Image: Meadow

A Vision For Robertson’s Millenials

I have written before about my belief that the aim of the Billionaire Boys’ Club and their political arm, Vision Vancouver, is to create a Vancouver that is solely for the 1%; a city of refuge for the rich. The proletariat — or at least that fraction of them required to maintain the lifestyle and businesses of the 1% — would be forced to live in the suburbs and travel in and out of the city via the rapid transit lines (preferably hidden below ground so as not to disrupt the aesthetics of the city beautiful) so favoured by Vision.

Since coming to power in 2008, Vision Vancouver have worked hand in glove with the development and real estate industries to being about these desired aims; and they have succeeded brilliantly, ensuring that wages are kept low, that no regular worker in Vancouver can afford to buy a house or even an apartment, that rents are skyrocketing beyond all reason, that provision for the least fortunate is collapsing around us. One of Vision’s bag men has openly boasted that Vancouver is not for regular people.

However, when they have forced most of us out, there may be a reason that some workers will need to be kept in the city, rather than be shipped in every day, and Hong Kong provides an excellent illustration of the kind of thing Vision Vancouver — famous for stating that affordable housing is whatever you can afford — may have in mind for the long term, for the millennials they are courting, perhaps:

 

 

These images are from a Guardian article concerning so-called “coffin cubicles”.  They show 15 sq.ft cubicles that people have adapted for “living.” And the article helpfully notes that a standard 400 sq.ft apartment can be subdivided into 20 double-decker sealed cubicles of this kind.

Now, Vancouver has about 25,000 vacant housing units ….