Yes, I am proud of every single athlete that came to Vancouver and tried their best. Yes, I am proud of the way the area embraced the world and behaved with politeness, even in the midst of the chaos of huge crowds and lineups. BUT, there is a huge hangover we are facing.
People who live here are well aware of the already high costs living here. The real estate board is crowing about all the condo’s and other housing they sold to visitors. Landlords here tossed tenants out under questionable reasoning to get into the shortage of rooms and accommodation. Prices were raised to utterly ridiculous prices for things like coffee ($6 a cup??? ) and the medal ceremonies even charged for those to come to see the athletes get the medals, with perhaps the exception of the ones in Whistler.
Vancouver was already at the top of the pile when it comes to buying even a 700 Sq. foot “mini” condo, and the number of homeless people all over this area had doubled almost every year since the bid was awarded.
Yes, there is a hangover…. a bad one. The contractor for the Athlete Village went into bankruptcy, so the City of Vancouver was basically forced to take on that construction mid-stream, and, of course, the costs skyrocketed. After all, contractors and their sub-contractors know a good pot of gold when they see one.
The organizers got the games on the proviso that “affordable housing” be part of the contract. Well….. it seems that contract is seen as “non-binding” now.
Here is part of that very contract:
“We have an obligation to provide short-term athlete housing as well as a mandate to ensure there are meaningful social, environmental and economic legacies from the 2010 Winter Games,” said John Furlong, chief executive officer, VANOC. “We are pleased to be part of this solution to provide permanent Olympic Legacy Affordable Housing as soon as possible after the close of the 2010 Winter Games.”
Under this MOU, VANOC will design and construct the 320 temporary modular housing units for use in Whistler, which are in addition to the 100-unit lodge and 20-unit townhomes that will be permanent housing units at the Whistler Athletes Centre in the Olympic and Paralympic Village. The Province will then pay for the design, relocation, site work, and modifications of these temporary modular units into legacy housing in the six communities.
The modular units will be used by VANOC during the Games then relocated to the six communities across B.C. and reconfigured to include a kitchen and bathroom in each unit.
Modular Units are trailers! They are NOT houses, they are not even apartments, and the cities in the lower mainland and BC are “providing” land (value, not specified land) to place these trailers in their cities.
NOTE: this is a Memmoradum of Agreement!
The athlete’s village was supposed to become a part of this scheme, but………..the units cost too much now.
From the local paper:
There’s more bad news for the beleaguered athletes village under construction for the 2010 Winter Games.
A report prepared by city staff and sent to the mayor and council says the costs of the affordable, or social, housing component of the massive athletes village is over budget by as much as $77 million.
“In order to achieve the full 100 per cent core-need subsidy, a further $77 million would be the additional required investment by the city,” says the report that was to be debated by council this week during its regular meeting.
In the initial agreement with the Vancouver Olympic Committee, the city received $30 million from VANOC and planned to have 252 units in the village after the Olympics devoted to social housing.
Council in 2006 projected spending $65 million for the affordable housing. A year later, council approved an interim increase to $95 million.
“Current estimates . . . project that anywhere from $56 million to $77 million in additional city equity would be required to sustain affordable housing in the Olympic Village project.”
In a series of 6-5 votes, the NPA strong-armed Vancouver City Council into approving a misleading report drafted in the office of Housing Minister Rich Coleman and approved by the organizers of the 2010 games (VANOC). The report, awkwardly titled the Joint Partner Response to the Inner-City Inclusive Commitments (ICI) Housing Table Report, asserts that the housing recommendations developed for VANOC are “not binding.”
Yeah…. this is something to be really proud of…. NOT!
UN’s harsh view of Vancouver
Any doubt that the world is watching was erased by a top-of-page-one headline in Thursday’s The Vancouver Sun, which declared “Vancouver a scarred paradise.” The Sun report described Vancouver as “a city with staggering wealth and soul-crushing poverty.” The article cited a report by the United Nations Population Fund stating that the Downtown Eastside “is home to a hepatitis C (HCV) rate of just below 70 per cent and an HIV prevalence rate of an estimated 30 per cent — the same as Botswana’s.”
Now to February and this is what one reported said:
Social housing at Olympic Village to cost $595,000 per unit
By Miro Cernetig, Vancouver Sun columnist February 22, 2009
Where’s bankruptcy court? I want to get in line.
Not because I’m actually going broke. I’m just thinking it might be a way to move closer to Vancouver’s downtown waterfront.
Yes, I’m musing about getting on the Olympic Athletes’ Village social housing list. It’s quite the deal.
