“When I tell people we rent our house, their eyes change. It is as if there is shame in being a tenant. People need to borrow heavily to lead a normal lifestyle. This is not what we want.”

“Deirdre Marconato regularly hears her neighbours and acquaintances say that Vancouver is “the best place on earth.”
“It’s a very pretentious phrase, but it is accepted as an immutable truth,” she said.
Ms. Marconato also thought that Vancouver was a great place when she arrived in 2008. She and her husband, who has an international career as a financial analyst, had decided to sell their flat in Hong Kong to move to the West Coast, where Ms. Marconato was born. They wanted to settle with their daughter in a friendly neighbourhood, close to good schools, ocean and mountains.
But when we spoke to her in her upscale West Vancouver neighbourhood in late June, Ms. Marconato was busy packing her last moving boxes. Her adventure was coming to an end after three years in Vancouver, with the family now returning to Hong Kong.
Upon arrival in Vancouver, the Marconato family soon saw that something was amiss. They were well-off, and used to the cost of living in Hong Kong, but they were shocked when they saw the local Vancouver house prices. They initially decided to rent.
However, being a tenant in Vancouver is to be part of a subclass, Ms. Marconato soon realized. “When I tell people we rent our house, their eyes change. It is as if there is shame in being a tenant,” she said.
Community life in West Vancouver is not what she imagined. “At least 60% of homes in my neighbourhood have been sold over the last two years. Many are empty. It’s a very cold atmosphere. We invite people over, but it is never reciprocate. I lived in London, Paris, Singapore and Toronto, and I have never experienced a situation like this.”
Furthermore, West Vancouver is not immune to crime: several gang shootings took place in the district in the last two years. A student of the high school attended by her daughter was stabbed outside the school.
A few months ago, a headhunter contacted Ms. Marconato’s husband to offer him a job in Hong Kong. The decision to leave was made quickly.
Ms. Marconato is disappointed that her “Canadian dream” has ended.
“I do not understand how people live in Vancouver,” she said. In Hong Kong, life is expensive, but wages are high. Here, jobs are not highly paid. People need to borrow heavily to lead a normal lifestyle. This is not what we want.”
– from ‘Fièvre immobilière: quitter Vancouver’, by Nicolas Bérubé, La Presse, 15 Oct 2011
[translation by Google; paraphrasing by your editor].