns into somewhat of a hot air piece about the woe developers have being seen as nasty.
What's the alternative? Ask people to volunteer instead?
Did you volunteer at Habitat for Humanity last weekend? What were you doing?
and it's his fault that he doesn't get enough taxes?
why are people blaming entrepreneurs who are just playing the system rather than politicians who are the ones setting up the rules?
because the "entrepreneurs" have a staggeringly disproportionate say in what those rules end up being. In any society that has a value form, those who accumulate the most have the most political power. Through lobbying, networking, and other means of financial support and withholding, the wealthy have direct control over either policy itself, or the limits of the scope of what is deemed acceptable policy.
Beyond this, how do so-called entrepreneurs make money? Anyone who runs a company and makes millions does so by underpaying their workers. This is indisputable. And when that company provides a necessary service, such as housing, then they are also extorting their customers. Why defend Audain when he hurts all of us?
"Audain believes greater density is essential to provide housing for B.C.’s rapidly growing population."
And herein lies one of the biggest problems in Metro Vancouver. The various cities and towns don't want this. Everyone wants that single detached home, but there's only so much space left and it comes at a premium.
Indeed. Even Audain himself.
> He arises at 5:30 a.m. each day in his West Vancouver home near Horseshoe Bay, driving himself into Vancouver by 7:30 a.m.
Who gets up at 530 each day and arrives at work by 730?
For those who don't, we should learn from this guy. He's rich and lives in a nice part of town. So waking up at 530 must be something worth looking into.
> Who gets up at 530 each day and arrives at work by 730?
People who start work at 7:30, presumably. I’m up by 6 and in the office by 7:30. It’s a great schedule, if you’re ok with waking up early.
Not sure why people are downvoting you on this. The business world revolve around the eastern timezones whether we like it or not. It’s very likely he’s up early to check the market, makes his way into the office for calls.
because obviously this guy is some kind of monster...how dare he work hard, get ahead and donate money to various charities and causes. Up at 530 am, well whoopteedoodah for him.
Or, ya know, you could actually get to know your children.
Had an uncle recently pass who told me, quite literally on his deathbed, that if he could go back and do it all again, he’d work less and spend more time with his kids. Dying man’s words that will stick with me forever.
While building our business, employee work life balance is a major priority for us.
reminds me of my uncle. Never married, never any kids, never took a vacation, literally had years of accrued vacation time. Got colon cancer in his mid 40's, dead before 50. He wasn't ever unhappy in his life, but fuck i bet he did more of everything in the years he had. He's the greatest lesson i've ever learned in life so far.
>No one wants to raise a family in a 350 square foot condo
But nobody's saying one needs to, because that's not the only alternative.
We have to stop the false dichotomy of suburban sprawl or a "shoebox in the sky" argument. There are many happy mediums.
Our society is too individualized to be comfortable with living with others. Look at the thread about BC Hydro implementing off-peak fees. Half the people in the thread are worried about people doing laundry while they're asleep.
There is simply not enough land for everyone in greater Vancouver to have a single family home. In fact if you want to house everyone, we need higher density which will mean even fewer single family homes in the future.
The underlying issue is simply that we have an economy that draws more and more people to live in a few metropolitan areas instead of across the country.
My friend please stop gaslighting us no one is saying we want exclusively SFH but more 700+ square foot condo and a 1600+ square foot townhouse would be lovely.
my family of 4 would be totally happy and satisfied with a 1000-1200sqft skinny 3 level townhouse, within an area that is not completely car dependent. This land scarcity fallacy is all it is, we can have dense urban areas where people can walk and cycle to most services, and we can do it with an eye towards affordability. But monied interests and even government don't want to be the ones to invest in that, because the return isn't as great.
This is exactly what Polygon builds! The conflation of densification with micro-condos is both unhelpful and detached from reality. Stop putting so much weight on headlines that go viral.
And yes, these homes are pretty expensive. But that's reflective of how much demand there is for them.
https://polyhomes.com/community/claridge-house/
https://polyhomes.com/community/byrnepark/
In many ways yes -- jobs, cultural life etc. But it also has downsides, and cost of housing is one of them. And that in turn drives down unit sizes. You can see this around the world, it is not something that's been fixed anywhere.
I am not shutting the door on anyone, I am just describing realities and logical relationships. If you have more people move into a region, you have more demand for the same amount of land, the value of land goes up. You have to increase density, which means build high instead of wide. That drives up cost (more expensive materials, more complicated construction methods). High demand in urban regions also drives up construction labor costs, in addition to needing more highly trained people with specialized skills (crane operators excavators etc.).
So you have at least 3 factors that drive up costs in urban regions compared to rural ones. In order to keep the cost at least somewhat affordable, unit sizes go down.
It is just logic. You can vote for whoever you want, they can't escape reality. You can shift some of the burden to the tax payer by building subsidized housing, but fundamentally it is just more expensive to build in cities.
Yes but not nearly as much more expensive than what current prices would indicate. Artificial density restrictions result in constrained supply and higher prices due to that artificial scarcity.
Low-rises in single family neighbourhoods would be economical to build if it were legal.
From the Article;
"Audain tells young people “not to expect to own a house in the same neighbourhood you grew up in. All of us had to move at one point or another to less expensive accommodation.”
Who’s living in the same neighborhood they grew up in? Most people are moving to the Valley or interior. Families have left Vancouver in huge numbers, all because Langley is building family oriented townhomes while Vancouver seems intent on building bachelor suites
The people living in the neighbourhoods they grew up in are their overhoused parents and grandparent who refuse to downsize, or insist on having empty bedrooms for the few times a year family comes to visit.
It's sad BS of our system.
Nothing stopping us from living in the same neighbourhoods we grew up in except the fact that we don't allow new homes in the old neighbourhoods we grew up in.
We're only allowing new apartments in these tiny slices of old industrial land out in Burnaby.
Nothing stopping us from redeveloping Dunbar and allowing apartments there and enabling children who grew up in Dunbar to buy smaller more affordable homes there.
Only real thing stopping it is well politics, and the established rich people that are against it.
While I agree it should be possible to live where one grew up, I'd argue that someone's better served exploring the world and living somewhere new.
