https://www.biv.com/news/commentary/...ights-11059874

Anyone following this BC Supreme Court ruling? Wonder how the province will sort this out...

So about 2 years ago my neighbour built a single storey laneway, and I noticed that the foundation was quite deep. They ended up with a massive crawlspace under the main floor.

Fast forward to now, and it looks like they are digging out the crawlspace to increase the square footage! There was a lot of concrete drilling a few days ago, and I believe they installed two additional windows on the right side to create another bedroom or two. Now they're taking out buckets of concrete/styrofoam and hauling it away in a truck (which is constantly blocking half of my garage).

Curious how they will access this new space because the access door is short. Maybe they'll just increase the size of the opening and install a full height door.

I'm no snitch but I'm sure the city would love to know about this construction project!

https://i.ibb.co/rG2gzjvz/lwh.jpg

Edit: Yep, they're drilling out the access door area as we speak...

LOL. Maybe they're renting it out to midgets/dwarfs as a separate unit? I have a big crawlspace (1200sf+) with about 4' of clearance and a very stable 20C climate and I have joked with my wife that we should rent it out cause someone would probably pay to live down there.

With a little work I can turn the crawlspace into a 4 bedroom unit ideal for a shorty and their family. Since the the ceiling is half height I'd only charge them half the going rate for a 4 bedroom so like $2500/mo! Haha.

What's that thing with the ports? Just sprinkle some alcohol and fent on them.

That's a huge job to try to get away with doing without permits lol. Gutsy.

lots of bathrooms in that laneway :lol

The cultural norm is to try to pass as much down as possible, but not before they die. God forbid you transfer some wealth to enjoy together :lawl:

Most ppl don't spend $4K/month on rent lol.

These seniors can rent a $800-1M 2BR 2BA condo for $3K/month and avoid stairs!

$1.5M @ 4% = $60K + $40K OAS/GIS/CPP Combined - $100k/year

Honestly, if you’re over 55, having $1.5 million or more in the bank, a solid monthly income from investments or a pension, and renting is the way to go.

It’s hard to change the mindset of the older generation, especially Chinese boomers, some think even GICs from the bank are scams and keep cash in a safety deposit box

^^ the gov will take it, how will they get gis to milk the gov

It's the same for Punjabi parents.

Which is amazing how China became a Cashless society basically overnight. How did the CCP manage to convince however hundreds of millions of boomers to give up their cash stashes and switch to app based payments? Unreal.

Except in Richmond Chinese Restaurant ...cash is still king but I think most accept WeChatPay?

idk what pricing is like down there but here you can buy a 2bed/2bath apartment in a 55+ building for $340k+, or a 2bed/2bath/garage rancher in a 45+ complex for $440k+. Basically about half(ish) the value of a SFH someone would downsize from. $4k/mo rent is getting you into assisted living. All with loads of amenities and things like shuttle services to anywhere they'd need to go when they can no longer drive. I've had family living in all of them for years and they're far more social and not nearly as isolating for a senior with limited mobility like living in a SFH.

Technically those aren't the rich everyone is talking about taxing, but people seem to think it is so they vote against taxing the actual rich people who are billionaires.

But otherwise I agree with you. It's pretty weird to enable older people staying in houses they can't even make proper use of and tying up most of their net worth so they have a lower quality of life. Especially during a long running affordability crisis.

I get that people want to stay close to their communities, especially with how hard it is to find family doctors and such, so if there aren't places like the stuff I listed above down there then there should be more of a push to require developers to build them and encourage seniors to free up family homes.

lol call the city man. You're going to have an entire family living there right next to you. That's going to cause issues for sure. Parking, noise, random crap. They'll probably park in the back alley.

This

Developers would love to build more housing - it's the cities that haven't let them. The cities have been the gatekeepers for determining what kind of housing (and where) for the past 100 years and it has kept getting worse - it's basically been an extortion racket.

Because cities charge development fees for new housing it's in their own selfish interest to see housing prices go up - the higher the housing prices the higher the fees they charge. This is what they call "capturing land lift" which is another way of saying they want a cut of the profits and they've been negotiating it development by development (like a good mobster would). Burnaby did this to the tune of collecting several billion dollars over the past 10 years - they use it to build community centres and to keep property taxes absurdly low.

What Burnaby did made Burnaby richer but it made its citizens poorer because the increase in the cost of housing overall was FAR greater than the money they collected. That community centre is cute but the increased cost of buying a home far outweighs the value of the community centre - we would have been better off with fairer property taxes.

