Olympics: a Plus or Minus for Vancouver?

I voted for the olympics. I wanted them to come. I liked the idea of 'inviting the world to Vancouver' and I also figured it was a good motivator to get different levels of government to commit funding to infrastructure.

Now, I'm not so sure.

Part of my initial enthusiasm was hearing VANOCs agreements to make the Olympics a WIN for several segments of society. The athletes village was going to be leading-edge green design, plus include social housing if I recall (I may be wrong). I thought there was going to be a legacy fund for housing. Etc.

So far, what I've mostly heard is:

The Eagle's Ridge was a red-alert eco-site, that got destroyed to build the highway to Whistler.

The leading-edge green design site isn't so wonderful anymore (I had no idea it would entail yet.more.landfill, did you?) at the athletes village site. I don't know a lot about what was promised there, but I suspect it's been a serious disappointment.

The housing legacy fund (if it ever was such a thing) is definitely no longer such a thing - just a generic kind of fund for something or other.

and certainly my neighbourhood (gastown/dtes) is experiencing displacement already.

And I've heard rumours that VANOC wants to wrap lots of buildings in banners with olympic images, which hardly seems like our enviro-sensitive image we try to portray.

As you can tell, I'm not terribly informed on this, but as part of my "change" - I'm going to try to find out more facts.

Can I remain happy the Olympics are coming? And are they truly 'green' as a recent report by the Suzuki Foundation claims? (Greenpeace said the same about Sidney, and lost tons of credibility). Are they bringing a net economic boom to most of us, or only to the top tiers of Vancouverites?

If you have opinions or suggestion on where to research let me know.