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Hongcouver
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Ian Young
Ian Young

The Hongcouver | Vancouver’s mayor never dreamed foreign-funded housing crisis would get so bad. If only he’d been warned…

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Mayor of Vancouver Gregor Robertson on a visit to Hong Kong. In 2013, he said it was “ridiculous” to attribute Vancouver’s soaring home prices to mainland Chinese immigration - but now he cites the role of global capital in the residential market. Photo: SCMP Picture
Ian Youngin Vancouver
Vancouver’s Mayor Gregor Robertson never thought the city’s housing affordability crisis, driven by foreign money, would get so bad.

If only someone had warned him. It’s downright tragic.

Robertson is right that things have got very, very ugly since he moved in to City Hall in 2008, though it’s not all (or even mostly), his fault. Prices have exploded. More than 90 per cent of Vancouver’s detached homes cost beyond C$1 million, even though the city’s household incomes are among the lowest in Canada. The benchmark price for all housing kinds across the wider Metro Vancouver region is C$919,300, by far the highest in the country. The average detached price in the City of Vancouver itself? An astonishing C$2.6 million.
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In an interview with the Guardian published this week, Robertson says he “wouldn’t have dreamed the crisis would get this intense” over the past six years, blaming “global capital”, as well as the federal and provincial governments not doing enough. He almost comes off as an heroic figure in the battle for housing affordability, joining a “global cadre of mayors squaring off against superheated housing markets to ensure that middle- and low-income earners have a place to call home”.

Vancouver’s mayor has likened the city’s housing situation to other cities. But this chart shows how Vancouver's price-income housing unaffordability has soared over the past decade, at a pace leaving London, Sydney , New York and San Francisco in the dust. Source: SCMP Graphic / Demographia
Vancouver’s mayor has likened the city’s housing situation to other cities. But this chart shows how Vancouver's price-income housing unaffordability has soared over the past decade, at a pace leaving London, Sydney , New York and San Francisco in the dust. Source: SCMP Graphic / Demographia
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Robertson describes city-level governments “dealing with chaos on our streets and people struggling to find a place to live”.

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