I hope you're not insinuating that our affordability crisis is a race issue by adapting the slogan of a narrow-minded bigot and applying it to Vancouver.
It's not a race issue, more of a "swiss" nationalistic mentality that seems to be developing. :P
But getting serious; I was highlighting the general and implied risk of IFOs' black and white comment.
The MAGA slogan is basically a euphemism call based on the separation of 'us' and 'them'. Where getting rid of or dealing with 'them' means that 'us' will be better off in some way. It's a black and white slogan frame to a perceived threat. In that context it's generic enough to mean whatever you want it to mean; From the hopeful desires to bigoted actions. It stirs motivation and anger to fuel desires of changing something back to a better time that we've seemingly have now "lost".
It's a slippery slope these things. And that's what I commented on. While we're frustrated at the cost of GVRD ownership the flavor-train we're all angry on is the 'foreigner, or the investor, the realtor, or the million dollar housewife/student' on the perception that they are making it hard for us normals from achieving our expectation of home ownership in a place they call home. But add in Chinese/Asian in front of those previous terms or just mention Realtors to your friends and we might as well be making the Vancouver housing crisis's slogan "Make Vancouver Great Again".
For nearly everyone, even rich foreigners, its required to have a Canadian mortgage when buying in Canada. Simplifying a lot of things; if the interest rate is cranked up the expensive housing problem is broadly solved, the problem with that is that everyone is effected. Instead, because Provinces can't set mortgage rates and even our Feds are at the mercy of the US treasury, we do what we can in the most populist way that allows us to feel as if something is being done without losing the staggering sums of equity our years of inaction has allowed. We get angry at shady realtors and rich immigrants that buy, sell and flip the houses in the most desirable parts of the country. Slap a tax here, replace the realtor board with the public, chase the loopholes every election cycle just enough to win the next election, and ignore the real long term issue - access to cheap money at the margins that far outstrip incomes.
For better and worse years of QE monetary policy (eg: super low, 0% interest borrowing) means that there is WAY more money in the world that is, at the margins, too easy to access. And if you believe the doomsayers about how a 1% interest rate increase will put 1mil CDNs under water then we all better hope there are rich immigrants/students/investors to take up the slack when those who are screwed all go to sell. Imagine happens when mortgages go up above a paltry 1% increase?
My point on commenting to IFO is that this "Make Vancouver Great Again" /black and white/ sentiment we ALL seem to be on wont go away until us normals dont need $+1 million to buy what our parents raised us to believe we should have, in the city we want to be in. Since changing those generational expectations or really addressing the root cause, we creep into blaming the Chinese shadow-flipping real-estate student until the inevitable mortgage rate creeps up and solves it for us with great pain. At best, our local and provincial abilities will mean that prices can be contained to go up at reasonable rates, but the reality is that the damage is done. The bar to get into ownership is too high for domestic incomes and ppl will remain pissed and blame 'them'. Eventually the crisis will come, those at the margins will be screwed and we'll all be in a bit pickle because owning even a +500k place for the median two person family income of 76k/yr means your probably not well diversified and everything you have is going into your home.. ahem.. I mean condo.
