BY Am Johal JULY 23, 2010
In Vancouver, young families and seniors on fixed incomes put their groceries on their credit card. Underemployed recent university graduates, overloaded with debt, are barely making ends meet. You don’t have to look very far to know that there’s an affordability crisis in Vancouver. This is one of the public policy challenges of our times.
The increasing social divide in the city is an outcome of inadequate public policies over three decades that have placed developers’ interests before those of citizens. City policies have accelerated and amplified development paths and exacerbated social impacts on middle and lower income communities while senior levels of government have downloaded costs and hamstrung local governments with limited revenue streams. The democratic deficit that functions at City Hall is also at the heart of the problem in articulating a workable solution.
Urban economics is not the work of magicians and alchemists. Economics is a shapeable, understandable social science – except when its regulation is left in the hands of the free market as the recent economic collapse has so vividly showcased.
As in other times in history, governments should intervene in the free market for the public good. There is no other way to ensure affordability in the city – whether it is building affordable housing directly, implementing market incentives or setting policies that keep rents affordable.
They largely used to in contemporary times until the politics of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher became fashionable in the Western world. The ‘third way’ post-politics of the following two decades blurred the lines between left and right and simply accelerated the neo-liberal project. Political communications has been given a higher value than policy substance over that time frame. In what was promised as a post-ideological politics, has, in effect, been extremely ideological in practice.
The lessons of the thirty year project are clear. We now have stagnant incomes with rising living costs in an increasingly unaffordable city. The unraveling of the social safety net has also led to innumerable social impacts. The most recent social indicators report at the city shows that the divides are not just between west and east side – they exist within neighbourhoods across the city and are increasing across the board. 30% of children are considered ‘vulnerable’ by the time they reach kindergarten. Over 35% of children in the inner-city have visible signs of tooth decay by age 5 in the inner-city.
From the late 19th century to the 1970’s, liberal societies around the world were becoming uniformly less unequal according to historian Tony Judt. In his recent book, Ill Fares the Land, he writes about the social impacts of these trends, “Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose…We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: Is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them.”
Vancouver’s Am Johal is an independent writer whose work has appeared in Seven Oaks Magazine, Znet, Georgia Straight, Electronic Intifada, Arena Magazine, rabble.ca and many others Am Johal’s blog
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