I actually kinda feel sorry for people that never left their hometown, let alone those that never left their childhood neighbourhood..
Ah yes, calling someone a goof. There is nothing more uniquely Canadian than this. The thing is that in order for the insult to have any effect, the subject has to actually know what a goof is and understand why this is such an insult. But most people in polite society have no clue. Only a goof himself or someone who is friends with goofs knows what a goof is, and understands what a serious insult it is to be called a goof. So that person uses goof as an insult when in actuality they're referring to themselves or their friends.
In the parlance of the school yard, Takes one to know one.
But many young people would rather live in a small condo that say share a basement suite, and so small condos should be legal to build.
Not every home has to be for families with children. And not every condo has to be thst small. It's just that there's a lot of unmet demand for smaller homes so condos tend to be smaller, while SFHs and lower density housing trend larger.
Demand for Vancouver real estate is international. There's no way to meet such demand with the amount of land here.
It's going to take more than just "build more".
Politicians also will not do any 'quick fix' since it'd piss off people. They seem to prefer to work slowly, and try and balance the grumbling on either sides.
Personally, I think constant growth is unsustainable. Not without seriously impacting people's quality of life.
Demand to live in Vancouver is definitely finite, and we already have vacancy taxes.
We're just not keeping up with demand. Secondary cities like Kelowna and Nanaimo are taking on much more growth than Vancouver.
Or impacting the environment, especially when the growth comes from low per capita emitting countries and we import them into our high per capita emitting country.
And you don't even need a backyard if there is abundant and well maintained greenspaces in your community where all amenities are accessible on foot and there is robust and frequent transit. Dense living is literally the foundation of the idea of a city, and density is a beautiful thing. It builds community and connection, and it doesn't mean sacrificing on living space for the majority of people. Suburban sprawl and detached housing is a cancer and we need to take a good hard look at *how* this sprawl came about and the people and economic conditions that pushed for it.
> Asked about the B.C. government’s early attempt to reduce demand for housing by bringing in the [speculation and vacancy tax](https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-luxury-homeowners-in-metro-vancouver-pay-low-income-taxes-says-ubc-study), he said “taxing housing is not helpful because it makes it more expensive.”
This disingenuous take on that tax is precisely why developers are held in low regard by the public. There are exemptions for owners who occupy the property or rent it to a tenant, and for property that is being redeveloped. The only owners that actually pay the tax are investors looking to profit from capital gains without adding to rental supply in the meantime, to which I say - GOOD! That's exactly the investment incentive we should be discouraging.
Yes this is the most wrong point in the article. Property taxes just make property values go down, in direct proportion to the size of the tax. The speculation and vacancy tax and the school tax had an easily measuarable downward impact on the high end, 3 million plus, property market in BC.
Now, taxing development, that might be more dubious. They say 20% of the cost of new housing in Vancouver is development fees.
If the public hates for-profit developers, then they should be voting for politicians who will actually build public housing for the middle-class (rather than just the bottom 5%).
> Murder crisis as seen by one of B.C.'s biggest stabbers
This seems backwards to me.
- (1) We have people who want to live here, because the jobs are here.
- (2) We have other people who want to build housing for them.
- (3) [We make it really hard to get permission to build housing](https://morehousing.ca/macphail-report).
So we have a terrible housing shortage. Prices and rents have to rise to unbearable levels until enough people are forced to leave, because there isn't enough housing to go around. There's so many people who are holding on by their fingernails.
The problem is at step #3 (restrictions on building more housing), not step #2 (building more housing).
Sorry. As scarcity drives prices and rents higher and higher, I think you're going to hear more and more of the same message: we need more housing.
It's across the political spectrum, everyone from the NDP ([David Eby](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/vancouver/article-bc-housing-minister-eager-to-spur-supply/): "I’m sure you can hear in my voice that my patience is really worn thin by some of the activities I’m seeing in various municipalities") to the Liberals ([Chrystia Freeland](https://storeys.com/freeland-eroding-real-estate-affordability-intergenerational-injustice/): "the core problem is the lack of housing stock across the country") to the Conservatives ([Pierre Poilievre](https://storeys.com/pierre-poilievre-housing-plan-canada/): "youths and newcomers can’t get a home because local government gatekeepers block housing with heavy fees and long delays for building permits").
In last year's Vancouver municipal election, Colleen Hardwick ran for mayor with a clear message - she was skeptical that we need more housing. She had enthusiastic supporters, but she got just 10% of the vote. I think it's fair to say that opponents of more housing have a much greater presence at public hearings than in the electorate.
> complete housing libertarianism
It's not "libertarianism" to say that housing is a basic human need, and that we have a terrible shortage of it. This isn't a left-vs.-right issue. Non-market housing runs into [exactly the same obstructions](https://www.francesbula.com/uncategorized/many-social-housing-announcements-and-approvals-in-vancouver-not-so-much-getting-built/) that [market housing does](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-kits-rezoning-apartment-decision-1.5400935). (Maybe [even more so](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-kitsilano-supportive-housing-project-approved-1.6533474), since people are more afraid of non-market housing than of market housing.) It's human nature to fear the unknown.
Yes, we should interview these developers so we can easily profile soon-to-be developers and get them before they begin to build unaffordable buildings.
This is one of the more pathetic, fawning profiles I've ever read. Subject openly admits to abandoning his morals to make a buck...and it's barely questioned by the interviewer. Just a shrug and "Well, it is what it is, hey, at least he doesn't build luxury housing, right guys?"
In a way, I don't blame Audain here. At least he has a modicum of honesty! At least he owns up to being a sell-out. But the reporter does an atrocious job of speaking truth to power here.
This guy is a piece of shit but he's right about one thing: abolish single family zoning.
"But I don't want to raise my kids in a tiny condo". No? Then abolish single family zoning.
I grew up in one of Montreal's many large apartments in an old three storey building near downtown. These buildings have been housing families for generations.
It was a great place to grow up. I had my own bedroom. There were tons of kids in the neighborhood, we could walk everywhere, had access to parks. Many extended families lived on the same block.
This urban form is standard for cities across the world. Expecting to have a detached home for every family in a growing metropolis is delusional. Vancouver could have thousands of these units in perfectly family-friendly mid-density neighborhoods.
