Getting boxed out of the housing market

Dear Editor:

I’m born and raised in the Okanagan and have spent the majority of my life here. I was a bit disturbed driving from Kelowna to Penticton yesterday when I noticed a real estate sign all in Chinese.

Although I’m an avid traveller and have even been to China, I felt frustrated not being able to read the sign in my own country. Chinese is not an official language in Canada and, by law, all signs have to be in English or French. Wondering who gave them the go ahead to put that sign up?

What’s more frustrating to me is that I have a great job that pays an above-average salary and I am feeling shut out of the real estate market. We all know now that one of the major reasons for the housing crisis in Vancouver and other major cities is dirty, illegal, laundered money, much of which is foreign investment.

In Vancouver and other cities in our country we see foreign international students owning condos and luxury cars with ease, driving up our markets and making it harder for locals to even have a chance. (I blame Gordon Campbell, Christy Clark and Stephen Harper for purposefully and knowingly jump starting this crisis).

But we are still yet to see affordable housing as promised from Justin Trudeau and John Horgan. Is this Chinese-written only real estate sign symbolic of what we are to see in the Okanagan? Dirty laundered money driving up real estate in our own hometowns? No wonder homelessness is at an unacceptable high; I’m afraid that even with my good job I’ll be starting up tent city down in Gyro Park.

Craig Johnson

Penticton