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VANCOUVER — This is an attractive city, just “mind-numbingly boring,” says a pseudonymous blogger at The Economist. Not enough grime nor grit, gripes the magazine’s online “Gulliver,” whose under-worldly view of life seems undermined by ignorance: he knows nothing of Vancouver’s sordid underbelly, poor chap.

Are we bored? We wish. We’re in perpetual crisis mode out here, always at the boiling point. We burn with envy and rage, despair and regret, every day and every time we open a newspaper and read the latest accounts. Our angst is real estate, or lack of it. The shocking lack of living space. Horrifying house prices. Densification, and opportunities missed.

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We are consumed by this, more than others might understand or appreciate.

Vancouver’s living situation is uniquely nuts. It’s among the least affordable cities in the world, based on housing price and wage comparisons. Salaries here are middling, with annual household incomes averaging about $70,000. Yet the median price for a single family home has just reached $1.6 million. Do the math and try to meet those mortgage payments, even at today’s low interest rates. Most can’t.