Root cause of housing unaffordability

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Maybe Poland just isn't as corrupt as Canada? It can't be JUST the Feng Shui they come here for.. - doesn't hurt, though. If you have Millions/Billions and you want to escape China with it, why not go to this safe beautiful place on the West Coast of Canada?

I've worked on houses worth $40-70M for these big $ people. Luxury cars and super cars are an extremely common sight - even for their young adult children to drive around in. So much so that the University campus where I go to the beach, UBC (University of British Columbia) is sometimes called the "University of Beautiful Cars," because students cars there are Lamborghini's and Maserati's etc, not civics and skateboards. I mean, there are Also civics and skateboards and bicycles and e-bikes etc but there are a LOT of luxury and super cars.

Lots and lots of money moved here. There was a special government inquiry into it.. independent investigator found rampant money laundering through casinos and drugs etc that pumped Billions/year into local real estate.. made several suggestions on how the government can slow/stop money laundering, but once the previous government had allowed/encouraged so much of it there's not much anyone can apparently do about it now, so it seems they've done nothing and somehow mysteriously with no source of income students and homemakers own $15M houses. All of this is a Part of why locals can't afford housing.

It's beyond super cars now. I've seen news articles about sightings of super yachts in the harbours. Lots and lots of corrupt money comes here to visit or stay, sometimes with it's people as guests.

No, our corruption is just inwards-oriented.
I think the main factors preventing this here are:
1. High, progressive taxes;
2. Not enough capital to make real money just on speculation;
3. Not enough rich people to disappear in the crowd - so you'd be likely targetted by inspections;
4. The system of local corruption oriented at robbing rich foreigners and spewing them out, likely stealing the money someone would try to launder - so they avoid us.

Yeah, we have the opposite.. we have high taxes, But, they seem to be voluntary for some people. Canada's rules are that Global income must be reported and then they tax people on that, not sure if people pay the same tax on foreign earned money as domestic employment income, buuuut, what I am sure of is that very few people who earn a lot of money around the world tell Canada Revenue about much of any of it. The "excuse," is that Chinese are "culturally private about their money," sooo they're not evading taxes, they're just being very private.. Anyways.

Apparently there's enough value in Vancouver real estate to make real money. Or maybe there wasn't but they made it so - prices have gone up 4-5x in 17 years.

Enough rich people here, but also laws that don't really penalize wealthy people/tax evaders etc much if ever. And IF people get busted for something it's a slap on the wrist fine vs. a serious penalty like loss of freedom. Combine that with a naturally beautiful & desirable surroundings it's a perfect storm for a place where people with serious $ want to relocate to and live the highest of high lives. So many locals are just becoming the service class to the Multi-Millionaire and Billionaire tourist class. Entire industries are adapting to be their servants.. taking care of their cars, their properties etc like we're living on the fringe of a giant resort property, not a fully functioning city.

What area for what purpose ?

Plenty better places to have lunch in Vancouver than that overpriced hide-a-bed. Hell, I'd rather eat lunch hangin' outside in the DTES than someone's overpriced West End hide-a-bed. Or at the beach like I'm gonna do later. Or almost anywhere else whenever it isn't pouring rain. Then I guess I'll eat lunch at work or in my car.

This is all true of course, but I'm sure you know that whenever someone brings up "the immigration problem" and similar canards they are not complaining about rich investors but about the much larger numbers of poor and non-white immigrants that, taken as a whole, are a favorite target for blame for just about any societal problem.

The rich immigrants, which are much smaller in number, are having an impact on the high housing prices, but the much larger number of poor immigrants are not.

No. Disagree. Fake news.

People here don't complain about someone's level of melanin or nationality or religious background etc etc ethnicity or culture. We complain about the MONEYED class distorting our entire real estate market and economy. No one gives a flying f**k if rich people are Chinese, Persian, Indian, Russian, or African etc. Money is money is money is power & corruption and so on.

It just HAPPENS to be that much of the money is Chinese. But there's also Persian money here, as well as organized crime from every major organized crime group in the world.. the Italians run certain industries here, etc. People complain about the Money, even Chinese-Canadians complained about the Moneyed class of Chinese immigrants destroying their ability to afford housing, too. Some of the rich immigrants will play the racism card, but it's largely BS because people don't have complaints about race - they have complaints about Class Warfare. (Although there were some low vibrational dipshits who were racist towards all Asian people blaming them for covid etc. That's real.)

You don't have to be a racist to think mass immigration is undesirable. A lot of persons of colour think mass immigration is a bad idea in several countries.

Ok.

Almost doesn't matter what anyone thinks about it or doesn't. Forecast is that we'll see 1.1-1.3 Billion climate refugees seeking inhabitable parts of the Earth to call home as things heat up over the next few decades - the largest mass migration of humans ever.. and not for job opportunities or political stability; straight up for food/water and not having their brains boil to death during the daytime Sun.

It's going to happen regardless of who's friendly or unfriendly to immigration. People Need to be on the move.. and so, they're going to come.

I think I did not explain myself clearly, because I think we essentially agree. I agree that rich immigrants (of any race) are distorting the housing market and are a factor in making housing prices go up. What I'm pointing out is that anti-immigrant sentiment is usually directed at poor immigrants (most of whom are non-white, but we can set that factor aside), who are not the ones to blame for expensive housing.

Not that you have expressed that sentiment, but I'm concerned when another poster, and many people in general, are ready to point to immigrants (and they mean the large number of poor immigrants) as the cause of just about anything bad.

Last edited by bee33 on 30 Sep 2023, 6:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes! All the people on the right who don't want to do anything about climate change are in for a big shock.