People seem to forget that in 2015 when @Ayan604 published his study, the BC Liberals had deliberately not collected data on where homebuyers were coming from.
This data simply didn’t exist, yet there were already rumblings about what was causing housing unaffordability.
2/
Meanwhile, the Urban Development Institute was welcoming mainland Chinese buyers with open arms. There was a profit to be made and @christyclarkbc’s campaign financing chair Condo King Bob Rennie would not be denied.
Any discussion about global capital flowing into #vanre from countries such as China were quickly labelled “racist” by white folks profiting from this financialization of our local housing market or the white politicians whose campaigns were bankrolled by them.
4/
If we want to talk about #StopAsianHate and #vanre then we should talk about why we are revisiting the work of @Ayan604, who has done more to bring data to the forefront of this conversation than anyone else, rather than the actions of the folks in my prior tweet. 5/
When @razamirza, @RWong1975, Gary Liu and myself started speaking out as @HALT_YVR, we knew it was important for POC and Chinese-Cdn voices to be part of the conversation.
We had to make it clear that this wasn’t about the colour of our skin but the colour of money.
6/
We knew that without appropriate policy to address the inequality of locals earning local incomes being unable to afford homes in the communities they lived in, xenophobia and the hate against people like us would only get worse.
7/
We knew that as Chinese-Canadian and immigrant voices that we could spark the right conversations and help people understand how to talk about the impacts of global capital inflows from an emerging superpower into a small city like Vancouver.
8/
I’m incredibly proud of the work we have done. I’m proud of @Ayan604 for so deftly navigating a very tricky position in order to deliver insights to explain with data what we were seeing on the ground.
9/
I’m thankful for the work @Dave_Eby did as housing critic and I’m hopeful that in his capacity as Attorney General and the minister responsible for housing he will continue to institute policies that help British Columbians have affordable homes
11/
In short, I regret nothing. It pains me to think how much worse it could have been if the lies and deception of our prior governments, the corruption and the self-interested spin of lobby groups like the UDI and local realtor groups continued to control govt policy
12/
How much worse would it be for Chinese-Canadians today if the global flows of capital continued to flow in and our housing prices started to challenge Hong Kong’s home price to income ratio?
I shudder to think. Give Andy the keys to the city already.
I got out for my first bike ride around Stanley Park this year. Coming down Burrard bridge and then onto Beach Ave I was surprised to find that it had been converted to a single lane of one way traffic to make room for a dedicated lane for bikes going both ways. 1/
Now, I’m unabashedly one of those middle-aged dudes in Lycra riding around on fancy carbon fibre bikes and the road at Stanley Park has always been a great training ride (Strava has me at 100+ laps of the park). I’ve shared the road with cars there and it mostly works ok. 2/
The few times I’ve run into trouble, a tourist was busy trying to pull into a parking lot from the other lane and failed to shoulder check, and in other cases, I’ve just gotten caught behind a long line of cars trying to somehow find a shortcut onto the Lions Gate bridge 3/
I’ve been asked for my perspective on this Joanna Chiu op-ed on a few occasions now, so I’ll share my own thread here with some thoughts. Firstly, the racism in #vanre discussions is real and I encounter it regularly on social media and to some extent day-to-day.
The problem is hugely complex and to distill it down to “zoning” is akin to trying to watch a 3D IMAX movie on an an old black and white cathode ray tube TV. Zoning alone isn’t the problem (and in fact, is also part of the solution) 2/
In Vancouver, what sets it apart, and what has been documented time and again by journalists like @ianjamesyoung70@KathyTGlobe@Goldiein604
and others is that a massive, difficult to measure flow of global wealth finds itself into the #vanre market 3/
Wiebe’s motion sounds good, if you didn’t know any better. But let’s break it down. “Develop a collaborative decampment plan” - push tent city folks out against their will, but make it sound like we listened, despite not having better housing options for them in the motion