Evidence continues to pile up confirming the socially destructive impact of the lack of affordable housing, inadequate transit and the resulting hollowing out of our city.
I hesitate to call this a crisis because what isn’t these days? I mean here we are in the midst of an opioid overdose crisis, a climate change crisis and then there is that idiot president just to the south of us.
When I dropped by my local bagel shop on West Broadway a few Mondays ago I was surprised to find it closed. The fellow from the shop next door was out sweeping the sidewalk and stopped long enough to tell me: They have been closed on Mondays for some time now. They can’t find enough staff to open. The same goes, it turns out, for their shop on Main Street.
A few days later, I was heading in for lunch at my favourite burger joint only to see a hand written “help wanted” sign taped to the window. Hmm. I ordered the usual and asked the owner to explain. I thought maybe he wasn’t paying enough. He said he was offering $20 an hour. But at that rate people still can’t afford to live in this neighbourhood.
Greg Wilson is with the B.C. Branch of the Retail Council of Canada. For his members, the labour shortage is chronic for entry-level jobs. There is no doubt that housing affordability is a contributing factor. So, too, is public transit. When property values are highest and public transit leaves something to be desired, the problem of finding workers is the most difficult.
(In Metro Vancouver, recall that Christy Clark’s failure to effectively deal with housing affordability, and her continuous buggering about as she frustrated transit plans by local mayors and TransLink, were major reasons she took a serious beating in the last provincial election.)
But I digress.
Aside from Vancouver, Wilson notes that West Vancouver is where his members are having the most difficulty recruiting. And, by the way, the average starting wage for entry-level jobs among his members is $18.35 an hour. Yet the most common complaint he hears is simply this: “I can’t find people.”
And even at that pay rate, his folks have to pay even more to retain workers in the long run, particularly in the downtown core.
Meantime, the ridiculously high cost of housing continues to drive people away. People like my neighbour for example. He and his wife have two young kids.
He’s some kind of engineer, and she is a school teacher. Right now he rents. I don’t know how much the two of them pull down a year, but he says it is well above $200 grand.
Why not buy? Well, any house he could afford around here would have a mortgage that would drain all his reserves. He’d rather spend the money on skiing and sailing. His plan? By the time his kids are old enough to find entry-level jobs, they will all be living in Comox. He will telecommute to work.
My neighbour is part of a trend that is reflected in the latest statistics from the Vancouver School Board, which confirm the decline in population of 13- to 17-year-olds in our city. In the past five years, high school enrolment has dropped 9.7 per cent. Meanwhile, suburbs with more affordable housing have seen their school populations grow significantly.
You may well wonder if there is any hope to deal with issues around chronic labour shortages.
Well, we know that the Tories when they were in power in Ottawa, as well as the Liberals before them, abandoned their role when it came to creating affordable housing. The province (see above) did little more than sit back and line its treasury pockets with vast sums of money from the booming real estate market. And the city — until its most recent housing “reset” — too often encouraged the creation of monster houses in single-family neighborhoods along with condo developments that met the needs of off-shore speculators and wealthy residents.
Now there is a new government in Victoria, a crew in Ottawa committed to a national housing policy and a government at city hall in danger of being tossed out next year. So we will see.
agarr@vancourier.com
@allengarr