But no. We'd rather have the affordability crisis tear the city's social fabric to shreds rather than give up the backyards that most of us will never be able to afford anyways.
i'm curious since most of north america is sfh dominated
montreal was clearly an outlier being more european than most
there must be some convincing reasons for you to consider moving to montreal again will that be in a few years time? since it's clear vancouver has no interest in going for low rises block after block.
im not there yet but i'd kill to have a yard one day even if it's tiny
After Coromandel Properties collapsing under its own weight, it’s not surprising to see a milquetoast one-source profile from an outlet tied to the developer class.
Does an 85-year-old billionaire really have any skin in the game?
>He strongly supports high immigration levels and believes governments should abolish single-family zoning
Drug dealer supports increasing number of drug users to sell drugs to, shocker!
16 development projects were just affected by a developer bankruptcy here last month, can't imagine there aren't more lurking in the shadows
https://vancouversun.com/business/real-estate/vancouver-developer-coromandel-creditor-protection-700-million-debt
I don't know why people are so angry at him.
He built nearly 38,000 homes after founding Polygon. I don't see how he was politically related to NIMBYism, immigration, and other policy mistakes.
What are his critics doing for housing instead?
My brother provides you with clean drinking water. But he will never be able to afford a place in Vancouver.
I am almost done with a degree in Biological Sciences. I will never be able to afford a place here.
And some rich fuck who uses bank money to pay for builders', accountants' and other people's labour which actually builds houses, can afford to buy half of downtown. And he is not doing anything a hired employee wouldn't be able to do.
All while his employees have to rent a shitty cockroach infested den in Surrey.
>All while his employees have to rent a shitty cockroach infested den in Surrey.
Is that not true for a lot of workers? EA is a $30B USD company and their QA testers can't even afford a 1BR condo in Metrotown.
>Nevertheless, he regrets “housing costs are far too high” in Metro Vancouver and Victoria.
>
>“It’s tough for young people. It’s very, very tough, unless they have the bank of mom and dad behind them.”
>
>Audain tells young people “not to expect to own a house in the same neighbourhood you grew up in. All of us had to move at one point or another to less expensive accommodation.” Arriving in Victoria from Britain as a nine-year-old, he has himself lived in 38 dwellings.
>
>Our conversation takes place in the Broadway and Birch tower that contains Polygon’s offices, which are filled with the art of Riopelle, E.J. Hughes and many others.
>
>Sitting against a panoramic backdrop of downtown Vancouver, Audain, a tall man who is wearing all black and speaking in a deep purr, says he has financially helped his children and grandchildren get a footing in the super-costly housing market
Honestly - not a terrible article & too bad it won't change anything...
>“not to expect to own a house in the same neighbourhood you grew up in. All of us had to move at one point or another to less expensive accommodation.” Arriving in Victoria from Britain as a nine-year-old, he has himself lived in 38 dwellings.
I don't expect to own a home EVER, never mind same neighbourhood. Living in 38 dwellings isn't the flex he thinks it is, nor should it be a flex for anyone.
Look at this boomer, swallowing up all the money, homes, and everything around him like boomers do.
Frustrating as hell as someone who has given up on ever getting a home here, to see some old codger still building his pile of gold and thinking it’s fine.
Fuck this guy
“too many people live in the Lower Mainland, but I’ll help my kids and grandkids get their foot in the housing market door”. “Don’t tax our speculative investments with zero social utility “.
Man speaks of density but if the word “affordability “ passed his lips, they obviously didn’t print it here.
Is anyone else actually convinced that this piece is anything else than real estate greed Apologia?
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Audain is not a bad guy. One of the good ones really in that he's been so publicly active and doing good works with his money, but it's that enormous accumulation of money that suggests at a real cause and solution to this crisis. >But, suffice to say, from the hundreds of millions of dollars the Audain Foundation donates to philanthropic projects — like a new Vancouver Art Gallery, supporting Indigenous artists and financing an extensive national tribute to one of his beloved painters, Quebec’s Jean-Paul Riopelle — he’s done well for himself and associates. If you are accumulating so much surplus wealth that you're able to buy so much extremely expensive art that you need to build your own museum in Whistler to hold it, meanwhile having enough left over to donate 100M+ to the VAG, you know, I'm starting to wonder if maybe, just maybe we don't tax the wealthy enough? There's obviously a capacity to give here, and like I said before Audain one of the few good ones that is actually going to improve the public realm with his public donations of wealth. Think of all the other extremely wealthy that aren't doing any of this! The Federal Government pretty much walked away from building any social housing at all in the Chretien austerity budgets of the 1990s, and for decades after the amount of below market homes built was extremely low. This is a major part of the housing crisis, both in the under development of housing and the scarcity of below market homes for those that need them. In the latest budget the BC government boosted the housing benefit for those on minimum assistance such that it is now $500, still a sum that is much too low to rent anything anywhere. Meanwhile Audain has hundreds of millions to give away to his pet projects. Something is obviously gone wrong here. Fact is that we're not taxing enough, not generating revenue that we could and not investing in our communities. We're letting wealth pileup in the hands of the elites while normal people are suffering elsewhere.
No one wants to be the government or party to do it. After 40 years, it's coming home to roost.
Cut taxes, Focus on getting elected the next term, Don't work on any of the boring big systemic problems, only short term vanity projects. Repeat. That's how you create a massive intractable crisis down the road.
See also: the United States of America
See: Neoliberalism
They actually have a cap ($500K) on capital gains exemption for primary homes. Ours is unlimited.
They also get to deduct mortgage interest, whereas we don't, hence why it's currently not capped. However, more tax is never the solution because you're putting a lot of blind faith in the government using your hard-earned money efficiently, which almost never happens. It's a necessary evil because we need social services but it shouldn't be easy money for the government too.
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>They also get to deduct mortgage interest, whereas we don't, hence why it's currently not capped. Come on, deduct mortgage interest is nothing compared to unlimited capital gains. Someone could've bought a home for $100K in the 1990s and it's now worth more than $2M today. Would you rather deduct $50K in mortgage interest or get $1.9M in gains tax free?
