Wayne Moriarty
The Province
The way things are going, it wouldn’t surprise me if “Bob, who owns a double lot on 14th and Crown” makes the 2017 Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest people. Just don’t tell Bob the good news. One unlikely consequence of skyrocketing real estate in this city has been the unease in which some homeowners discuss their astonishing good fortune.
A friend of mine bought a condo in Chinatown a few years back. It wasn’t anything more than an architectural drawing at the time. Today, she still hasn’t moved in, yet the value of her place has doubled.
She seems modestly pleased by all this. I would be on my knees weeping with joy.
As someone who moved to Vancouver a dozen years ago and has rented for every minute of those 4,380 days, I am tired of homeowners saying things like “it’s just mine on paper.” Wrong. It’s yours on lots and lots of paper — each ply with its own serial number and a picture of the queen.
Many homeowners in this city have been so gobsmacked by their rapid ascent into the league of the nouveau riche, they find themselves uttering ridiculous laments like, “The bank owns it,” or “The only way it’s worth anything is if we move.”
Their property value has doubled in the past couple of years, yet somehow they make the situation sound almost burdensome — like renting would be a preferred option.
There may be a problem to having greater equity than the Sultan of Brunei, but I’m sorry, I just don’t see it.
Barring some unforeseen development like a lottery win or a coup, I am part of a population in this city that will never own the place where I sleep. The lottery win isn’t likely; the coup I’m thinking about. Seriously, what if all us renters got together and did something about being left, financially, so far behind the homeowners of our province?
I needed to speak with a Communist about this.
Kimball Cariou is the organizer of the Vancouver East Club of the Communist Party of Canada. I asked him if there was a Vancouver West Club. He told me “not at the moment.” I wasn’t surprised.
Our conversation was genuine and delightful.
“Philosophically, the CPC doesn’t have any objection to home ownership. People should have the right to own their own homes, but there is a bigger social issue here and that is we believe society has the obligation to make certain that everyone has a decent place to live and enough to eat.”
To meet that end, Cariou and other like-minded activists spent a good part of this month occupying a Burnaby apartment building scheduled for demolition.
I asked Cariou what advice he would give renters in a market as volatile as this one.
“There are two things renters can do,” he said. “One of them is political. Renters have to start voting for candidates and politicians who will seriously put the interests of tenants and renters first … The other thing renters have to do is get together with neighbours and friends and say ‘no’ when facing eviction. That takes a lot of courage.”
Cariou has me so fired up, I may apply for that vacancy with the Vancouver West Club of the Communist Party of Canada. All I need is an office. I wonder if Bob on 14th and Crown has a basement suite I can rent?
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