If cities were interested in helping their citizens versus enriching themselves they'd do what the Province is now forcing them to do - relax zoning to allow more density, drop public hearings for things that comply, publish a transparent community plan, and stop doing closed door negotiations (extortion) with developers.

Wait until they're done, then call:whistle:

Leave the PNE mo's and gon gons alone ... they've worked hard. Even though it makes perfect sense to move to a condo or independent assisted living from the sale of the East Van SFH, it's all psychological. Which begs the question that depending on how old your aging parents are, do you want to orchestrate one move to a condo or two? Like 5-7 yrs later, to an independent Assisted Living (with meals, cleaning, and no health support) or a full supported living senior home.

The other thing that is hard to convince a mo and a gon gon to move is the pure sound of the number for rent. For our gen, $3000/mth in a nice relatively new condo in a good neighbourhood, sounds like it's $15,000/mth equivalent to their 1960's mindset. (it's kind of how we lament a burger and fries combo is like >$20 nowadays when we've seen it for like $8-10. Really hard for bottle collecting, penny pinching grandmas and grandpas to wrap their heads around spending that much money on rent alone THEMSELVES. To them, psychologically, sounds like an annual salary in their day.

Ask me how I know.

Lastly, I honestly don't know who would want to buy a SFH in East Van that is built in the 1960's-70's. They have deteriorated very badly, for most it's a complete take down and rebuild which now turns your $1.7M purchase price to $3.M by the time you're done.

These old retirees staying in their SFH is a net negative for everyone. Like Honda said, if you NEED to defer these taxes you simply can’t afford to live there for retirement, and you literally have the golden ticket to solve ALL of your financial problems and are choosing not to take it.
The housing crisis also goes beyond units. It breaks down to bedrooms and bathrooms. If 2 or even one person is filling up a 5 bedroom house, not maintaining it because they are incapable that’s one more place that’s going to get sold, torn down, and turn into 5/6 bedrooms at double the price when they are done with it. It’s no different than the boomers that are incapable of doing their high level jobs but refuse to retire, opening up the spot for a more capable younger person to progress further in their career. It’s a generation refusing to let go of their easily acquired things to help the next generation until they can get these things much later in life.
I understand not wanting to make the change when you’ve got 2 million in the bank to live off of and 2 million in your house. You don’t need it. But if you can’t pay your property tax and are sitting on 2 million, it’s time to accept that you might need to change your lifestyle, and you have every opportunity to do so, when the younger generations are being told to change their lifestyle to afford things and it’s things like “skipping breakfast or don’t take your dog to the vet.”

We are talking above one another. You are using logic. I pointed out it's an emotional psychological thing. To explain to someone who has a psychological block using logic and reasoning is a losing cause.

Hopefully, you will eventually understand ... because I'm using logic with you.

“Damn guangdong hoarder family member, you’re living in filth with a house collapsing around you?”

Yes.. but the rents!

:lol

Thankfully my parents are both of the mind to have the trajectory to sell large SFH, downsize, and ultimately end up in some sort of assisted living situation because they are smart enough to know what’s best for them. When the time comes we’ll see what actually happens but they are both very pragmatic when it comes to things like this

There’s an old woman who lives up the street from me, she’s got a fairly mint CSX I’ve been eyeing up because it’s just rotting on the street, probably hasn’t been driven in 3-4 years. This woman has got to be 80+ she needs a walker to get around and can barely do it even then. She’s got a Vancouver special literally overflowing with trash in the front yard and the few times I’ve seen here with the door open the inside is pretty much the same. Honestly like I know people are stuck in their ways and you can’t force peoples hands but someone living in these types of conditions, it’s absolutely terrible. What like fucking bugs everywhere, rotten shit you can’t even clean up or probably even see, house hasn’t been cleaned in a decade. But at least ya got your detached home! lol fuck

^ it's not the detached house that they are stuck to ... obviously (to me at least) it's the memories of that place they can't let go. Counselling might be best solution, not waving $$$$ signs.

In 2055, when your children hint at you moving out of your SFH and pay (conceivably at rate of inflation in 30 yrs time) $9000/mth for rent, I bet you will have an emotional aversion to that!

You'll want to stay in your 40-50 yr old house and say eff those greedy Gen Z bastards who just want their inheritance early.