PR
AsPolicyVille
So.
Was yesterday's Clarklandian announcement on affordable housing (that actually buried a much bigger late Friday document dump) really 'historic'?
All kinds of British Columbians who have been paying attention have come to the fact-backed conclusion that it most definitely was not, including the good folks at the Carnegie Community Action Project:
Yesterday, Feb 12th 2016, the BC government announced that it would spend $355 million over the next 5 years to build up to 2000 “affordable” housing units. The government claimed that this was an “historic” announcement. However, the money referred to in the announcement is not a new investment by the BC government, it is the expected revenue that will be gained from the Non-Profit Asset Transfer Program i.e. the sale of BC Housing buildings to non-profits in the coming years.
This reinvestment was already announced in the 2015 BC housing Service Plan. At that time it amounted to $418 million spread out as follows: $35M for 2014/2015; $174M for 2015/16; $140M for 2016/17; and $69M for 2017/18...
But it's not just the fact that this was a re-purposed public relational project announcement off a less than optimal program that actually has less money in it now than it did when first announced a year ago (which the proMedia mavens around here, Bob Mackin excepted, pretty much missed entirely) that makes it 'a'historic.
It is also this:
...Building up to 2000 “affordable” housing units over the next five years is not “historic.” In the 1980’s between the mid 1970s and early 1990s, BC built between 1000 and 1500 units of social housing a year...
But nevermind all that.
Because, according to top Lotuslandian opinion makers like Mr. Mason of the Globe and Mr. Palmer in the VSun (and/or his header writer), none of this over-hyped PR-masquerading-as-policy-type stuff that never actually comes to fruition as originally planned/announced really matters anymore now that Ms. Clark can now feel the 'wind at her back'.
Or some such codswallop.
Sheesh.
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Saturday, February 13, 2016
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3 comments:
wind at her back might really be a lot of hot air.
like opening new beds announcement and closing others about same time reducing net bed gain in valley recently.
The air pressure in the Liberal Cadillac's tires must be dangerously low for the last gasps of our local press to have begun blowing them up this distance from the next election.
The above are excellent comments and C Clark , with all her hot air and no action, is contributing to global warming.
Can we get a GHG emission voucher for voting against her?
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