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SULLIVAN: A nation of few winners and a mob of losers

I got a notice in the mail the other day from a government bureaucrat who says the value of my apartment has gone up 43 per cent in a year. This is a family newspaper, so I won’t use the notorious Internet acronym that came to mind at the time.
Sullivan

I got a notice in the mail the other day from a government bureaucrat who says the value of my apartment has gone up 43 per cent in a year.

This is a family newspaper, so I won’t use the notorious Internet acronym that came to mind at the time. Instead, how about WTH – What the heck?

This “assessment” makes sense if you calculate the value per square foot based on sales in the area on July 1, but it’s wrong in so many other ways. For example, the BC Assessment Office is enshrining the temporary impact of a real estate bubble for taxation purposes, and then the government subsequently raises the level at which homeowners qualify for the “homeowner grant,” which is in fact a tax break.

So the point is?

Did you know the Mad Hatter had taken over the assessment office?

Of course I’m not the only one whose wealth has nearly doubled on paper in a year. As Jane Seyd reported here last week, average increases in residential assessments are 36 per cent in the District of North Vancouver, so I’m surrounded by neighbours who are experiencing the same modified rapture.

I say modified because it’s apparent to all that the market has peaked and if you try to sell your jewel on the open market for its assessed value, good luck. The handy real estate sell phrase “below assessed value” is about to get a workout.

Maybe one way of keeping the assessors honest is to require the assessment office to offer the assessed value to people who put their homes on the market – or charge assessors with the responsibility of selling homes for the assessed value. That’ll bring ’em down.

Meanwhile, we’re faced with the spectacle of people rushing to appeal their assessment – in effect arguing that their homes are less valuable than the assessment office says they are.
Curiouser and curiouser.

Mind boggle aside, this has real consequence for real people. Despite the hike in the qualifying assessment threshold to $1.6 million, more than 1,000 people will lose part or all of the homeowner grant. It doesn’t matter if they were naughty or nice in 2016; no grant for you.

This grant thing costs the government $820 million in lost tax revenue. That’s all taxpayers, including renters, who shouldn’t be expected to take up the slack while some fat cat columnist continues to qualify for a property tax discount even though the value of his real estate has increased by 43 per cent.

And because I’ve managed to survive for 55 years (OK, and a bit) I can defer my property taxes until I sell my ridiculously valued apartment. And if I never sell it, you guys will have to cover the municipal budget without me.

I imagine a lot of people feel like innocent bystanders while their real estate turns them into millionaires while they do nothing. But the worst consequence of this Monopoly game is that it’s no game. Too many people are on the outside looking in through no fault of their own. I can’t imagine what it’s like for families looking for a home to raise their kids in this market.

This is not sustainable. Not just because the real estate market could easily collapse at midnight turning overnight millionaires back into mice, but because on the larger stage, we’re turning into a nation of mice.

As Justin Trudeau goes looking for the middle class in the coffee shops of the nation, what’s left of the middle class is processing the news that the two richest Canadians have as much money as one-third of Canadians combined, 11 million people. And if that’s not enough to blow your mind, Oxfam says the world’s eight richest people have as much wealth as the poorest 50 per cent.

Again: Eight people have as much money as 3.6 billion.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember, but our democracy is built on equal rights for all. But the economy is out of control: bypassing the Charter and creating a few winners and a mob of losers.

Assess that, why don’t you.

Journalist and communications consultant Paul Sullivan has been a North Vancouver resident since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of Madonna. p.sullivan@breakthroughpr.com

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