“This offer card from Globe & Mail for BC subscribers, was in our mailbox last week. Love that the generic Vancouver condo photo has the word ‘unaffordable’ on it. Obviously not so much advertising revenue from that sector for G&M lately 😉 Fun times!”
– JM, by e-mail to vreaa, 5 Feb 2013 [Thanks JM. -vreaa]
Vancouver Real Estate Anecdote Archive 
won’t see “Unlimited” translated into Cantonese. For that, look at Section H of today’s Vancouver Sun “Realtors prepare for Lunar New Year upswing in sales” special real estate feature celebrating the Lunar New Year…. Stylized drawing of a snake… eerily similar to the Canuck logo.
Buying real estate is not a Lunar New Year tradition, but that won’t stop the dogs from barking.
The Globe should have also shown a picture of West Vancouverites sipping lattés with “Unbearable” written on top.
I was thinking that it could also be a Toronto condo but then I noticed that there was no snow swirling around it and the window glass was still in the frame.
You’re quite right about the lack of the Toronto characteristics.
The green slime trails and bubbling stucco below the corners of the windows are the keys to identifying it as Vancouver.
Drove over the Burrard Bridge towards downtown today.
Big highrise covered in plastic. Leaky Condom?
Moldy City, Moldy City here I come.
I live on the top floor of a high rise in the South Granville area – I can see all the way to Bowen Island from one side of my apartment and to Mount Baker out the other side – the sheer number of buildings under tarps, white blue or multi-coloured is quite astounding. From the townhouses up the hillside to the high rise right along the waterfront in West Vancouver, to all the various buildings in the west-end that are tarped it seems obvious that the question seems to be when, not if, the building will need remediation.
It seems a real slap in the face to have bought a condo for a half million dollars or more only to have it spring leaks and bring on thousands of dollars in remediation costs.
What is the deal with all the tarps I keep hearing about anyway?
To outsiders it sounds ridiculous. It is not like Vancouver is the only city with rain or that the engineering does not exist to keep buildings dry. I lived in that town 40 years and don’t ever recall seeing or hearing anything like it.
But we always had leaky basements. That was the normal kind of problem in the older West side homes where half century old concrete eventually cracked and was invaded by tree roots.
They are doing something wrong there, that is for sure.
The idea that condos are unaffordable has seeped into the national consciousness. The Globe and Mail is trying to relate to everyday Canadians and they must think everyday Canadians view condos/real estate as unaffordable. This is a sea change in national consciousness. I used to get a lot of flack when I complained about high housing costs. Now the globe and mail thinks everybody sees it that way!
They’re affordable. It’s called “renting”
Apparently, Condos aren’t the only thing that’s ‘unaffordable’ in Vancouver…
DearReaders… YourSaturdayMorningZen, Quote ‘O TheDay, & ‘Funnies’…
“That’s what we think is best for public safety.” – PM Stephen Harper
[G&M] – Harper Confirms Vancouver Coast Guard Station To Close
…”Prime Minister Stephen Harper confirmed today that his government would not be reversing its decision to shut down the Kitsilano Coast Guard Station… The government is replacing the year-round, 24-hour Kitsilano station with a three-person inshore rescue team based in Stanley Park during the summer months…”….
http://tinyurl.com/bapodz6
[NoteToEd: RoboRedaktor has a hostage in “PopularCulture”]
To Farmer 9 February 2013 at 8:25 am:
Shoddy and overpriced construction/engineering is a big problem in Canada, but I have a different take on what’s the cause. Not to sound like a Republican, but I believe corrupt unions have played a large part. I’ve experienced this first hand from a “young” person trying to enter the trades and then realizing the traditional route to getting in the trades is now economically infeasible at my age (31 years old).
Speaking of leaks, for example, it takes a 2-year trade diploma, a 1 year co-op, and a 4 year apprenticeship in my province just to become a fully licensed plumber. That’s the equivalent of a PhD equivalent level education in terms of time spent. No offense to the plumber, but you’re just a plumber, it shouldn’t take over 7 years to get licensed.
I don’t know about you, but starting a plumbing career at age 40, considering these are physical jobs where the retirement age is much sooner, doesn’t seem economically feasible. I laugh at people who tell guys now entering their late 20’s to early 30’s to “just get a trade” if you’re having difficulty breaking out of the low wage service sector mould.
What the unions have done is significantly convince the government to raise the barriers of entry into the trades for our young. This skews the supply and demand curve and allows older workers (who are mostly baby boomers) to bid up their wages. Ironically, this doesn’t result in better quality work, as there’s less competition coming from the young pressurizing the older workers to back up their wages. The older workers know their jobs are secure and this reflects in their work that’s poorly completed at a snail’s pace.