A few days ago, I had a tour of the $1-billion Olympic village. Sadly, I’ll never afford the $6-million penthouses. But the City of Vancouver’s brain trust has managed to build us some of the slickest social housing on the planet.
As you may have heard, Vancouver’s taxpayers now face a $110-million bill for 252 units of “affordable housing.” That’s $77 million over budget — or about $436,000 a unit.
But it’s more, really. Add in the approximately $40 million in free city land and you can pretty much count on Olympic social housing costing $595,000 apiece, or about $540 a square foot. That’s at least double normal cost.
Here’s some more sobering math: Assuming the cost of Olympic social housing is $150 million ($110 million in construction plus $40 million in land), each unit would have to rent out at $3,200 a month to pay out that 30-year mortgage. Clearly that’s unsustainable when social housing’s monthly rents are measured in the hundreds of dollars.”
Back to the hangover.
Here are some reality facts. Mimimum wages here are $8.50 per hour, so given even a full-time job, trying to rent out these units to lower income people is foolish. The other choice is to raise already high property taxes to cover the difference. There is one problem with that! Actually 77 MILLION problems with that.
The City of Vancouver is already shutting down schools, demanding the school system find some way to cut further into an already bare cupboard budget, and the costs of the facilities built by the City are yet to be paid for!
The City of Surrey, which would supposedly get some of these “affordable” trailers is also facing a financial crunch because the high-flying developers who were going to “change the neighbourhoods” where those who could have some kind of affordable housing have gone bankrupt. Ooops! Tax dollars that the City of Surrey were banking on (foolishly) are not going to be there! Where is this land that these trailers are supposed to be place on? Something tells me that land is now up for sale to the highest bidder.
Here is a kicker that even I did not expect!
The City of Surrey is now targeting landlords who provide low income tenants with inspections and by-law officers. There are huge number of people here who built “ego houses”, over-sized places they could not afford without having ILLEGAL suites in them. These same people have rented “rooms” to those desperate to have even a paltry bit of space for up to $700 per month. NO kitchen privileges, no parking, no smoke detectors, and a huge list of things those tenants are NOT allowed. These “apartments” are often built without any permits, and against the building permit for the houses themselves. Virtually all these houses are designated as SINGLE FAMILY ONLY! Yet, there are up to 4 units rented.
The City of Burnaby has much the same problem, with landlords renting out several houses without any health inspections, and often the upper portions are rented separately from the basements. According to Burnaby by-law, anyone owning more than one property for rent (other than their own personal home) MUST have a license, but I have yet to see this enforced, while those landlords are making millions from renting out places infested with rats, often without proper heat control.
Every single city in the lower mainland has a homelessness problem, and from the statistics I have seen, the homeless are often now families who just cannot afford to live here. Yes, both parents have jobs, but those jobs are not professional, so the pay is low. Shelters for families are turning more people away every month than they shelter!
Since the city bid for the Olympics in 2002, homelessness has increased 373 percent.
That is in Vancouver alone! Surrey’s figures are higher, Langley has seen a huge increase and that city is a small one!
A 2007 report by the Pivot Legal Society,(Vancouver) a local nonprofit advocacy group, said the 2010 games increased homelessness while decreasing the number of affordable housing units through gentrification and evictions.
The report found housing speculation caused increases in property values as developers purchased properties in Downtown Eastside. Developers then renovated the properties and increased rents, thereby displacing residents; in other cases, landlords simply evicted tenants in preparation for a sale.
Oh yeah, the realtors are a very happy bunch! They, along with the developers are making millions, while tossing families and the working poor out!
The same thing happened in Surrey, Burnaby, Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam, Langley (where affordable housing was discouraged all along), New Westminster, North Vancouver, and as far as Abbotsford. Landlords put hundreds, if not thousands, out in the cold so they could profit from the Olympics and the sale of property to those who really want to live here and are rich.
The lumber industry is basically shot, so jobs in that industry will likely NEVER return. Farming is becoming far too expensive, given that even a few acres cost several million now, even with the facade of the government’s Land Use prohibitions.
Unfortunately the only solution to this may come in the form of a disaster, a mega-thrust disaster. There is no will or even acknowledgement that affordability is a truly desired thing any more.
UNLESS you are very very wealthy, don’t even bother to consider a move here. Businesses here are already dealing with employees who refuse to work for them because the rents or real estate costs are far too high.
As for those who are being crunched like so much construction gravel under the gleaming towers, you really don’t have much choice but to move to somewhere else, raise your kids without the pretty picture of sea and mountain, and realize that unless a mega-thrust earthquake levels the playing fields here, you don’t have much a of a chance to get a decent living for you or your family.