View from the Summit

(Or)

Everything You Need to Know About the Future But Were Afraid to Ask

On December 6, 2011, TED announced that the 2012 TED Prize would go to the City 2.0—the city that works. Grand luck for Vancouver to have the opportunity, so fresh in the new year, to host an up-close look at exactly what such a city could be.

Of course a conference on The City offered heaps of mileage for Vancouver, always in the running for one of the world’s most livable cities. And the stars came out—Calgary’s rock-star mayor Naheed Nenshi, Surrey’s Dianne Watts, our own Gregor Robertson, and luminaries such as Carole Taylor, Douglas Coupland, and Mike Harcourt joined university presidents Stephen Toope (UBC) and Andrew Petter (SFU) for what promised to be an extraordinary urban exploration.

Yet great chunks of the 2012 Cities Summit seemed intent upon looking through the wrong end of the telescope—and occasionally just staring at the telescope itself. Much of the conference was pre-occupied with issues such as open data and affordable access to hyper-speed broadband. Any lineup of people cheering for these initiatives will have Your Faithful Scribbler near the front, but the absence of context and gravity flattened their impact.

And it must be said, the presence of corporate sponsors as major presenters diluted the sense of serious purpose.

Where’s Naheed?

Why, for instance, did representatives of IBM and Shaw warrant half hour key-note addresses, while luminaries like UBC president Stephen Toope and Naheed Nenshi were relegated to minor panel roles?

For those who have seen, or possibly even worshipped Naheed Nenshi in action (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNAMH2_CLfo), watching him answer three or four questions on open data (you can get snowplow reports from your house!) was just a little, um, underwhelming.

We could have used a whole Nenshi hour. Seriously, would someone please give this guy his own show? If Marg Delahunty showed up in Nenshi’s driveway, she’d be dipping her cookies in a hot mug of tea at the kitchen table instead of standing outside freezing those big girls in her Viking bra at Rob Ford’s place. Admit it, Canada, you could not buy better TV. Talking to you, Sun Media.

Undoubtedly future iterations of this summit, should Vancouver be so fortunate as to host them, will temper sponsor expectations, and put the spotlight on those whose reputations precede them.

Speaking of which, Doug Coupland set off a Twitstorm with a spirited paean to the local in local culture—especially his admonition that “a city without strong, consistent arts funding is basically a parking lot,” which sparked a loud and delightful outburst of spontaneous applause. It’s probably unnecessary to point out here that our “arts problem” is a provincial rather than a civic one.

Toope Sounds the Alarm about Vancouver’s Loss of Talent

Other panels proceeded choppily, without any broader context to highlight their impact. Of particular note was the panel on Cities as Urban Laboratories, moderated with exceptional skill by Wal van Lierop and featuring UBC president Stephen Toope and Lise Thorsen, Mayor of Copenhagen. All too briefly, attention was turned to the critical role played by human talent—the lifeblood of the knowledge economy. Toope sounded the alarm that Vancouver is hemorrhaging the precise talent needed to drive a thriving urban economy. “Massive exodus” were the exact chilling words. The panel agreed that we can attract, but not keep the people we need to build a sustainable urban economy.

But why is the most livable city in the world experiencing this—and how do we stop the bleeding? These are the questions Vancouver must find an answer to, and soon.

But first, let’s listen to a presentation from Car2Go!

So it went…

It’s the (Emerging) Economy, Stupid

Finally, with just under 2 hours remaining in scheduled programming, Dr. Jaana Remes, Fellow of the McKinsey Global Institute clambered up into the crow’s nest, pointed the telescope in the right direction, and brought the future and the summit sharply into focus. For this observer, Dr. Remes WAS the Cities Summit.

‘Urbanism,’ as the West now understands it, cannot be divorced from the rapidly shifting centre of gravity of the global landscape and economy.

Cities in emerging markets are becoming the world’s powerful economic driver, concurrently re-balancing the distorting effects of the Industrial Revolution and opening a dangerous new chapter in history.

As Remes outlined, from the dawn of recorded history until the Industrial Revolution (and, it should be added, the colonial period), China and India dominated the world’s trade and productivity—contributing most of global GDP up to and beyond 1500 AD. Today that output is dwarfed—down to 10% of global GDP—by the mature developed economies of the West. But all that is changing.

China and India’s share of global GDP will more than triple by 2050, while the West’s share will shrink by almost one half.

