

Oh sweet! Now we have an academic on the case! End of argument! Take that, YIMBY’s! Academic takes on Vancouver’s housing-supply ‘myth’. “If we are looking back at the last 15 to 20 years, we have been providing more than enough units of housing – and it’s still unaffordable.” Weird…it’s almost like developers want to keep building housing hollowed-out investment vehicles…

But be careful! Don’t ask for rent control or those sensitive developers might just stomp their feet and stop building all together. It also means those investment vehicles – gasp – might get sold, thereby further decreasing the rent supply! Why rent control is a false cure for housing shortages. How terrible is the market that it can’t adjust for a restriction of 2.5% rent increases? Or that we need to coax them with programs like STIR? Or that when we say “Oh, you are running your home like a business? Ok, we’re gonna need you to get a licence…” they fucking show up with placards at City Hall?

And what about these Marpole scumbags who protested modular housing for the homeless?

How terrible is a market that bulldozes art galleries then calls the condo they build in their place “Main Street Arts“? The voracious gaping maw of capitalism will never be sated!

Related: The Fight for Ugly, Or Why Art Can’t Sell Condos.

Vancouver is Awesome: Not everybody loved the “I Love Yaletown” opinion piece we published. You think? This was a tone-deaf article followed up by a tone-deaf non-apology. People weren’t upset because she “loves her neighbourhood”, Bob. They were rightfully angry at her glamorization of poverty. They were peeved at the blatant bourgeoisie navel-gazing while the rest of us struggle to stay and live in the most expensive city in North America.

I’m number 51 on this list, right? The 50 Most Powerful People in Vancouver Right Now. But wait a second…Frances Bula helped write the list and she’s on the list? I guess that’s the nature of power…and Van Mag.

But what I really want to know is, who are the least powerful 50 in Vancouver? A Selection of the 30 Most Disappointing Under 30. “Victor Chen, twenty-eight. Chen used an app to hire a person to pick up and deliver a Chipotle burrito to him every night for twenty-two consecutive nights”.

‘Transportion service not really that into transporting people’: Former police sergeant alleges TransLink doesn’t want weekend bar crowd on SkyTrain late at night. “He worked 12 Symphony of Fire events”. I’m not really that into praising cops but this guy deserves a medal.

Schadenfreude of the day: Party bus burns on Granville Street. Insert “it got lit” joke here. Best comment: “Please tell me someone has looped this for a Yule log video” – Allen Forrister.

Related:

Techno-utopian of the day: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it ‘co-living’

Bonus: Our open-plan office failed, so we’re moving to a towering panopticon.