Pete Fry

What is community engagement? Let’s start with what it is not. It’s not random selections of citizens taking direction from the top; it’s not sticky notes and roundtables to record and ignore. Community engagement is an opportunity to involve citizens meaningfully in the decisions that affect their lives.

See more at:
http://www.straight.com/news/761236/pete-fry-better-city-together

The provincial government recently announced $35 million in funding — for what are termed as routine capital grant upgrades: things like window and boiler upgrades, roof replacement and energy efficiencies.

Vancouverites, were of course disappointed that of the 109 projects, not one was in our local school district.

What piqued my interest though, is that of the relatively modest wishlist submitted as part of the VSB’s Routine Capital Plan Submission — most of the requests are for my local elementary school, Lord Strathcona.

Rent control is another obvious solution, but in a free enterprise housing market—where renovictions are a thing, and the provincial Residential Tenancy Act is in desperate need of overhaul—there is potential for pushback from industry. Arguably rent control could be seen as a disincentive for new rental builds, although cities like New York have managed to make renter protection a condition of rezonings.

But there is a tool that hasn’t been subject to much discussion in our province, one that might bring some relief to beleaguered British Columbians: a renter’s tax credit.

Vancouver City Council approved an amended staff report to remove the viaducts in principal, with the inclusion of a serious commitment to immediate downgrading of Prior Street and a new east-west arterial, as well as meaningfully honouring of Hogan’s Alley and the black community displaced from there. — Still there is more work to be done, in particular regarding development and affordable housing, delivery of Creekside Park and the management of traffic in NE False Creek.

Earlier, I wrote the following op-ed:

The idea of an octogenarian rattling around an underutilized, empty-bedroomed $3 million Dunbar bungalow while young families are forced out of the city makes for a convenient if not somewhat mean spirited scapegoat — but let’s take another look

Like many Vancouverites, I owe a sincere debt of gratitude to VCC.

I wrote my first lines of HTML code in a VCC classroom, allowing me to upgrade from print-focused graphics to remain successfully self-employed and engaged in newly emerging world of web design. During my lean years, the meat and baked goods shops at the downtown campus—serving deep discounted butchery and bakery student works—kept me well fed when I couldn’t afford much else. My wife successfully transitioned into a productive career thanks to the affordable and specialized skills upgrading she received at VCC almost twenty years ago.

This morning, as predicted, the Bank of Canada cut our interest rate by .05 per cent. Ostensibly, the move is to head off a recession — spurred mostly by slumping oil markets that have dampened Alberta’s economic outlook — lower interest rates mean Canadians will spend more.

Lower interest rates also mean cheaper mortgage rates, which in turn will push up housing prices, particularly as investors look for safe places to park their money, like Vancouver.

Firstly, it never should have happened — an absolute abdication of leadership—doomed to failure from the start. We elect leaders to make the tough decisions, not pass the buck; and that is precisely what Christy Clark’s government did by putting our transit infrastructure investments to plebiscite. 

We’ve all heard anecdotes about global capital and foreign ownership. I recently wrote about the market externalities affecting my own community of Strathcona. A well-financed west-side investor set about purchasing a number of homes in the neighbourhood: in cash, with no subjects or conditions, and always over the asking price.

Strathcona has a limited land base, maybe 350 detached homes in all, and this particular investor may have purchased a dozen of them—about 5 per cent.

Coincidentally, five per cent is about the same number that the BC Real Estate Association claim as the relatively insignificant amount of foreign ownership in Vancouver. A little higher at 5.8 per cent is the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s figure for percentage of foreign ownership in the downtown peninsula.

Housing affordabilty in Vancouver isn’t really news, of course. Since the federal government stopped funding new social housing in 1993, we’ve seen increasing pressure on low income Vancouverites. Today, after fifteen years of low interest rates and steadily increasing housing prices in Vancouver, what was once a social justice issue for this city’s most vulnerable and their allies, is increasingly taking its toll on middle-income owners — and the politicians and pundits are taking notice.