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Entries from January 2016

Social housing at Olympic village soars to almost double original cost

February 17th, 2009 · 7 Comments

That’s the latest fun news from city hall, as per this report that just got put up on the city’s website. The cost of the 250 housing units has soared from the original estimate of $65 million to $110 million. Now the city is facing the question of what to do — put in millions […]

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The myths of affordable housing

February 16th, 2009 · 29 Comments

Monte Paulsen at the Tyee has one of the most succinct and incisive analyses of affordable housing that I’ve seen in 10 years of reporting on this topic. You can see it here. He challenges the myth that supply alone with create affordable housing. He also challenges the one that says the government should build […]

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The never-ending quest to transform the Downtown Eastside

February 16th, 2009 · 18 Comments

Vancouver’s defining neighbourhood has been in the limelight this past month, with two media outlets (the Province and the Globe and Mail) running extensive series on how to fix the neighbourhood, while police chief Jim Chu put out his own report on what to do. The unspoken message behind all of this is, “Yikes, the […]

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Another city blogger joins the fray: Geoff Meggs

February 15th, 2009 · 25 Comments

Former journalist, now councillor, Geoff Meggs has put his blog back in motion recently. For those of you who just can’t read enough about city hijinks and deep policy thoughts, the link is here. It was impressive that in a recent post, he took the time to publish a lengthy comment from someone critical of […]

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Tags: City Hall Talk

Penny Ballem’s memo to staff re cost-cutting

February 13th, 2009 · 21 Comments

And here’s the memo from city manager, as promised earlier this week From:   COV Broadcast Server Sent:   Friday, February 13, 2009 3:27 PM To:     All Staff (COV) – DL Subject:        COV Broadcast – Memorandum from City Manager – Human Resource Measures MEMORANDUM FROM THE CITY MANAGER – Human […]

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City puts an Olympic village project overseer on the case

February 13th, 2009 · 1 Comment

It was one year to the Olympics yesterday, but for the city and the Olympic village developers, the deadline is much closer: Oct. 31 to be exact, except for a couple of buildings that are going to be delivered Nov. 30. The city is still working on finalizing its financing, and it’s also taking extreme […]

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New police crackdown spreads in Downtown Eastside generates protest

February 12th, 2009 · 9 Comments

Vancouver police brought out their 2009 business plan a few weeks ago, which was unusual in the numbers it attached to some of its efforts. Among them, police set a target of increasing ticketing for bylaw infractions in the Downtown Eastside by 20 per cent, ticketing for Safe Streets Act offences by 10 per cent, […]

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Olympic deal?

February 12th, 2009 · 2 Comments

The Globe’s Gary Mason has a story today about the city getting close to coming to a deal with Fortress, the lender on the Olympic village project, to take over the financing. It’s not a completely done deal yet, of course, since Fortress’s syndicate partners have to agree to this too and the city still […]

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Affordable housing the latest project to get a SWAT team

February 12th, 2009 · 5 Comments

Remember the Vision Vancouver promise to create an affordable housing boom? Here comes the task force to accomplish same, as you can see in this motion coming up next week from councillors Geoff Meggs and Raymond Louie here. It’ll be interesting to see what kinds of solutions they can come up with, given how dramatically […]

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More than one in 10 cycle to work in some Vancouver neighbourhoods

February 11th, 2009 · 32 Comments

That’s the news from the highly anticipated, recently compiled statistics on cycling and walking in Vancouver, which comes out just in time for the pro and con sides in the Burrard Bridge debate to whack each other on the head with the numbers. It’s also the occasion when Vancouver lords it over all the other […]

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