Vancouver

Notes on the making of a disaster

by Reed Eurchuk

Power lines

Vanessa Geary’s career trajectory neatly illustrates the institutional basis sustaining the so-called “left” side of the political spectrum. Geary worked for the NGO “Tenant’s Rights Action Coalition” [TRAC]. She went from there to work in ex-mayor Larry Campbell’s office. Following Vision Vancouver’s loss of the mayor’s office, she found herself a new gig covering Anita Zanker’s maternity leave at BCGEU headquarters. From NGO to government to union headquarters, such is the path available for the professional “left.”

Mirroring this and inverting it, on the right, the path leads from powerful corporation to government and back to the boardroom or lobbyist. Such are the little power-saturated worlds of our political classes, divorced at the root from their constituencies.

These career paths may contribute to the ease with which these individuals suddenly discard previously proclaimed principles, and promote projects inimical to their past theoretical base. For example, look at Linda Mix, another ex-official with TRAC, who went on to the 2010 Bid Corporation Board of Directors promoting Vancouver’s Olympic bid, a position utterly opposed to the interests of tenants.

Lack of Vision

Whatever happened to Vision Vancouver anyway? They have four elected council members, but you hear much more from the single COPE councillor, David Cadman. The lack of vision at Vision can best be illustrated by Tim Stevenson’s recent feeble attempt at bringing his burning issue to the fore.

As reported by Mike Howell in the Vancouver Courier, Stevenson is passionate about the size of City Hall. “It’s just too small,” Stevenson roared, one foot on the barricades. Oh boy, the city is closing down hotels, adding to the homeless population, firing the youth and child advocate, turning the South East Flats into another sterile inner city suburb, gutting social housing commitments, and cutting taxes on the wealthiest business owners in town, while raising taxes on residents (among other reactionary moves), and Tim Stevenson is excited about the size of City Hall.

“Round and round she goes, where she stops, no one knows”

So cries the barker at the casino, and many wonder today, as Vancouver’s overheated real estate casino market inflates to dizzying dimensions. In Globalization and Its Discontents, Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz gave a good description of how this happens: “Throughout the world, speculative real estate lending is a major source of economic instability. This type of lending gives rise to bubbles (the soaring prices as investors clamour to reap the gain from the seeming boom in the sector); these bubbles always burst, and when they do, the economy crashes. The pattern is familiar, and was the same in Bangkok as it was in Houston: as real estate prices rise, banks feel they can lend more on the basis of the collateral; as investors see prices going up, they want to get in on the game before it’s too late—and the bankers give them the money to do it. Real estate developers see quick profits by putting up new buildings, until excess capacity results.” Then the developers can’t sell the condos or rent the office space, and “they default on their loans, and the bubble bursts.”

By any rational person’s estimation, Vancouver’s real estate is now grossly over-inflated, and even the local corporate media has acknowledged it. But it’s anyone’s guess as to when the bubble will burst, because, exacerbating Vancouver’s bubble is the input of millions of public dollars. Vancouver is drunk on public money in anticipation of 2010. With the Canada Line, the Convention Centre, huge investments in highways, construction of arenas, and related Olympic spaces under construction, Vancouver is a veritable Klondike of public investments.

Unfortunately, these investments will mostly benefit a tiny group of rich people, tourism executives, hoteliers, large property owners, and developers, who will all make a killing, thanks to your money, dear taxpayer.

So in another twist, your tax money further inflates land values, because these huge public investments add value to the privately-owned land, which the owners can privately realize in a number of ways. Unwittingly, taxpayers contribute to the speculative excesses: they build the scaffolding for their own hanging.

By taxing the windfall profits of landowners—profits that depend on your investments as taxpayers—this whole merry-go-round could be slowed and somewhat directed. Reason could be introduced into planning to benefit all the citizens of the city.

And they call this merry-go-round “capitalism.”