[ad_1]
This piece of opinion is a courtesy of Maclean & # 39; s
It is the opposite of a US scrap yard of closed factories, and this is n & # 39; is nothing like one of those bubbling immigrant suburbs of Paris. But Metro Vancouver, in its own way, with its Ferrari and Lamborghini and its glorious backdrop of mountains and sea, is just as much a case study of the dark, broken and ugly side of globalization.
At least 20,000 homes in Vancouver are empty, and no one is really sure who owns them. The vacancy rate for rental housing is less than 1%. In addition, 25,000 homes are occupied by homeowners whose taxable income reported by households is mysteriously lower than the amount they spend on property taxes, utilities and mortgage payments. The Canada Revenue Agency estimates that about $ 170 million in taxes have not been collected in British Columbia in the past three years.
Non-residents hold approximately $ 45 billion in residential properties in Greater Vancouver and a non-resident condominium sold in the Greater Vancouver area over the last three years. It's a lot known. But Transparency International estimates that about half of the residences in West Vancouver belong to mystery trusts or front companies.
READ: The real estate war that is tearing apart Vancouver's neighborhoods
The Canadian Mortgage and Housing The Corporation considers that housing is "affordable", that it is a good thing. a rent or mortgage and related costs, if the expenses represent less than 30% of the household income. In the Greater Vancouver area, homeownership costs account for 87.8% of a typical household's income, according to Craig Wright and Robert Hogue, economists at RBC. This is the worst level ever recorded in Canada.
Vancouver has also become a major global center for organized crime networks based in China. They are the main source of opioids that killed nearly 4,000 overdose Canadians last year. Vancouver is the zero point in the fentanyl crisis. Overdose of opioids is now the leading cause of death for Canadian men in their thirties.
"These are the heartbreaking human consequences, the growth pains if you will, of the great transformative forces of the past 40 years," Foreign Minister Chrystia In listing these human consequences, Freeland could have described Vancouver: "Median wages stagnant, jobs become more precarious, pensions uncertain, housing, childcare and education more difficult to pay. Part of Metro Vancouver's problem, as the UK's Tax Justice Network puts it in its latest Financial Secrecy Index, is that the Canadian financial system is even more opaque than either Russia or China and the federal government largely ignored the dysfunctions of Vancouver. But the provincial government of BC was worse
MORE: Vancouver real estate: Why multi-million-dollar homeowners cry poor
In a scathing 247-page report released late June , former RCMP Assistant Commissioner Peter German has grimly exposed the corrupt and shabby functioning of the "Vancouver model," as the lucrative pathology began to emerge in the years when the Liberals of Christy Clark were in power in Victoria. The proceeds of international crime, in hockey bags filled with bricks of $ 20 banknotes stained with fentanyl, were laundered in casinos that Victoria claimed to regulate. Returns were then systematically swallowed up in obscure real estate investments and then reinvested in crime.
The German report, aptly titled "Dirty Money", is only the first part of the mission entrusted to him by the Attorney General of the British Columbia NDP, David Eby. The next phase of Germany will look at the impact of all this waste of dirty money around the real estate and real estate industry of Metro Vancouver
. the casinos. His badessment was far too charitable. In 2009, the provincial integrated anti-gambling team was dismantled after filing a threat badessment asking for increased powers to investigate money laundering by organized crime groups. Five years later, after raising the same alarm, the Senior Director of Investigations for the British Columbia Gaming and Policy Branch was fired without just cause. His unit was dismembered, his members were rebadigned
While all this was going on, the Vancouver City Council was worse than useless. The unfortunate mayor, Gregor Robertson, has spent most of his 10 years in power arguing loudly that foreign capital dumped into the city – most of them driven out of China by quasi-legal means – was a major cause of real estate madness. . Municipal elections are up in October. Robertson sinks. A motley list of candidates is now aligning with a variety of ideas to repair Vancouver's torn civic fabric.
The NDP came to power last year in a minority government with the Green Party, and it was for the sake of its first orders of the day were to impose strict limits on provincial election expenses and municipal. In the 2004 municipal elections, Robertson's Vision Roberts and its non-partisan Association competitors raised $ 5.3 million between them. Their most generous lenders were great players in the real estate industry.
Victoria has also imposed a tax on foreign buyers and an increase in property transfer taxes, and a new law is requiring that real owners be registered on title deeds. There is also a $ 1 billion federal-provincial social housing fund under construction
But it took at least 15 years for Metro Vancouver to become an affordable nightmare and a playground for gangs. If the damage can be canceled, it will take at least as much time to change things.
Source link
