[URBAN NOTE] "Unlike New York, Vancouver lacks the incomes to match the housing frenzy"

[rfmcdonald]

The Globe and Mail's Kerry Gold suggests that relatively low incomes in British Columbia are at least as much of a problem for real estate buyers as high prices.

When Tanya Marquardt lived in Vancouver, she shared a tiny one-room apartment in Gastown with a hot plate and a futon couch she’d roll out every night for her bed.

The rent was a few hundred dollars a month. That same place, she says, now rents for $1,100 a month. That typical price hike gives her pause when she considers returning home to Vancouver, which, she says, she might have to do if Republican candidate Donald Trump is elected president.

But she knows too that transitioning back to Vancouver might not be a wise career choice. The former Vancouverite is now living in Brooklyn, where she lives with her partner in an apartment that costs them $2,700 (U.S.) a month, including utilities. She teaches at Hunter College when she’s not working as a playwright or writing her book.

The artist has found success since her move to New York City six years ago, enough so that she and her partner have saved to purchase a home. They could afford a one-bedroom condo where they live, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, for around $900,000, she figures. Her American money would buy them a nice condo in Vancouver, too. Although health care is a major advantage, she questions whether she’d make much of a living as an artist if she returned.

“I think about it,” she says. “But I worry I wouldn’t get work if I came back. I also think my work has changed. I don’t know if there’s an audience there for it.”

It’s become routine for political leaders and members of the real estate industry to cite Vancouver’s stature as a “world-class city” as one of the reasons for the region’s affordability crisis; all big, popular cities endure it. B.C. Housing Minister Rich Coleman has said that, compared to “other major cities worldwide,” Vancouver is “pretty reasonable.”