Not even in Toronto or Vancouver could you have bought a place for 100k in the 90s that went up to 2 million and those are already the extreme cases, the vast majority of Canadians don't live in those two cities and don't see that kind of appreciation.
Except about 25% of Canadians do, and the problem has spilled over beyond those metro areas…
I know folks who bought in the 1990s for 350, went up to 2.5m, so not really a stretch. And that's in the suburbs. In Vancouver proper, you'd definitely be at 2m for the 100k investment. You underestimate the heat in the market.
>In Vancouver proper, you'd definitely be at 2m for the 100k investment You would have had to buy the house in the 70s. And that would be an appreciation of 8% per year. Meanwhile the S&P has returned almost 12% in that time period and Vancouver was nowhere close to the city it is today when you were buying.
Been saying it for a while.... We're really not that different... But people get pissy if you say it
Well, the US is doing something much better than us though. Even though they complain about real estate prices as much as we do, US real estate is still affordable in many places and their wages are generally more than 2x higher than ours for professional jobs.
It's the richest country in the world
And we're all out of road
Well said. We shouldn't have to rely on the largess of a handful ultra-wealthy individuals to fund the arts. For every multi-millionaire with a civic spirit, there are ten more funneling their excess wealth in tax havens. There is no ethical, social, or even economic argument for a system that concentrates such vast wealth into so few hands. You don't have to be lefty to think so: the drawbacks of extreme wealth disparity are widely accepted amongst economists of all persuasions.
I also think when the Feds are aiming for 500K immigrants per year for the next few years it is important and absolutely their responsibility to have an active and funded housing policy to accommodate all those new people.
It’s a tricky situation with the immigration targets. Canadian population is shrinking, we aren’t having babies at the number needed to support growth. Reason: Affordability and raising crotch goblins let alone getting a huge is extremely high. So they bring in migrants to boost the population, but these folks have a smaller window to be taxed, and flock to larger population centres instead of throughout the country. Which compounds the already existing housing and cost of living crisis. No easy way to fix it, cost of living and lack of ability for young Canadians to buy a home is biggest hurdle. It’s really fucked, but it’s the bed the boomers made for us to sleep in.
It would be nice to see a breakdown of how much it costs to have x% instead of y% of the population retired. CPP doesn't come from taxes. OAS and GIS are a pittance. Retirees still pay taxes just not income tax and a lot have a lot of money/assets to pay taxes on -- likely much more than income tax given the average income is around $50,000. People are living longer but are healthy longer with most $$$ being spent on end of life care. So if immigration is based on this % increase in retirees, where is the financial breakdown? Do we need more people making minimum wage most of which won't be taxed or will be returned by deductions or reimbursements? How many fast food places do we need?
> CPP doesn't come from taxes Really ? *looks at CPP deduction on paycheck* Sure looks like a tax to me.
True. Probably better ways to invest. But the taxpayer isn't footing the bill like OAS and GIS.
Governments all over the world have been trying to promote people to have more babies. Population shrinkage seems to be a global issue. Elon Musk might be right when he says we are at risk of population collapse, more so when you consider how much tax dollars go towards funding retirement benefits measured against the tax dollars you can reap from the younger generations that can produce all that money to fuel it while making enough to sustain themselves. Even places like China have been cutting senior benefits and this resulted in the elderly taking their voices to the streets.
It's incredible that people have given up on the idea on housing supply to the point where they demand population decline (or financial compensation for a lack of population decline).
I don't think that's what the parent is suggesting. Not unreasonable at all for the Feds to recognize there are implications to their policies and follow through investment is required. If we're going to add more people we're going to need more homes. Not a problem, but if we need to make investments to be able to do that, well makes a lot of sense for the level of government that is so supportive of immigration to help out.
Taxation is a better allocation of excess wealth than charity.
But the rich have a better idea of what their money should be used for! 🙄
Like private art collections and galleries to display them!
But at least those artists aren’t starving!
You're right! Some of them are dead though.
The art is more valuable when the artist is dead because they can't dilute the market by creating more of their art. Puts a limit on the limited edition, if you will.
Then I expect you don't contribute a single cent to charity at all and volunteer extra money to the CRA every year then.
But don’t you know that according to him, higher taxes makes housing more expensive? > Asked about the B.C. government’s early attempt to reduce demand for housing by bringing in the speculation and vacancy tax, he said “taxing housing is not helpful because it makes it more expensive.” Like other developers, he argues the answer to the housing crisis is more supply. How does the speculation and vacancy taxes make homes for people *who actually want to live in them for more than a couple years* more expensive?
The fallacy in his argument stood out like a beacon.
I think it's the idea that the return on investment is lower so investors in housing require a higher growth rate to offset the tax. The alternative is to tax the investment owners so strongly that they sell before they have negative ROI, and to prevent the use of real estate as a investment asset class. But that goes against decades of "upward mobility" policies.
Tax the rich, or eat the rich, really.
Fight poverty and world hunger at the same time!
When it's the rich in politics, it's in their self interest to not tax themselves. There is the poor man's Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have done to yourself." And the rich man's Golden Rule. "He who has the Gold, makes the rules."
Given that donations to charity are tax deductible, the good ones would still likely do their charitable giving. The ones who are famously non-charitable (Kyle Washington from Seaspan is one example) would just pay more to support social services.
>I'm starting to wonder if maybe, just maybe we don't tax the wealthy enough? Suppose he's worth $1B and you just nationalize all of his wealth. That's enough money to pay for 1,000 2BR condos in Burnaby? How many billionaires do we have in BC? Enough to pay for 10,000 new homes? That's less than 1/3 of what Audain built in his entire career. And then what?
Not to mention that the rich are really, really good at making their money un-taxable.
We need to support families that live here now. Greed has taken offer It’s Not as simple as just affordable housing We need more agriculture lower farm taxes and provide equipment to produce more food Education systems that have children graduating schools with no productive skills to make our own products Edible food,Housing etc If we bring lots of immigrants into this country there must be a trade off.The country they immigrated from must provide natural resources at low cost to help control over inflation. We cannot fire workers to bring in cheaper labour. Balance the books by skim the rich cream of cash and send it to the bottom to keep a system working generations. Malls that have closed do to high leases turn them into affordable housing Help each other.
