I got an Email from the super big boss at the place where I work the other day.
Usually these things are meant for everyone, and recently they've been all about, as you might expect, online teaching and the like.
But this particular message was personal.
And it had a letter attached.
A letter that congratulated me for working at the very fine public institution concerned for twenty-five years.
Which led me to smack myself upside the top of the head and ask...
Where the heckfire has all that time gone?
****
When we arrived in Vancouver in the summer of 1995, Bigger E. was two years old and littler e. was still a gleam in her Mom's eye.
It was C. who found the first house we lived in, a rough-around-the edges bungalow in Mackenzie Heights on the westside of town that cost us $1,200 a month. Two years later the off-shore owners offered to sell it to us for $255,000. We balked (yes balked!) and moved to a crazy shanty town on the edge of campus that we loved, not for the buildings, but rather for the people. For a good chunk of the next eight years we tried to build a co-op nearby and almost succeeded only to have our hopes dashed by the BC Liberal Party's version of BC Housing.
I've felt terrible ever since because we were the community group that showed GordCo's, Inc.'s money men that it was possible to extricate land from Pacific Spirit Park. The parcel concerned, which we lost to a developer because our fully-financed $12 million dollar plan for 42 families was about a million shy of the hastily assembled competitive sealed bid mark, was a small one. In contrast, the GordCo-jacked parcel that followed was massive and, in my opinion, it tore the heart right out of the park.
Anyway, in the aftermath of the loss we moved to the eastside of town where've been ever since.
The lab moved as well and I like where it is now. The colleagues are great, the students and post-docs are even better, and we're doing some of our best work right there, right now.
It's just weird how fast you go from being the young trouble maker who can, and does, do everything at the lab bench, to the old guy who mostly manages, raises money, dispenses advice, and writes.
Really weird.
OK?
_______
Image at top of the post...The two E's not long ago, all grown up now.
When our former landlords asked us if we wanted to buy that bungalow I truly and honestly thought they were crazy....Of course, the dirt is now worth more than 10 times what they were asking at the time.
Why were we a million shy on the co-op, which was an equity thing, at that total cost to family number ratio?....Because we had a sliding scale plan that would make it possible for everyone concerned to get in on the action regardless their income level...Me, always with the pipe dreams...Would I do it differently with a 2nd chance?...I'm really not sure, to be honest.
Speaking of the Tragically Hip, E. and I have been working on a cover of 'Ahead By A Century'...I've just been unhappy with my playing on it so far....But it's coming.
.
7 comments:
I remember an empty lot near Blanca, between 10th and 16th selling for about $24K in the sixties. Wife's uncle lived nearby. We all agreed the price was crazy. In today's dollars, that's under $200,000.
That lot price was 40% more than we paid for a nice 3 BR townhouse near Guildford. Today's young people have little chance of climbing on board the property ladder unless the Bank of Mom and Dad is involved.
We can send people into space but we're not smart enough to create affordable housing. Something wrong with that picture.
Something wrong with that picture, indeed, Norm.
Even with help from the bank of Mom & Dad, I'm not sure either of our kids will be able to own dirt in Lotusland.
Unless, of course, we do the in-fill thing.
.
'Mom & Dad' could move OUT and the kids could move in. The problem with in-filling, it bumps up the property tax assessments and wipes out the senior discount.
NVG--
Hmmmm...
One problem, Mom and Dad will likely have to cash out to move out.
.
one other small detail, for us.
1975 we paid $53,000 for a '1923' (2 fruit picker shacks nailed together) 910 square foot home (included the two porches)(North Van) for a family of 2A(2C). 1983 rolled around and interest rates shot of to 18+%, high unemployment to boot. Most of my fellow workers had bought higher and were wiped out. We survived.
Best ask your 'children' IF they really want to live in Lotusland.
The sole positive about the pandemic is that it demonstrated how quickly the state can respond to a crisis. And puts the lie to decades of blather about what can and cannot be done. Surely, the housing crisis is eminently fixable with concerted government attention. Aren't the old excuses gone now?
What I find disconcerting about the issue of housing and it’s affordability, aided and abetted by a media that gushes at every wrinkle of house pricing, the great unwashed have become used to the idea that house prices are the economy, not the result of a healthy economy based on other factors not just housing.
Meanwhile governments have loved all that money sloshing around looking good whilst avoiding doing anything sustainable to raise income levels rise to meet costs of living.
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