As a non-profit housing CEO, here's why the Social Housing Initiative mattered. It offered a real pathway to build homes for our neighbours in need, without half a million dollars in paperwork. Without 8-12 months of unnecessary delays for projects Council never rejects anyway.

It's interesting that "came for the neighbourhood" means, to him, tall buildings.

For most of us, the key fact about these neighbourhoods is that we are priced out of detached homes, and all that's all they have in them.

The interplay of zoning-induced scarcity and the principal residence capital-gains tax exemption has blown up the welfare state and the social contract in this city, this province, this country. Legalize housing, tax land, bring back the middle class.

Housing in BC is an absolute scandal. Modestly-sized homes in larger buildings are illegal. The resulting scarcity results in tax-free profits that flow in the hundreds of billions to incumbent homeowners.

The housing crisis is an inside job, orchestrated by people living in $2M homes, racing to pull up the ladder behind them.

Read the Council Report here: pub-burnaby.escribemeetings.com/filestream.a...

This speaker disclosed that they themselves live in a $2M home. And yet they came to Council to say that a laneway home for someone else is a "monstrosity."

Burnaby had allowed up to four storey "multiplexes," with up to 50% lot coverage. They are rolling that back to appease this opposition.

No deal

These are beautiful. It looks like good things are happening in Spokane