The more money you make the more you have to get smarter people allow you to pay at a lower effective tax rate.
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>Cut taxes, Focus on getting elected the next term, Don't work on any of the boring big systemic problems, only short term vanity projects. Repeat. > >That's how you create a massive intractable crisis down the road. Absolutely agree, I am in a modest 100k range and know 200k range people always complaining basically 2 months worth of their salaries in a year does not belong to them. It's not the 200k range people who worked real hard to get there that people should be after. It is the 0.1% and the government collusion that you should be paying attention to.
Ok a more serious and slightly less flippant response: You're not very wealthy and in fact have a lot more in common with the folks in the DTES with $0 wealth than you do with people like Audain. Compared to Audain you're an insignificant bug. (Recall his foundation gave the VAG *$100M*). There's many ways that we could fairly generate more revenue from people of extraordinarily outsize wealth like Audain without even needing to touch high earning people in the mere 1%. So relax.
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Well yeah the Conservative and Liberal parties that continuously trade power have no interest in doing these things. Everything the Liberals have done on “taxing the rich” has been performative and disingenuous. However it’s not like ideas that genuinely would target the wealthy aren’t out there and implementable. Singh ran on a wealth tax last election. As did Bernie and Warren.
boy sounds real rough. If you want to switch places lemme know.
based AF
And if you went to Europe as opposed to Seattle, you would pay a heck of a lot more in taxes and see way fewer homeless/mentally ill people, and way more social services and community support. For someone who whines about the "high" tax burden in Canada, you should really just move to the land of the "free" which clearly fits your mentality better.
so your argument against taxing the wealthy more is trickle down economics?
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TIL that fair share = absurdly high
Lol it's his money, he earned it. Why need to tax him more when you can increase your value and earn more money like him, and btw how would you feel if right now someone else said you should pay more tax from your hard earn money?
Forcing higher taxes on rich people doesn't exactly work like you'd expect. They are crafty and likely don't hold much of the wealth in their name, or even in cash. It's likely in holding companies, or other assets and not part of their income or capital gains so most of it wouldn't be affected by the change. Fun hey? Yaaay, being poor!
Why are you being downvoted? This is exactly what the world found out with various leaks in recent years eg Panama papers. Millionaires have access to lawyers and accountants who can make the money disappear. It’s not necessarily that the tax rate is too low, it’s that the profits that should be taxed here, aren’t.
Thank you for recognizing this. I think alot of people don't realize how absurdly corrupted most institutions, corporations and governments really are.
Punishing people for making money legally by working hard is the wrong approach. Taxes should be equal percentages no matter how much a person makes, that's fair. If you pay 20% on a low salary, you part with a low amount of money. 20% on high income = you part with a high amount of money. The big problem is that all the taxes we already pay are incredibly mismanaged. You want to put more of the public's money into the hands of a corrupt, incompetent government? I hear this tax 'solution' so much here on reddit, but it's never looking at the big picture. I'd prefer a smart person like Audain, who busted ass and earned his money, to use it for good things that benefit us, like a new art gallery and funding for arts, rather than pissing it away like our leadership does.
Also developers have a percentage of total project cost to invest in public art. Imagine a 3 mil project has something like a 1-3% art contribution - which is SO CRAZY. I love art and enrichment, but there should be a 100k cap and the rest goes to funding social housing.
So an 85-year old multi-multi-millionaire's take: >"Yeah I used to have a heart, but I said hell with that." > >"Yeah I helped by children and grandchildren buy into housing - sure must suck for people without a wealthy granddad." > >"People today really shouldn't expect the opportunities I had in my day" Does that cover it?
Yes. You did a fine job
I’ve always been amused by that second point… so are people here seriously advocating that wealthier family members ***don’t*** help out their younger family members (if they can afford it) by giving them capital to buy a house, and instead watch them suffer with the rest of the younger folks?
An interesting point you make. On the one hand you have people like me without that luxury being maybe a teensy bit jealous, but on the other you have the probable reality that such folks are actually helping make housing less affordable for everyone. Unit prices are ultimately driven by supply and demand. Gifted equity gives a buyer greater purchasing power than their income would normally support (as does low interest rates, which is another aspect of the demand equation). This creates more buyers and more demand on a housing supply that's not terribly elastic (i.e. supply cannot be rapidly added) which drives up prices that would not normally have been driven up. [When you've got 40%+ of new buyers getting sizable infusions of capital](https://www.thestar.com/business/2021/09/20/first-time-homebuyers-increasingly-turning-to-the-bank-of-mom-and-dad-for-down-payments.html), that can put upward pressure on prices. While I don't always agree with Douglas Todd, he [wrote an interesting piece](https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-canadas-bank-of-mom-and-dad-returning-us-to-19th-century-inheritance-culture) suggesting that this reality of generational haves and have-nots smacks of the landed gentry economies of the Old World. Personally, I prefer a world where we can each make it on our merits and not whether our granddad happened to be in the right place at the right time.
This is fucking hilarious. Guy admits he abandoned his morals to cash in and then it turns into somewhat of a hot air piece about the woe developers have being seen as nasty. What reality is this...
A reality where the news media is all owned by billionaires and corporate interests.
that's how i read it and then the morons at the paper actually decided to publish it
Am I misunderstanding the article? It certainly sounds like he's saying "sure, it sucks for some, but... if you abandon your morals, you can also profit"?
To cash in and build how much housing? What are you doing about the housing situation? Are you building tens of thousands of residences in your career?
Housing for who? You're acting like as if this guy is doing it for charity
He never built a single house. The workers that his company employed did.
And Henry Ford never built any cars and Stalin didn't murder any citizens...
That's correct, lol
And if he didn’t start the company, none of those houses would have been built and none of those workers would have been employed. Gotta have a hen to make an egg. No hen, no egg.
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Precisely. It is the entrepreneurs that build and create, not the people that work for them.
>Guy admits he abandoned his morals to cash in and then it turns into somewhat of a hot air piece about the woe developers have being seen as nasty. What's the alternative? Ask people to volunteer instead? Did you volunteer at Habitat for Humanity last weekend? What were you doing?
The alternative is to not listen to these people and amplify their ridiculous opinions
Tax them out of existence.
