“Why is there affordable housing being built in Chilliwack and Mission but not in Abbotsford?” was the question posed to me by someone who had recently moved from working on a mental health team in Chilliwack to a mental health team in Abbotsford.

The answer to the question is simple and straightforward - Abbotsford City Council.

What is going on in Sydney Australia? They are an Olympic city (Summer too, not the puny Winter Games), they're on the water, they have lots of immigration, a jewel of a city. Sounds like Vancouver.

But their housing bubble exploded all over the place. Now, combined with crazy levels of personal debt, they have a new category of 'pay-later poor'.

Dormitory style housing is being proposed to deal with Vancouver's homeless problem.  Several city councillors are proposing building the housing which would consist of 100 square foot units with shared amenities.  NPA councillor Kim Capri said that they units could serve as transitional homes for people, until more specious accomodation could be found.  But the fear was that people would live in these units indefinately as there probably wouldn't be anywhere to transition to for many people.  Councillor from the opposition raised concerns about health and the safety of women in the facilities.

This is just ridiculous. Look at this cover of 24 Hours. The header says 'Bubble trouble?' but there is no article about the housing market or the bubble, just a generic photo of construction and the line 'Is the housing bubble about to burst? Experts say that while meteoric price hikes have subsided, the housing market is in no threat of crashing anytime soon.'

When I was young my mother, who had divorced our father, moved from place to place with my sister and I, and we never had a lot of money. We lived in different shelters for a time, then eventually my mother got a good job and managed to get into some subsidized housing. I was young at the time so I didn't think much about it, it was just the way we lived our life. But now that I am older and I own a nice townhouse in North Vancouver with my wife, I look back at those times and realized how difficult it must have for my mom, to always just scrape through life.