Local debate about the design implications and cost projections of Vancouverism’s tower/podium model pales in the face of the following:

• Urbanization and development in the emerging markets, particularly China, is occurring at 100 times the scale and 10 times the speed of post-Industrial Revolution growth in the West—a force unparalleled in human history;
• The world’s 600 largest cities, with 20% of the world’s population, currently contribute over $30 trillion—more than half of global GDP. By 2025 this output will reach $64 trillion;
• By 2025 136 new cities will enter the top 600 list—all of them from the emerging markets, and overwhelmingly from China. One in three of the developed market cities will falter and drop from the list;
• These 600 cities will contribute 60% of the world’s global growth, 2/3 of them are in emerging markets;
• By 2025 only one city from the developed markets, New York, will be in the top ten global cities for GDP growth. The other nine will be in China.

But according to Remes, the real story lies deeper—the impact of middle-weight cities in emerging markets—those with populations between 150,000 and 10 million. These cities are poised to deliver a startling 40% of total global GDP growth by 2025—more than the entire developed world and emerging market mega-cities combined.

In the process these cities will lift hundreds of millions out of poverty and into the middle class, while simultaneously massively increasing human consumption and our environmental impact.

Municipal Decisions Will Lock In Consumption Patterns for Decades

And it is here in these few hundred cities, Remes tells us, that municipal decisions affecting transportation and development will lock in our energy consumption patterns for decades.

As Mike Harcourt posited, to Remes’s vigorous agreement during the question period, if China and India follow the North American urban development model, the global and humanitarian consequences are catastrophic.

If the Cities Summit set out a clear vision of an alternative vision, defining those key components of the City 2.0 that will channel humanity into a constructive and sustainable urban future, Your Faithful Scribbler missed it.

We are, it seems, still peering “through a glass, darkly” at a future we can only guess at—one that will need firm commitment and swift action—but in directions we do not yet know.

Read more at:

McKinsey Global Institute:
Urban World: Mapping the economic power of cities http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/MGI/Research/Urbanization/Urban_world

Globalization and Unemployment: Michael Spence (Nobel winning economist), originally published in Foreign Affairs: http://www.viet-studies.info/kinhte/MichaelSpence_Globalization_Unemployment.pdf

Sobering Warning from the Governor of the Bank of Canada on Vancouver housing costs

To deliver his key address on Housing in Canada in June 2011, Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney chose his venue carefully, appearing in Vancouver at the Board of Trade. (1) He noted that Vancouver’s average selling price was now 11 times the average family’s household income—a level is so extreme that its primary comparable is Hong Kong—the least affordable city in the world.

Indeed, he said, Vancouver seems to be

“taking on characteristics of financial asset markets, where expectations can dominate underlying forces of supply and demand. The risk is that expectations become extrapolative, prompting the classic market emotions of greed and fear—greed among speculators and investors—and fear among households that getting a foot on the property ladder is a now-or-never proposition.”

Carney identified two drivers of Vancouver’s explosive housing market growth: low interest rates and the movement of Asian capital into “selected international housing markets as those investors seek out diversification and hard assets.”

Relative to household income, our property values are now among the most severely unaffordable in the world. Relative to income, Vancouver’s property values are 56% higher than New York’s, and 31% higher than London’s.

In its November, 2011 report on the Canadian housing market, RBC notes that 94% of average household income is required to cover the ownership costs of a 2 storey detached home in Vancouver. (2)

This development is new and unprecedented.

Corrosive Effect of Housing Costs

As Carney laid out in his address, housing not only meets a fundamental human need, it can affect a region’s financial stability. Excesses in the housing sector can generate key vulnerabilities in the financial system and the economy as a whole.

Rather than stimulating productivity and competitiveness through business investment, cheap credit has been used to bid up the price of houses.

Vancouver residential real estate values began to detach from their historical relative values to the rest of the Canadian market sometime around 2006, when volatility began to get very choppy.

Chart 16 from Mark Carney’s June Address on Housing

Many see Vancouver in a housing bubble, and it may well be. Others however, such as celebrated architect Gregory Henriquez, think our prices still have far to go to reach that point. Amazingly, Henriquez says that Vancouver is still under-priced. He is not looking at local economic conditions, however, but at the international forces in play. Viewed globally, Henriquez says that our market has become the “safety-deposit box for the world.” (3)

What distinguishes Vancouver from major capitals such as London, New York and Hong Kong is that our economy doesn’t generate global incomes. In fact, with median incomes ranking us in the bottom third of Canadian cities (below Sudbury, Regina and Windsor) Metro Vancouver is best described as a relatively low-income urban region.