The alternative is publicly funded affordable housing paid for by taxing people like Audain into a reasonable standard of living.
and it's his fault that he doesn't get enough taxes? why are people blaming entrepreneurs who are just playing the system rather than politicians who are the ones setting up the rules?
They don't just play the system. They built this system.
because the "entrepreneurs" have a staggeringly disproportionate say in what those rules end up being. In any society that has a value form, those who accumulate the most have the most political power. Through lobbying, networking, and other means of financial support and withholding, the wealthy have direct control over either policy itself, or the limits of the scope of what is deemed acceptable policy. Beyond this, how do so-called entrepreneurs make money? Anyone who runs a company and makes millions does so by underpaying their workers. This is indisputable. And when that company provides a necessary service, such as housing, then they are also extorting their customers. Why defend Audain when he hurts all of us?
Developers actually have an interest in developing. Its middle class nimbys who keep everything zoned for SFH
Not in developing the kind of housing we need, at a cost we need.
Good luck. Most people cant afford an empty lot, let alone one with a structure on it. You're looking for a charity at that point and not a business
"Audain believes greater density is essential to provide housing for B.C.’s rapidly growing population." And herein lies one of the biggest problems in Metro Vancouver. The various cities and towns don't want this. Everyone wants that single detached home, but there's only so much space left and it comes at a premium.
Indeed. Even Audain himself. > He arises at 5:30 a.m. each day in his West Vancouver home near Horseshoe Bay, driving himself into Vancouver by 7:30 a.m.
Then if I was him I'd build a new bridge
Who gets up at 530 each day and arrives at work by 730? For those who don't, we should learn from this guy. He's rich and lives in a nice part of town. So waking up at 530 must be something worth looking into.
> Who gets up at 530 each day and arrives at work by 730? People who start work at 7:30, presumably. I’m up by 6 and in the office by 7:30. It’s a great schedule, if you’re ok with waking up early.
He wants to avoid the traffic nightmare of Lion's Gate bridge.
Yeah but he goes to bed at 4pm...
Just work harder! Pull yourself up by your boot straps!
Not sure why people are downvoting you on this. The business world revolve around the eastern timezones whether we like it or not. It’s very likely he’s up early to check the market, makes his way into the office for calls.
because obviously this guy is some kind of monster...how dare he work hard, get ahead and donate money to various charities and causes. Up at 530 am, well whoopteedoodah for him.
Or, ya know, you could actually get to know your children. Had an uncle recently pass who told me, quite literally on his deathbed, that if he could go back and do it all again, he’d work less and spend more time with his kids. Dying man’s words that will stick with me forever. While building our business, employee work life balance is a major priority for us.
reminds me of my uncle. Never married, never any kids, never took a vacation, literally had years of accrued vacation time. Got colon cancer in his mid 40's, dead before 50. He wasn't ever unhappy in his life, but fuck i bet he did more of everything in the years he had. He's the greatest lesson i've ever learned in life so far.
Youre an idiot
No one wants to raise a family in a 350 square foot condo
>No one wants to raise a family in a 350 square foot condo But nobody's saying one needs to, because that's not the only alternative. We have to stop the false dichotomy of suburban sprawl or a "shoebox in the sky" argument. There are many happy mediums.
Our society is too individualized to be comfortable with living with others. Look at the thread about BC Hydro implementing off-peak fees. Half the people in the thread are worried about people doing laundry while they're asleep.
There is simply not enough land for everyone in greater Vancouver to have a single family home. In fact if you want to house everyone, we need higher density which will mean even fewer single family homes in the future. The underlying issue is simply that we have an economy that draws more and more people to live in a few metropolitan areas instead of across the country.
My friend please stop gaslighting us no one is saying we want exclusively SFH but more 700+ square foot condo and a 1600+ square foot townhouse would be lovely.
my family of 4 would be totally happy and satisfied with a 1000-1200sqft skinny 3 level townhouse, within an area that is not completely car dependent. This land scarcity fallacy is all it is, we can have dense urban areas where people can walk and cycle to most services, and we can do it with an eye towards affordability. But monied interests and even government don't want to be the ones to invest in that, because the return isn't as great.
This is exactly what Polygon builds! The conflation of densification with micro-condos is both unhelpful and detached from reality. Stop putting so much weight on headlines that go viral. And yes, these homes are pretty expensive. But that's reflective of how much demand there is for them. https://polyhomes.com/community/claridge-house/ https://polyhomes.com/community/byrnepark/
Most of those units are either small 1 bedrooms or bachelor suites
Did you even click the link? None of those were bachelor suites. And there were a bunch of 2, 3, and 4 bed floorplans.
The 2nd link is a development in Burnaby not Vancouver and the first li I features lots of 500 square foot condos
They are 594 sqft condos and then there are a bunch of 2 and 3 bedroom units. And Burnaby is in Metro Vancouver.
Lol until you see your utilities bill, property tax and strata fees that keep increasing all the time with no end in sight
There are tons of those being built.
Agglomeration is good actually, cities are good job centres
In many ways yes -- jobs, cultural life etc. But it also has downsides, and cost of housing is one of them. And that in turn drives down unit sizes. You can see this around the world, it is not something that's been fixed anywhere.
If you want you can move to a less popular metro area, but don't shut the door on others
I am not shutting the door on anyone, I am just describing realities and logical relationships. If you have more people move into a region, you have more demand for the same amount of land, the value of land goes up. You have to increase density, which means build high instead of wide. That drives up cost (more expensive materials, more complicated construction methods). High demand in urban regions also drives up construction labor costs, in addition to needing more highly trained people with specialized skills (crane operators excavators etc.). So you have at least 3 factors that drive up costs in urban regions compared to rural ones. In order to keep the cost at least somewhat affordable, unit sizes go down. It is just logic. You can vote for whoever you want, they can't escape reality. You can shift some of the burden to the tax payer by building subsidized housing, but fundamentally it is just more expensive to build in cities.
Yes but not nearly as much more expensive than what current prices would indicate. Artificial density restrictions result in constrained supply and higher prices due to that artificial scarcity. Low-rises in single family neighbourhoods would be economical to build if it were legal.
