What’s happening to Vancouver is a ‘second colonization’
I don’t know how much longer I can live in Vancouver or where I will go. The rents are too high and finding affordable accommodation is very distressful.
I’ve been here 20 years now and I am a senior — an elder artist — who is denied subsidized housing because of overwhelming demand, but who lacks enough money for decent market-value lodgings.
I call what is going on in Vancouver the “second colonization.” The baby-boomer Caucasians are handing over property and power to nouveau riche mandarins and because of the immense sums of money involved, nothing can be done.
All levels of government and all the major political parties are compliant.
Stewart Brinton, Vancouver
There is always Hope
Jennifer Fox’s column, Goodbye Vancouver, you should go love yourself, is why I live in Hope. In Hope, you can own a waterfront home for less than $300,000. You can walk the dog on its 90-foot lot if you’re not fishing off your own beach.
Everyone says hello, whether you know them or not, especially if you are working in your garden.
If you like to travel, you live at the confluence of three major highways. Nobody goes anywhere in B.C. without going through Hope. Speaking of winter, we are only 40 minutes from Manning Park and fantastic dry powder skiing.
With the improved highway, we are also just 90 minutes from Boundary Road and the glimmering lights of the big city.
Maybe what the Biebs meant was, “If you don’t like the way you look that much, maybe you should come and love us?”
Art Green, Hope
More Asian money is coming
It’s simplistic of letter-writer Elliott Graham to declare that Chinese investors will sell their real estate holdings when the Chinese stock market recovers. No, when our market crashes, they will be snapping it up even faster.
A fully paid real estate investment in Canada or any secure country will never lose the value of personal safety, which is the underlying reason for these purchases.
The middle class in Vancouver has been decimated by inflated home prices, which is moving to lower-priced markets in Metro Vancouver, B.C. and Canada.
As that happens, be prepared to say hello to a new lower middle class.
Doug Marsden, Vancouver
Justice system is ‘a joke’
OK, maybe Jian Ghomeshi is only guilty of being a scumbag, but columnist Gordon Clark is wrong to say our justice system works.
It’s a complete joke — a revolving door that keeps criminals, drug addicts and mentally unstable people on the street and costs taxpayers millions of dollars a year.
Lance Frohlick, Richmond
Syria still ruled by tyrant
Some of the antiquities in Palmyra, Syria, have been saved, but Syria is not “liberated.” The tyrant, Bashar el Assad, with the assistance of Iran and Russia, is still in power.
Syria’s civilians have been gassed and bombed by this trinity and those still living are now refugees spread around the world or migrants stuck at borders in camps, bereft of their homeland.
Liberated means freedom from arbitrary or despotic government control. No, Palmyra is not liberated.
Cherryl Katnich, Maple Ridge