To the editor:
Re: “West End Neighbours society wonders what is affordable,” April 11.
Here we go again! The city’s lawyer says housing affordability is “nebulous” and “relativistic.” Wrong. Housing is affordable when it costs less than 30 per cent of income at every income level. That’s the Canada Mortgage and Housing definition and it’s been accepted in Canada for decades.
Increasingly, city council tries to redefine affordability. According to them an apartment is affordable if somebody, anybody, can manage to pay the rent — no matter how high it is. So we subsidize developers to build rental units that very few people can afford to live in. This is unacceptable, and we certainly can — and must — do better.
RJ Aquino,
Vancouver