Our unemployment rate among the under-25 year olds is 17%.

As Jock Finlayson of the BC Business Council describes it, Vancouver has “a limited base of high-paying jobs, a large local population of disadvantaged individuals, and high rates of immigration—coupled with the difficulties many new Canadians face in finding employment.” (4)

All of these circumstances militate against Vancouver being able to compete in the global marketplace for the best and the brightest talent needed to drive the knowledge and creative economies that will sustain cities in the future.

Our universities are losing key talent and find themselves unable to attract replacements or build on what we have. Our business sector cannot recruit, our local merchants are caught in a fight for an ever-dwindling supply of disposable incomes, and attitudes are hardening against even modest tax increases necessary to maintain our basic infrastructure.

Is It a Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhoods?

This dynamic is playing out on the ground in Vancouver in bizarre ways.

Local realtor Andrew Hasman sees the reality daily, and believes that for single family homes, the local person “is completely out of this market”. He reports that international buyers pre-dominate, often buying 5 or six homes.(5) The Canadian Real Estate Association reports that since 2009 our percentage of residential real estate transactions exceeding $1 million has doubled to 20%, compared with 5% in Toronto. (6)

Many Vancouverites seem unaware of the strange drama unfolding in many of our neighbourhoods.

The west side of the city is shedding residents almost daily as international buyers purchase more and more housing stock. These homes often sit empty or are re-cycled into the market and re-sold at significant gains within months to other international purchasers.

The west side real estate market is behaving exactly like a secondary market in financial instruments rather than a shelter market. Often the commodity is not actually used or consumed, but only traded. This trait allows valuations to inflate so long as the market is supported by global buyers, completely independently of local economic conditions.

During the recent civic election I was twice approached by people who reported that their homes were the only ones occupied on their block.

Imagine the strangeness of a neighbourhood without neighbours. Increasingly, this is becoming a reality for west-siders.

One person wrote recently reporting that her neighbour, a west side real estate appraiser, says that

 “all of his work was now with (international) buyers….very few spoke English, translators were used in virtually all the transactions.”

The east side of Vancouver is a study in contrasts. Unattractive to international capital, this neighbourhood is filling with our new residents. The following is excerpted from an email from a Canadian Chinese supporter, who asked to remain anonymous:

“I am in my 40′s in East Vancouver, family of 5, middle class, and only recently bought for our family in 2009. I am Chinese, and furious of all the rumors within our community of the billions of $$$ (leaving) China that needs safe harbour.

I hate what this city has become, a neighborhood of illegal suites, 2 or 3 suites per house…  Try going to an open house in East Van, there are rooms with numbers on them some times, and rooms subdivided into more rooms, and garages turned into suites.”

Others on the east side are suffering. Former City Councillor Ellen Woodsworth has herself been evicted, as her home of 32 years has been sold from under her.

On Vancouver’s south side, in Little India on Main Street, vacancies in commercial real estate abound. One shopkeeper said that neighbourhood South Asians are uprooting en masse and moving to Surrey. Young people are leaving, having lost hope of ever affording a home in their own city, and taking their parents with them. This second generation store owner has just opened a thriving new 15,000 sq ft store in Surrey. At the family’s struggling parent store on Main Street, he is lucky to make 2 sales a day. Many businesses around him sit vacant as their market has up and left, taking with it part of Vancouver’s heritage and history.

Business closures abound in the formerly thriving neighbourhood of Little India on Main Street.

In the West End, elderly ladies related their own struggles one weekend afternoon during the civic campaign. They are spending, most of them, 60-70% of their incomes on rent for apartments they have lived in for decades. Many have worked almost 50 years, saving for retirement, and now find themselves worried about reno-victions. This is the practice by real estate investors of evicting tenants of older buildings to facilitate an upgrade so as to obtain higher rents on the property. With their retirement savings vanishing into rent, these renters have no idea what will happen to them once their resources are exhausted.

At UBC a Canadian Chinese pastor described his congregation of mainly Asian graduate students, university professors and employees. Almost all of them rent, he reports, and everyone is at the end of their rope over housing expenses. It is common for people to give up and move away. These are precisely the immigrants Vancouver needs to build our future, but they are being driven out of Vancouver by extreme housing costs.

Young people report that their friends are leaving to take work in other cities, or just moving to more affordable homes in the metro region, feeding a growth boom in cities like Surrey. Even young professional couples, doctors and lawyers, are giving up the dream of raising children in a house if they remain in Vancouver.

