The Hongcouver | Canada housing non-profit courts Ottawa with affordability plan – as founder Westbank woos millionaires in China with gifts and soaring prices

The Creative Housing Society warns of unaffordability, income inequality and economic segregation in Vancouver. But the developer behind the group uses rising prices in the city as a promotional tool in China to target wealthy people in search of ‘globally optimised asset allocation’

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An artist's impression of Vancouver House, currently under construction in Vancouver at the downtown end of the city's Granville Bridge. Graphic: Westbank

Published: 5:45am, 22 Jun 2018Updated: 2:52am, 23 Jun 2018

Is it possible to fight housing affordability in Vancouver, while at the same time touting the city’s price gains as a selling point to millionaires in China seeking “globally optimised asset allocation”?

That’s the question inadvertently posed by local developer Westbank’s Chinese website, as it promotes mainland sales events for its projects. Among other things, the Vancouver High-End Real Estate Seminars specifically target applicants to Canada’s millionaire immigrant investor programme with offers of free gifts.

UPDATE: Westbank has altered its website on the eve of its seminars in China. See note at end of story

Potential attendees of the seminars in Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen this Saturday are alerted to things that routinely top the lists of things that make Vancouver awesome: good schools, clean air, and spectacular scenery.

But the Chinese-language site also unabashedly shakes the moneymakers that have given Vancouver good claim to the title of Strangest Real Estate Market in the Western World.

The site was the subject of an online furore recently when it was highlighted by local housing activist Rohana Rezel.

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