Oddly enough, due to the incidents of shoddy construction that result from this corruption, this is used by the unions as further leverage that the government needs to increase the levels of qualification in order to enter the trades. The unions created the problem, and their solution is to further reinforce the problem by upgrading credentials on the young, because perpetuating the problem is profitable for the unions and their workers. If the government just took a look at the average age of a construction worker and engineer today – they could easily see that the problem isn’t newbies coming on the scene messing things up.
I’ve come to the conclusion that if a young person wants to enter the trades, he is better off taking the small business route right away. He could start small by restoring old houses in rural Canada for example. I doubt it will take him 7 years just to figure it out, and he won’t be in so much debt due to education requirements, nor will he have to spend years upon years listening to condescending baby boomers that will only serve to hurt his confidence.
Loyal cadre, wu Mao has been deposited ij your account for you anti union trope! Good work!
Don’t despair, Nekkid… If DDW’s false meta-narrative helps him to deal with locus of control issues… so be it. However, for those who value historical scholarship, it is worth noting that BC’s construction unions were effectively broken in the run-up to Expo86… e.g. if you thought that “Special Economic/Development Zones” were a unique feaure of pre-Capitalist China… you’d be wrong.
Allow me to quote from the Hansard of the Legislature of British Columbia, 14 May 1984 (yes, I know Ed – hard to believe, in the ‘GoodOlDayz’ there actually were legislative sessions)….
….”MR. MACDONALD: Oh, I know what I’m talking about. Let me just repeat it, Mr. Speaker. When a vote for decertification is approved, which this minister has made easier for the employer to carry with all that business that they may vote at the time of the voting and not at the time of the application for decertification, then the agreement falls and no other union can apply for ten months. Those employees are completely at risk in terms of what their employer can do to them in that period. The old law used to be that when there was a decertification, it might be for the purpose of substituting one union for another, in terms of the wishes of the employees. That’s gone under this minister. This minister of anti-labour smiles and jokes and says: “Ah, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
[Mr. Pelton in the chair.]
Mr. Speaker, if the Victoria IWA went to apply for certification for a new operation today…. Its monthly membership dues are $25 and a few cents, I think, because there is a formula there, which may seem a lot, but it isn’t an awful lot in terms of the service that that union gives to its members, and its initiation fees are $25. That particular local union, because of the recession, had to put its secretary on part-time, so they’re really running behind on that kind of a dues structure. The Minister of Labour is saying here that in terms of any new organization, you go out there and collect not the $1 that they used to collect before to certify that the person wanted a vote to see whether the trade union should be certified, but they have to go out and collect $50 each from those new employees. Does the Minister of Labour deny that? It’s right in his legislation, and for no reason except to make it more difficult for employees to belong to trade unions.
Mr. Speaker, we have here anti-union legislation such as we have not seen before in the province of British Columbia. It’s the market system where the little people are to stay little, as far as this government is concerned. The kind of heart and consideration for them that I think existed in the time of W.A.C. Bennett is nowhere to be found in this prison government.
[4:15]
We’re turning our backs on organization for the poorest, weakest and least protected in our society, while at the same time the privileged are allowed to have their organizations and exploit. I thought that a Minister of Labour should stick up for trade unionism. This minister isn’t doing it. I don’t think he deserves the name of Minister of Labour; it’s minister of anti-labour, minister of anti trade unionism, minister of anti the right of people to band together and protect themselves from arbitrary dismissal, to improve their conditions, to improve safety on the job.
This bill is not about Expo 86; it’s about the Minister of Labour saying that we’ve got to cut back the trade unions we have in this province in the interests of foreign capital coming in and treating us like a Hong Kong or a Taiwan and attracting capital. I don’t know what this mish-mash of economic theory is that’s rattling around in the government benches. It’s so ridiculous and so inhuman, so anti-people, so anti the little people, the people that work and produce the wealth of this province. I don’t pretend to understand that kind of reasoning, because I think it’s just avariciousness dressed up as economic theory.
This bill is turning its back on trade unionism. The Minister of Labour is leading the fight, and I think: what kind of a new order are we running into in this province? It’s not one I like to see. The clear direction is going out to the Labour Relations Boards of the future that you’ve got the Pizza Hut model, where you treated like dogs people who decided that they would take a chance under the protection of the laws of the province of British Columbia and join a trade union. That’s the message going out there in terms of anyone else who would dare to try to organize.”…
http://www.leg.bc.ca/hansard/33rd2nd/33p_02s_840514p.htm#04723
In the interests of further ‘light’ reading for those so inclined… here is a link to a PDF document maintained on the servers of the [now defunct?] Impact On Community Coalition… it’s an appendix entitled, “A Chronology of Events – The Expo86 Eviction Crisis” which nicely chronicles the extravagantly sleazy ‘shenanigans’ of… dare we say it?
The UsualSuspects.
Click to access Olds_Expo86EvictionChronologyAppendix2.pdf