At the top end of the market is another family I spoke with during the campaign. They recently moved to the city to be with an aging parent. The husband is a senior executive recruited as one of the top hires in Vancouver in 2011, and the wife is a working professional. Their combined income easily places them in the 1%. Despite selling a luxury home in one of Calgary’s most desirable neighbourhoods, Vancouver’s housing market is completely out of reach even for them. They currently rent in North Vancouver.

Hear No Evil

Yet Mark Carney’s sobering warning last summer seems to have fallen on deaf ears. To hear local developers, urbanists and planners discuss this issue, you would think our market is within the normal range, and people concerned about the speculative spree fueled by interest rates and global capital influx are alarmists and potentially xenophobic.

The theory currently dominating the discourse on our housing market points to natural or systemic causes for our pricing: our limited land base pressured by in-migration. According to this view, the cure for this market is to build more housing—ie. condominiums.

Yet in-migration is occurring at historically normal rates and we didn’t grow mountains and a southern frontier overnight. We don’t know the profile of our in-migration population, but few of them are likely to be able to manage our condominium costs—the highest in Canada. We could be facing a more troubling development; that most of our increased population is either disadvantaged or non-investor immigrants—renters at the low end of the market. These are the people filling up divided rooms and garages in East Vancouver, while homes in Shaughnessy sit empty.

Conclusion

It is time to take off the rose-coloured glasses and face some hard truths. We need a thorough and rigorous analysis of our housing market, the causes of its extreme condition, the risks it poses for our long-term economic sustainability, and a study of the levers and mechanisms available to government to modulate those risks.

After concerns about global speculation on the Vancouver housing market made front page news during the election campaign, Mayor Robertson for the first time allowed that this area needs study.

Let’s start right now.

Notes

1  Bank of Canada, Remarks by Mark Carney, June 15, 2011: http://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/sp150611.pdf – chart16
2  RBC Report, Housing Trends and Affordability, p.4: http://www.rbc.com/newsroom/pdf/HA-1125-2011.pdf
3 Canadian Architect, October 2011 http://www.canadianarchitect.com/news/creative-financing/1000640212/
4  Vancouver Sun, May 21, 2011: http://www.bcbc.com/Documents/PR_20110521_SunArticle_RegionalGrowthStrategy.pdf
5  Vancouver Observer, May 20, 2011 http://www.vancouverobserver.com/city/2011/05/20/leading-realtor-calls-vancouvers-housing-market-unhealthy?page=0,0
6  Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/11/21/canada-house-prices-1-in-5-vancouver-homes-million_n_1103932.html – s486640&title=Vancouver_1_In

Note: See  BC Business Magazine’s story on Sandy’s blog post. Also see an earlier post on this topic by Sandy.

Thank you for coming to this party with heart, gusto and love for Vancouver. You brought wisdom, commitment, and worked incredibly hard around the clock for the success of this campaign. It meant everything to me, but it means more to our City.

The election result is anything but a defeat—in fact it only encouraged me, and here’s why:

First of all, it was incredibly good fun. The energy just built and built. This campaign touched and excited people—we saw this on the ground every day.

Second, a spectacular team came together. We had speed bumps and mulligans, but in the end everything clicked into place. This group is fired up and ready to knock ‘em dead next time. They can’t wait!

Finally, the groundwork is solidly laid for something exciting and successful next time out.

This campaign was able to achieve massive media attention and garner major credibility. We got (among other coverage) two major spreads in consecutive Sunday Province editions, including the front page, the front page of the BC Section of the Globe, the CBC news (television AND radio), the Sun, the Georgia Straight, Simi Sara and Bill Good on CKNW, and one hour on Fairchild radio.

I was endorsed by the Straight, Michael Geller, Frances Bula (not an outright endorsement but near the top of her recommended list), Moira Stilwell, Am Johal, and many others.

The media showed a keen interest and are indicating now that they consider this campaign an opening salvo by someone they expect to hear much more from.

Voter Landscape

Here’s how the landscape on winning a seat on council looks. About 135,000 people cast votes in this election. The final council seat went to a candidate who drew votes from 36% of the voters, or about 48,000 people. More than one in three.

That’s a huge number.

Vision spent an estimated $2 million and held all their seats. The NPA is rumoured to have spent about $2.5 million on this campaign and gained only one new seat. Adriane Carr and the Greens had a miniscule budget and got a seat as well. COPE lost both its seats on Council, seemingly by accident.

