Two recent incidents point to a particular nasty aspect of the regional economy that has been gaining momentum for some time.
I'm talking about the fact that many people are simply too poor to live here.
The first was the city of Vancouver's decision to offer up some of the Olympic housing units to required workers such as firefighters, nurses and police. We need these people who make the city operate to be able to actually live here, Vancouver Council said.
The second was the City of New Westminster's decision to become the first municipality in Canada to adopt a comprehensive "living wage" policy for its employees. A living wage is that hourly rate needed by a family in a region to actually live in that region. Yesterday, the 2010 Living Wage for Metro Vancouver was set at $18.17/hour by advocates. That's $1.43 an hour more than it was two years ago.
Yet the minimum wage in this -- the most expensive province in Canada --still hovers around $8 an hour, the lowest in Canada. However, many employers, recognizing the absurdity of the minimum wage in a high-cost region, pay about 50% more than that, defacto setting the minimum wage at $12. Good on them, but that's still below what's required to live here.
Obviously there's a serious dichotomy between legislated pay, and what people need to earn to live here.
I'm not advocating that we just jack up the pay scale. That's a simple solution that may feel good but doesn't address the real problem.
Blame housing costs
To me, that's the cost of housing. Yes, that cost that most of us who got in early gleefully watch as prices rise into the stratosphere.
Those ever increasing prices not only shut most of these low-wage families out of the housing market, they eliminate rentals as well. And as rental housing diminishes -- no one builds rental housing any more because condos are far more lucrative -- their prices go up. More people chasing that housing increases the rents even more in a constantly escalating spiral.
Poorer families have little choice today: They can either flee to the farthest suburbs, and then have to find some form of transportation to those low-wage jobs, or they have to fight it out for cripplingly expensive housing in the city where the service jobs are.
BC has always been an expensive place to live, and Vancouver has always been one of the worst offenders. But it always had some kind of mix -- albeit at times uncomfortable -- between rich and poor. Previously, we tried to maintain the mix by building co-ops for lower-income families. But most in the city today are leftovers from the 70's and 80's.
Instead, we now get "social housing" like the Olympic village, which is offered up to well-paid unionized workers like firefighters and police because they're considered "needy."
So what are we telling people here? Sounds like: If you haven't got a union job, then tough. Move to Edmonton.
I guess we finally have become world crass... er... class.