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“Community gardens” actually incentivize and subsidize wealthy developers to keep their lands fallow until it suits them. When developers restrict the supply of their land, they drive up prices. That’s Economics 101. Remember, these are the same people who told us that Vancouver’s affordability crisis was largely due to a short supply of land available for development.

In 2010, The Vancouver Sun reported that in 2009 the city gave more than $212,000 in tax abatements to Prima Properties’ community garden at Burrard and Davie Streets. In that same year, a garden on a parking lot next to the Astoria Hotel reportedly earned the Sahota family $132,000 in tax breaks. That was a decade ago. That is only two properties in 2009. In April 2017, a smaller gas station property across the street from the Burrard and Davie Street garden was valued at more than $36 million.

Ten years ago, then-Vancouver Courier columnist Alan Garr reported that the cost of each tomato plant grown in community gardens was about $500. That was before Vancouver property values sky-rocketed and the number of “community gardens” proliferated.

Many developers contract with gardening businesses — not the poor. A year-round produce voucher program would be more ethical and sustainable.

The tax revenue lost from “community gardens” on private lands is not sustainable and fails the most fundamental test of any scheme: fairness.

Samuel Hyman is a Vancouver lawyer.

Letters to the editor should be sent to sunletters@vancouversun.com. The editorial pages editor is Gordon Clark, who can be reached at gclark@postmedia.com.

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