Our campaign garnered almost 21,000 votes—almost 15% of those cast. That’s more people than can fit in Rogers Arena. It’s not enough for a seat, but those 21,000 will be the hardest votes we ever have to win.

Name Recognition

This entire campaign was built around name recognition—my biggest challenge.

Frances Bula touched on this best when she said that name recognition is very poorly understood by the average person. For instance, despite all the coverage I received in the media, at meetings almost no one recognized me until I said I was the person who helped start and lead VancouverNotVegas and led the fight against the casino. And most were skeptical until they heard me talk at length about the issues.

It was only in the last week that we started to see signs on the ground that we were getting breakthrough in public awareness, and those signs were very strong. But it was late.

Occupy Vancouver

Occupy Vancouver occupied the election campaign and everyone came down with temporary insanity for a good 10 days. This threw just about everyone off their game and certainly affected our sequencing. But to be honest, we were in a flat out sprint regardless. Anyone interested can read my position statement on Occupy Vancouver here.

Conclusion

We didn’t win.

We won anyway.

Our campaign won media respect, public recognition in significant and influential communities, and created opportunities that didn’t exist before. This was the beginning.

In closing I want to tell two stories from the campaign trail. One of them was a childcare worker in her forties, making less than $11 an hour, caring for children of 3 families in her home on the East Side. Rents are going up but her income is not, and she is being forced out. Despite having a job, she has no security and is hurtling toward disaster.

Another day I was meeting seniors in the west end. A group gathered and were telling me that they spend on average 60-70% of their monthly income on rent. Most had saved for decades for a comfortable retirement, and were now eating into those funds every month just to survive. All of them live with ice in their bones for fear that they will be evicted from apartments they have lived in for decades, and most believe that no landlords will take them because their monthly incomes are so low.

One woman told me that she will be through her savings in three years, and then she doesn’t know where she’ll go or what will happen to her. She worked hard and saved for 47 years, and blinked back tears as she choked on the word ‘homeless’.

We can do better. Not only that, but we must. We have to offer real hope to the low income worker and the retiree, and let them know that they are not alone—that we are in this with them and for them and we will not abandon them.

That’s why I’m in this for the long game, and I hope we’ll be on this road together.

Thank you all for everything. For your support, kindness and encouragement. It meant the world to me.

— Sandy

Thanks to the team & supporters:

Team Leads
Katrina Prescott
Judy Rudin

Ravi Sidhoo
Cynnie Woodward
Isabelle Plessis
Lindsay Brown
Melanie Rupp
Ian Pitfield
Ebie Pitfield
Am Johal
Anne Giardini
Laura Byspalko
Woon Ai Tsang
Edmond Luke
Mo Dhaliwal & Skyrocket
Naji Shahla
Riham Abdelhakam
Liz Watson
John McLean
Jesse Finkelstein
Doug Brockway
Barney Ellis-Perry
Vanessa Richards
Stacey Huget
Sean Cranbury
Ryan Smith
Maureen Palmer
Angelique Crowther
Liz MacLean
Michael MacLean
Laurie Jones Kinley Jones
Dan Boucher
Andrew McLean
Mac Boucher
Nancy Dickson
Maryvon Delanoe
Miriam Blume
Diana Lam
Pat Crowe
Karyn Garossino
Mary Watson
Dana Coburn
Nadine Miller
Milena Kermode
Alix Brown
Mike & Ann Carroll
Patricia Fulford
Dick & Val Bradshaw
Cec & John Fraser
Moira Stilwell
Gyle Graham
Anne Giardini
Asha Fraser
Daryl Martini
Kamal Basra & Tracy Theemes, Sophia Financial Group
Ashton Braun
& many more.

And real gratitude to all my endorsers (click link for full list).

Thank you all.

My statement on this study was that as far as I am aware, no names are more Canadian than any others. Further, this is precisely the kind of “research” that shows how poor our data is on the subject of global investment in our domestic real estate market. These statements were not included in the news story.

I was also tempted to ask whether George Bush was a more Canadian name than Sook-Yin Lee, but figured that might not have gone over so well. My own husband has a name that many would regard as foreign and is routinely asked where he comes from. He comes from VGH and his family has lived here for almost 100 years.

This issue has nothing to do with the origin of what appears to be our global capital influx, or the people who hold it. It has to do with the nature of global capital itself, which could belong to anyone and come from Antarctica or Texas.

