Tyler Durden

What I am trying to get at is my concern that one of the long-term consequences of this mess will be the destruction of public support for government involvement in the provision of non-market housing. There are some political commentators who already cynically exploiting the situation to that end.

Now, not knowing Mr. Ransford, I cannot say whether that’s what he’s doing – although I will say that his Vancouver Sun piece about creating a “real” neighbourhood in the DTES through market condo development was one of the sillier pieces of writing about the neighbourhood I’ve encountered.

I do think you’re somewhat overstating the situation as well – believe me, I am not trying to minimize the difficulty of the position we are currently in, but it’s also not accurate to say that we would be on the hook for $875 million for a luxury condo project. The development contains a lot more than luxury condos. Not enough more, in my opinion, but still a lot more.

tl;dr: This is clearly an example of Doing It Wrong. But that doesn’t mean that government always does it wrong. And it doesn’t mean that we should leave meeting the city’s housing needs to the private sector.

“The damage was not done by those *reporting* or *commenting* on the problems. The damage was done by those *signing* the deal. ”

Absolutely. And thank heavens for some transparency at last!

Stephanie thinks it’s OK for the City to put taxpayers on the hook for $875 million for a luxury condo project because “the idea that competence is somehow vested in the private sector is a myth that our current economic woes must surely have dispelled.”

The difference between City of Vancouver taxpayers and all the other folks losing their shirts out there is that we taxpayers were neither consulted nor informed about the fact that the city was gambling on the real estate market with a billion dollars of our money and assets.

Which brings us back to the issues of transparency and prudency.

And this whole obsession with our international reputation. Just how much have we spent trying to convince the world we’re “the best place on earth” (vs. just investing in trying to make this a more liveable place for most citizens) and where has it gotten us? Seems to me we got a lot more done and generated a lot more international compliments when we focussed more on our own citizens than on what the world thought of us.

And in the never-ending Canadian way, taxpayers are invited to clean up the mess after the party is over. No one monitered the party people and no one will ever take personal responsibility for anything.

That said, anyone who’s been around Council knows perfectly well that a good number of city councillors are woefully out of their depth. Is anyone actually surprised that the partisanship and stupidity that characterizes a lot of what passes for governance in this city has yielded a mess like this?

What a sorry vindication for people who were dismissed as wet-blanket paranoiacs for believing that the Olympics might actually be, you know, risky.

thank you for your calm civil tone. I will try to reciprocate.

I concede that I don’t know the legal details that will allocate the loss. But calculating the loss *is* as simple as comparing costs vs revenues.

Some sharing of this loss between the public, Fortress, and Millennium will happen. I guess I’m not as concerned about the allocation as the amount of the loss.

I guess I was working on the assumption that M and F would go belly up and the public will end up holding the can. Time will tell if that is right.

Mr Geller: I must disagree with your statement about the reputation of Vancouver. The damage was not done by those *reporting* or *commenting* on the problems. The damage was done by those *signing* the deal. (Of whichever party–I have no horse in the partisan game here).

But I agree with Michael Geller, this is a black eye for Vancouver and BC (more painful from the fact that Vancouver has/had an expertise in natural resource risk management).