Dear Editor:
Going through my backlog issues of the North Shore News, I've come across your "Afforda-BULL" (Oct. 19) editorial on affordable housing.
I'd like to offer the perspective that "affordable housing" is a mirage - all in the eye of the beholder. What is affordable to one person is not affordable to another, and this is true regardless of the price. The only thing that everyone can afford is something that is free of charge. As soon as you put a price on it, you push it out of the reach of someone. For that person, it is no longer affordable. So when we come up with an arbitrary number that is "affordable," all we have really done is identify which people we regard as our friends - those we'd like to help.
With affordable housing, what we're really talking about is using the government's power of coercion to thwart the aims of people we disapprove of and to subsidize people we approve of. The North Shore News, to judge by your editorial, approves of "young couples" and disapproves of foreigners, "the world's wealthy," and investors. And you would like governments and politicians to share your love for the former and your antipathy to the latter, and to translate those feelings into interventions in the market.
But the market is not evil; it is (ideally anyway) the place where free people enter into voluntary agreements with each other. Fraud and coercion - including those practised by government - are what ruin markets, and, I would say, human life generally. If foreigners and investors are buying up North Shore housing, then presumably it's being turned into rental stock. Your beloved hypothetical young couple might be moving in next door after all, but without the millstone of a gigantic mortgage around their necks.
Paul Vitols
North Vancouver