I do not put stock in polls showing public support for restrictions on foreign investment, and none whatsoever in the anti-immigration statements on media comment threads. It’s a mystery why credible media outlets permit anonymous comments on race of any kind, and I wish they would end the practice.

The first and primary thing we need is an independent review of the extent of non-resident and speculative investment and a determination of its downstream effect on housing prices and rents. Despite the fact that relative to median incomes our housing prices are now 56% higher than New York’s, we still don’t have even the most basic data on the subject.

Housing costs are now extreme and causing real hardship in our city, without any rational explanation. They are traumatizing seniors, constraining the ability of our corporate sector and universities to attract and retain professional talent, and undermining the ability of young families to thrive in the city.

For the record, I do not call for restrictions on foreign investment, but for study of its extent and a review of the options used by other cities to protect their local housing stock. This might lead us to restrictions, but I would also like to see options like the one suggested by Richmond City Council candidate Chak Au, who proposes finding ways to channel this capital into local business development.

Whatever the ultimate result, we do need to address housing affordability in many creative ways, all made in Vancouver.

The Occupy Vancouver protest and encampment on the grounds of the Vancouver Art Gallery has taken this election by storm, forcing all of us to reflect on our core values. Many share a deep sense of frustration that the movement appears to lack clarity and focus, and that public debates and spaces have been disrupted.

Yet employing police authority to physically confront peaceful protesters is inherently inflammatory, and its longer term outcome uncertain. Before using physical force in this way, those in government should know the answers to three questions:

1. What is the cost?
2. What is achievable?
3. What is the exit strategy once the City engages in open conflict with protesters?

In the absence of clear and unambiguous answer to any of these questions, I would not approve the use of force to remove the tents at Occupy Vancouver.

Few if any of the over 1000 cities involved have displaced Occupy movement protesters without violence. It’s doubtful Vancouver will be the exception. The Stanley Cup riot in June has incurred massive investigative costs, and we have not even begun the trials. A choice that opens the door to a second riot in 6 months is not, in my view, in our city’s interest.

In my personal and professional experience I have seen many tense situations defused with calm and measured response by authorities, and I support this approach now. Rarely does raw force yield the desired results.

Patience, nerve, and quiet strength are the skills needed to resolve even the most tense situations. This is how we talk desperate people back from the brink, get critical witnesses to come forward, or even negotiate the return of hostages. And it’s how we should resolve our concerns with peaceful protesters camping in a public square.

That said, Occupy protesters have taken over public space for their own exclusive use, and have used their numbers to overwhelm public debates that others have come to hear. The Occupy leadership model does not lend itself to dialogue with the broader community, which largely supports their aims but is losing patience with their methods. Those seeking a respectful response from our whole community have an obligation to do better.

These demonstrators are for the most part Vancouverites. Whatever their methods, the Occupy Vancouver members are citizens passionately pursuing a better society for all. This objective deserves attention and respect.

In Vancouver, the Occupy movement gives voice and visual presence to our acute affordability issues. It provides a window to the real and harsh reality that too many of our own citizens, including children, face every day. I saw this most acutely in one very memorable moment during this campaign in East Vancouver. A woman rose at the end of an all-candidates meeting to speak in anger that she was not hearing any answers for her. In her forties, she provided childcare for 3 families, made under $11 an hour, and was living month to month in a part of town where speculation and gentrification are driving up rents. This hardworking woman is pitching headlong into irrecoverable poverty while 3 families depend on her so they can work themselves.

What is to become of her? No one can say. What is to become of Vancouver if hardworking people like her can’t make it?

The demonstrators of Occupy Vancouver are fighting for this woman’s dignity and for the dignity of thousands like her in Vancouver who have no voice. I hope we can all remember to put their interests first, and to see our challenges with Occupy Vancouver in this broader context.

Let’s put our most vulnerable citizens and the working poor front and centre, and we will reach a peaceful resolution that can serve the long-term interests of all. Whatever the outcome, we share a city and a future. Let’s take the best care of both that we can.

As Lao Tse said more than 3000 years ago, “What is in the way, is the way.”

For an independent and collaborative approach to public engagement, please vote Sandy Garossino for City Councillor on November 19, 2011.

In Vancouver, the elephant in the room—that is, the glaring topic that everyone including City Hall has been avoiding discussion of—is skyrocketing house and rental prices. This questionnaire is a reprint from VREAA (Vancouver Real Estate Anecdotes Archive) who asked  Sandy Garossino to talk about the unaffordability of housing and rent in Vancouver. Thanks to VREAA for coordinating this exchange.

