This story was just on the CBC’s The Current this morning, talking about sharing houses in a hippie-communal sort of way as a way of getting the lifestyle vibe quivering at perfect pitch and of surviving in Crazyville. Councillor Geoff Meggs is quoted briefly as having no problems with the concept; the run-down shared houses of, say, my neighbourhood of Grandview are similar, as were the communes of my youth c. 1970, sigh, … an earlier period of extreme housing shortages and rapidly increasing rents.
In San Fransicso, where housing prices make Vancouver look cheap (especially rental prices), communal living is quite popular. I know several bay area tech workers and even tech company executives who live in 60s-style communes for tech workers.
Interesting places. Old run down buildings in DTES-like areas with the walls completely covered in psychedelic art. So far probably not too different from SF communies in the 60s and 70s. Being SF in the 2010s there are people in every corner silently tapping away at MacBook Pros and scribbling math on whiteboards in the living room.
I have a friend from San Francisco who’s emigrating to Canada and when he was checking out Vancouver prices he kept mentioning how cheap things were here; rents, parking, food, etc.
Heh…I have a friend from San Francisco who thought about moving here until he found out how much Canadian tech companies pay.
The serious point being affordability is also a function of income. And wages in many sectors around these parts are low/stagnating.
+1 … vancouver may be cheap if your money comes from elsewhere, but considering its median income is low even by Canadian standards, it ain’t affordable from the inside.
Author
Wages in Sydney are about a third higher than in Vancouver; rents are at least a third higher. Last year, an NSW politician provoked a storm of invective when he said that people should rent where they love and buy where they can afford, implying the long car-commute.
On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 1:00 PM, Price Tags wrote:
>