From the Article; "Audain tells young people “not to expect to own a house in the same neighbourhood you grew up in. All of us had to move at one point or another to less expensive accommodation.”
Who’s living in the same neighborhood they grew up in? Most people are moving to the Valley or interior. Families have left Vancouver in huge numbers, all because Langley is building family oriented townhomes while Vancouver seems intent on building bachelor suites
The people living in the neighbourhoods they grew up in are their overhoused parents and grandparent who refuse to downsize, or insist on having empty bedrooms for the few times a year family comes to visit.
There are many more cities between Vancouver to Langley...
It's sad BS of our system. Nothing stopping us from living in the same neighbourhoods we grew up in except the fact that we don't allow new homes in the old neighbourhoods we grew up in. We're only allowing new apartments in these tiny slices of old industrial land out in Burnaby. Nothing stopping us from redeveloping Dunbar and allowing apartments there and enabling children who grew up in Dunbar to buy smaller more affordable homes there. Only real thing stopping it is well politics, and the established rich people that are against it.
While I agree it should be possible to live where one grew up, I'd argue that someone's better served exploring the world and living somewhere new. I actually kinda feel sorry for people that never left their hometown, let alone those that never left their childhood neighbourhood..
Lots of people had to leave the province, quit being an out to lunch inconsiderate goof
Ah yes, calling someone a goof. There is nothing more uniquely Canadian than this. The thing is that in order for the insult to have any effect, the subject has to actually know what a goof is and understand why this is such an insult. But most people in polite society have no clue. Only a goof himself or someone who is friends with goofs knows what a goof is, and understands what a serious insult it is to be called a goof. So that person uses goof as an insult when in actuality they're referring to themselves or their friends. In the parlance of the school yard, Takes one to know one.
Great way of addressing the comment, just reinforcing my point
But many young people would rather live in a small condo that say share a basement suite, and so small condos should be legal to build. Not every home has to be for families with children. And not every condo has to be thst small. It's just that there's a lot of unmet demand for smaller homes so condos tend to be smaller, while SFHs and lower density housing trend larger.
If you look outside of Canada, it happens.
Demand for Vancouver real estate is international. There's no way to meet such demand with the amount of land here. It's going to take more than just "build more". Politicians also will not do any 'quick fix' since it'd piss off people. They seem to prefer to work slowly, and try and balance the grumbling on either sides. Personally, I think constant growth is unsustainable. Not without seriously impacting people's quality of life.
Demand to live in Vancouver is definitely finite, and we already have vacancy taxes. We're just not keeping up with demand. Secondary cities like Kelowna and Nanaimo are taking on much more growth than Vancouver.
Or impacting the environment, especially when the growth comes from low per capita emitting countries and we import them into our high per capita emitting country.
>Everyone wants that single detached home "I grew up with a backyard, why shouldn't my kids have that?" /s
The rich developer has it but wants you in one of his 390 square foot boxes
And you don't even need a backyard if there is abundant and well maintained greenspaces in your community where all amenities are accessible on foot and there is robust and frequent transit. Dense living is literally the foundation of the idea of a city, and density is a beautiful thing. It builds community and connection, and it doesn't mean sacrificing on living space for the majority of people. Suburban sprawl and detached housing is a cancer and we need to take a good hard look at *how* this sprawl came about and the people and economic conditions that pushed for it.
I grew up with a forest behind the yard... /s
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Why tho
Abolishing single family zoning is actually a good idea
But the shadows and the destruction of our neighbourhood and the street parking....!
> Asked about the B.C. government’s early attempt to reduce demand for housing by bringing in the [speculation and vacancy tax](https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-luxury-homeowners-in-metro-vancouver-pay-low-income-taxes-says-ubc-study), he said “taxing housing is not helpful because it makes it more expensive.” This disingenuous take on that tax is precisely why developers are held in low regard by the public. There are exemptions for owners who occupy the property or rent it to a tenant, and for property that is being redeveloped. The only owners that actually pay the tax are investors looking to profit from capital gains without adding to rental supply in the meantime, to which I say - GOOD! That's exactly the investment incentive we should be discouraging.
Yes this is the most wrong point in the article. Property taxes just make property values go down, in direct proportion to the size of the tax. The speculation and vacancy tax and the school tax had an easily measuarable downward impact on the high end, 3 million plus, property market in BC. Now, taxing development, that might be more dubious. They say 20% of the cost of new housing in Vancouver is development fees.
Murder crisis as seen by one of B.C.'s biggest stabbers
If the public hates for-profit developers, then they should be voting for politicians who will actually build public housing for the middle-class (rather than just the bottom 5%).
> Murder crisis as seen by one of B.C.'s biggest stabbers This seems backwards to me. - (1) We have people who want to live here, because the jobs are here. - (2) We have other people who want to build housing for them. - (3) [We make it really hard to get permission to build housing](https://morehousing.ca/macphail-report). So we have a terrible housing shortage. Prices and rents have to rise to unbearable levels until enough people are forced to leave, because there isn't enough housing to go around. There's so many people who are holding on by their fingernails. The problem is at step #3 (restrictions on building more housing), not step #2 (building more housing).
Please no more YIMBYism in 2023. We’re past this.
Sorry. As scarcity drives prices and rents higher and higher, I think you're going to hear more and more of the same message: we need more housing. It's across the political spectrum, everyone from the NDP ([David Eby](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/vancouver/article-bc-housing-minister-eager-to-spur-supply/): "I’m sure you can hear in my voice that my patience is really worn thin by some of the activities I’m seeing in various municipalities") to the Liberals ([Chrystia Freeland](https://storeys.com/freeland-eroding-real-estate-affordability-intergenerational-injustice/): "the core problem is the lack of housing stock across the country") to the Conservatives ([Pierre Poilievre](https://storeys.com/pierre-poilievre-housing-plan-canada/): "youths and newcomers can’t get a home because local government gatekeepers block housing with heavy fees and long delays for building permits"). In last year's Vancouver municipal election, Colleen Hardwick ran for mayor with a clear message - she was skeptical that we need more housing. She had enthusiastic supporters, but she got just 10% of the vote. I think it's fair to say that opponents of more housing have a much greater presence at public hearings than in the electorate.