Policies On Housing – Sandy Garossino, Independent Candidate for City Council

1. What do you see as the main housing challenges facing Vancouver?

Battling homelessness is a constant challenge. My worry is that a housing crisis has now spread into what is termed in Hong Kong as the Sandwich Class—those with incomes above subsistence levels but below the wealth required to buy medium level property. Excessive buying of residential property for investment, rather than shelter purposes has driven housing prices to stratospheric levels relative to local median incomes. A housing crisis for the middle class stresses the entire system including our ability to house the homeless.

The larger context is the challenge that faces all global investors. Apart from labouring for wages, the way to make money is to build or invest in a business, buy stocks and bonds, or speculate on assets like real estate or gold.

In the current climate of global uncertainty, almost nothing in the world is matching Vancouver real estate for return on investment, security, and long term value. My concern is that our real estate market has morphed into a stock market, and human beings who need affordable homes are being forced out of competition.
Vancouver’s future rests on a healthy knowledge economy as well as small and medium sized businesses that will provide long-term employment. Both these sectors need young people and immigrants with good prospects and disposable incomes. Because housing prices have now detached from the local economy, we cannot offer a promising future to the very people we need to build it.

2. What measures do you propose to address those challenges?

The most important thing is to recognize that we have a problem and we must commit to solving it. We have to gather critical data, including clear information on the extent of non-resident purchasing of investment properties. We can then have an informed discussion about solutions such as incentivizing capital toward rental properties or investment in local businesses, taxing unoccupied properties at the business rate, or considering innovative zoning options. This is a sensitive issue and we need a made in Vancouver solution. Lets bring experts together to generate savvy solves that turns this into an opportunity for Vancouverites.

3. What is your policy on housing densification?

My mind is not made up on density. We must take care to add density of residences for human beings as opposed to density of investment units. A second priority is that density should be absorbed by the City on terms that meet neighbourhood objectives.

Adding density in an attempt to moderate housing prices is unlikely to work. We have to look at the demand side. That said, there are many positive benefits of the right kind of density and I am open to those.

4. Would you support policies that would lead to a drop in real estate values?

This is a time for great care in policy development.

We may well be in a real estate bubble and a sharp drop in values for other reasons is not out of the question, regardless of government policies. However, government’s role should be to modulate severe market swings and not precipitate them. Shocking the market has potential to wreak havoc on households, especially those who may be over-leveraged or recent buyers.

I think we can be more surgical in our responses. Finding solutions that look at targeting specific real estate practices can help solve some of these problems while also encouraging investment in other asset classes.

5. What is your own family’s housing situation?

I have been a homeowner for 24 years. My first house was purchased in 1987 in Point Grey for $125,000, with parents and in-laws supplementing our down payment. The opportunities that created such security for our generation have vanished and it is vital that we stand up now for young people and families.

As a homeowner, I understand the concerns of Vancouverites about possible drops in real estate values and the risks associated with broad, generic approaches to housing policies. We need to find specific, pragmatic solutions tailored to the Vancouver market.

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Media Release, November 1, 2011: Independent Candidate Sandy Garossino Responds to Motion by Suzanne Anton

Sandy Garossino, a former Crown prosecutor and business owner, asks for Suzanne Anton to reconsider her motion calling on staff to remove the Occupy Vancouver tents from the Vancouver Art Gallery.

“In the absence of any cost estimate, it is premature to attempt to remove the Occupy movement from the Vancouver Art Gallery.” says Garossino, an Independent candidate for City Council.

“Any action by the City to forcibly remove Occupy Vancouver carries the risk of violence and will necessarily embroil us in an open-ended and extremely expensive policing and legal process,” says Garossino.

The Stanley Cup riot and its subsequent investigation was one of the costliest policing exercises in recent years, and charges have yet to be laid, she notes.

Occupy protests are going on in 900 cities worldwide, and none have been removed without violence. Physical confrontation is expensive, unpredictable, and rarely successful in a democratic society.

Garossino calls for a measured response.

COMPLETE THIS PHRASE: “KNOW YOUR LIMIT …”

Seems pretty straightforward, right? But you might be surprised to know that many children can also finish the sentence. Thanks to a massive advertising campaign, BC Lottery Corporation’s catchy slogan is seen and heard everywhere. I even found a hackysack ball with the same words kicking around my car—presumably a summer freebie.

It probably doesn’t seem like a problem, given the message’s meaning. Of course people should understand their own spending budgets for lottery tickets or slot machines. But Sandy Garossino suggests that there are other considerations. A businesswoman, former crown prosecutor, and spokesperson for Vancouver Not Vegas, Garossino spent the past year researching the effects of gambling in British Columbia. And she is particularly concerned about widespread marketing efforts and the effects on our kids.

So what is gambling? At its most basic, gambling occurs when you play a game of chance for money—or something else valuable, like a skateboard, bike, or iPod. Wagering on the outcome of a hockey game, with a favourite DS game as the prize, qualifies as gambling.

In a recent survey of Ontario teenagers, more than 40 percent had taken part in gambling—ranging from lottery tickets to Internet and casino gambling. A small percent, totaling 29,000 students, were problem gamblers. And these kids were more likely to have substance-use problems, carry a weapon, experience depres- sion, or be involved in gang activity. A quarter of these teens have attempted suicide. No parent wants this reality for children in grades 7 to 12. Shockingly enough, the research shows that problem gamblers typically start gambling around age 10.

For kids, gambling takes various forms. Card games are the most common, followed by scratch tickets and lottery tickets. Bingo, sports pools, and dice are also popular. Teens privately bet on the outcome of a wide range of games. Some kids move on to more serious gambling activities, which are correlated with other addictive behaviour.

The BC Lottery Corporation website provides information for parents as part of the GameSense program. Their survey found that 43 percent of BC kids have gambled in the past year. The website points to the role of gambling imagery in normalizing these activities for kids—everything from advertising the next Lotto 6/49 prize to poker on primetime television.

With the spread of legal casinos across BC, exposure to gambling is on the rise. And kids who gamble tend to have parents who also gamble. But surely a poker game with friends is not a problem? And buying tickets for the PNE prize home is a summer tradition for many families. So what’s the big deal?

Due to their growing brains and developing abilities, kids are more susceptible to risky behaviour. They may not see any negative consequences. In fact, research suggests that taking risks is considered both fun and necessary. Many kids think that there is an element of skill in gambling, and that practice leads to more chance of winning. Kids don’t see gambling as an issue—so they may not recognize a problem until it has ballooned out of control. Unfortunately, at this point debts may seem insurmountable and kids become desperate.

Garossino suggests that parents should tune into the prevalence of gambling. “Go into any 7/11 and see if you can walk past the cash register without seeing advertising for lotteries,“ Garossino points out. “If you look at a lot of the BC Lottery Corporation marketing, it is directed around sports. So it’s young males who are at risk. The addiction rate amongst young males is very high. So they begin that awareness really early, and the association between professional sports and gambling is just getting tighter and tighter.” The increasing connection between video games, the internet, and gambling is another way to attract underage consumers. Increased exposure to gambling marketing and imagery normalizes it in society. Just a generation ago, very little gambling was allowed in Canada. Now it is everywhere, but most people have not asked any questions about the effects. Garossino recommends that parents should start to flag these things and be aware of the dangers. “We can’t over-react to everything that our kids are exposed to. It’s really an issue of awareness and just caution.” Garossino says. Talk to your kids about what they’re seeing in BC Lottery Corporation ads. Ask who is really winning in this game? Point out that people are paying for the chance that—just maybe–they’ll be winners. Garossino reminds, “This is really a way to get people to give their money away for free, basically.”

Even young children may be exposed to basic games of chance. For instance, popular games on the Webkinz website include the Wishing Well, which looks like a slot machine, and the Wheel of Wow, resembling a simple roulette wheel. Webkinz addresses concerns by explaining that these games do not involve any actual wagers and work more like random prize generators. That said, many children log on to Webkinz daily to spin the wheel, which is limited to one game per day.

The Neopets website has 39 games of luck and chance, including scratchcards, dice, a wheel, Neopet fights, and a tombola. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained— are you willing to risk it all” is the hook, and players bet virtual Neopoints. An additional consideration, you can buy Neocash with real money—blurring the line between virtual and real gambling.

Of course, most people can take part in gambling activities without developing problems. As Garossino points out, “There will always be gamblers. Gambling is fun for a lot of people, and it’s harmless for most people. But we have to be much more conscious of the downside.” Families need to talk about their own values, beliefs, and expectations around gambling. It’s important to dispel the “get rich quick” idea, so kids can think about how money is earned and spent responsibly. Like with so many difficult issues, parents need to maintain a healthy attitude and have open discussions with their kids.