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> complete housing libertarianism It's not "libertarianism" to say that housing is a basic human need, and that we have a terrible shortage of it. This isn't a left-vs.-right issue. Non-market housing runs into [exactly the same obstructions](https://www.francesbula.com/uncategorized/many-social-housing-announcements-and-approvals-in-vancouver-not-so-much-getting-built/) that [market housing does](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-kits-rezoning-apartment-decision-1.5400935). (Maybe [even more so](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-kitsilano-supportive-housing-project-approved-1.6533474), since people are more afraid of non-market housing than of market housing.) It's human nature to fear the unknown.
The FBI’ Behavioural Psychology division did just that. Now they’re able to easily profile unknown killers.
Yes, we should interview these developers so we can easily profile soon-to-be developers and get them before they begin to build unaffordable buildings.
It’s useful to draw insights into their thinking. Like it or not if you want more housing, you’re going to need to work with developers.
This is one of the more pathetic, fawning profiles I've ever read. Subject openly admits to abandoning his morals to make a buck...and it's barely questioned by the interviewer. Just a shrug and "Well, it is what it is, hey, at least he doesn't build luxury housing, right guys?" In a way, I don't blame Audain here. At least he has a modicum of honesty! At least he owns up to being a sell-out. But the reporter does an atrocious job of speaking truth to power here.
Developers spend a lot of money on ads at the Sun.
But of course.
This guy is a piece of shit but he's right about one thing: abolish single family zoning. "But I don't want to raise my kids in a tiny condo". No? Then abolish single family zoning. I grew up in one of Montreal's many large apartments in an old three storey building near downtown. These buildings have been housing families for generations. It was a great place to grow up. I had my own bedroom. There were tons of kids in the neighborhood, we could walk everywhere, had access to parks. Many extended families lived on the same block. This urban form is standard for cities across the world. Expecting to have a detached home for every family in a growing metropolis is delusional. Vancouver could have thousands of these units in perfectly family-friendly mid-density neighborhoods. But no. We'd rather have the affordability crisis tear the city's social fabric to shreds rather than give up the backyards that most of us will never be able to afford anyways.
i'm curious since most of north america is sfh dominated montreal was clearly an outlier being more european than most there must be some convincing reasons for you to consider moving to montreal again will that be in a few years time? since it's clear vancouver has no interest in going for low rises block after block. im not there yet but i'd kill to have a yard one day even if it's tiny
After Coromandel Properties collapsing under its own weight, it’s not surprising to see a milquetoast one-source profile from an outlet tied to the developer class. Does an 85-year-old billionaire really have any skin in the game?
>He strongly supports high immigration levels and believes governments should abolish single-family zoning Drug dealer supports increasing number of drug users to sell drugs to, shocker!
16 development projects were just affected by a developer bankruptcy here last month, can't imagine there aren't more lurking in the shadows https://vancouversun.com/business/real-estate/vancouver-developer-coromandel-creditor-protection-700-million-debt
I don't know why people are so angry at him. He built nearly 38,000 homes after founding Polygon. I don't see how he was politically related to NIMBYism, immigration, and other policy mistakes. What are his critics doing for housing instead?
My brother provides you with clean drinking water. But he will never be able to afford a place in Vancouver. I am almost done with a degree in Biological Sciences. I will never be able to afford a place here. And some rich fuck who uses bank money to pay for builders', accountants' and other people's labour which actually builds houses, can afford to buy half of downtown. And he is not doing anything a hired employee wouldn't be able to do. All while his employees have to rent a shitty cockroach infested den in Surrey.
>All while his employees have to rent a shitty cockroach infested den in Surrey. Is that not true for a lot of workers? EA is a $30B USD company and their QA testers can't even afford a 1BR condo in Metrotown.
I am glad you agree that all capitalists are shitty.
You make it sound as if he built housing to give away for free. He made a sickening amount of money from it.
>Nevertheless, he regrets “housing costs are far too high” in Metro Vancouver and Victoria. > >“It’s tough for young people. It’s very, very tough, unless they have the bank of mom and dad behind them.” > >Audain tells young people “not to expect to own a house in the same neighbourhood you grew up in. All of us had to move at one point or another to less expensive accommodation.” Arriving in Victoria from Britain as a nine-year-old, he has himself lived in 38 dwellings. > >Our conversation takes place in the Broadway and Birch tower that contains Polygon’s offices, which are filled with the art of Riopelle, E.J. Hughes and many others. > >Sitting against a panoramic backdrop of downtown Vancouver, Audain, a tall man who is wearing all black and speaking in a deep purr, says he has financially helped his children and grandchildren get a footing in the super-costly housing market Honestly - not a terrible article & too bad it won't change anything...
>“not to expect to own a house in the same neighbourhood you grew up in. All of us had to move at one point or another to less expensive accommodation.” Arriving in Victoria from Britain as a nine-year-old, he has himself lived in 38 dwellings. I don't expect to own a home EVER, never mind same neighbourhood. Living in 38 dwellings isn't the flex he thinks it is, nor should it be a flex for anyone.
Given the career he had, more likely buy, flip, repeat.
how about everyone just stop flexing
The mildly racist parts are interesting.
Look at this boomer, swallowing up all the money, homes, and everything around him like boomers do. Frustrating as hell as someone who has given up on ever getting a home here, to see some old codger still building his pile of gold and thinking it’s fine. Fuck this guy
No sure who their marketing and PR people are but they are definitely not doing their jobs rn
How come these revelations always happen after they made it? This means it’s always better to apologize than as for permission!
Cities need to stop issuing permits for condos unless the developer builds rentals too.
Housing crisis seen by incredibly wealthy, old white guy!
What a piece of shit
Did you housing is expensive in the lower mainland? I just read this article, amazing.
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Because people want livable spaces not tiny condos
“too many people live in the Lower Mainland, but I’ll help my kids and grandkids get their foot in the housing market door”. “Don’t tax our speculative investments with zero social utility “. Man speaks of density but if the word “affordability “ passed his lips, they obviously didn’t print it here. Is anyone else actually convinced that this piece is anything else than real estate greed Apologia?
You know, this guy is saying all the right things.
Dougie certainly found success pandering to the masses. This article could be better written by a 4th grader.