Taking shelter from an infinite ceiling in a perfect storm.

Ride through Vancouver, and you will see that the city is home to far too many homeless people sleeping rough in neighbourhoods all over the place.

Less apparent, yet equally important to the equation is all of the Homes-Less-People, the multitude of condos and detached houses alike, entirely empty of inhabitants, sitting vacant year after year after year.

The path to this door has been unused for so long that it is almost completely lost to moss.

Whole neighbourhoods are turning into ghost towns, so that fewer and fewer privately owned places are actually occupied. According to the 2001 census, almost a quarter of the residences in Coal Harbour sit empty, causing house prices to skyrocket as fewer and fewer homes remain available to Vancouver residents looking for a place to live. And it's not all condominiums, either.

It's happening all over the lower mainland, but the nicer the neighbourhood, the more it attracts the foreign investor. Vancouver's great beauty, its very liveability is working against our best interests. It's turning our nicest areas into empty, vacant villages.

Take a ride through Shaughnessy with your eyes peeled for the signs of abandonment, and you will be surprised at how many homes are unoccupied. Look for moss on driveways, and rott eating away at a back lane garage. We took just such a ride, and came upon a big old house listed for sale. We stopped by just as the agent was locking the gate. She asked if we would like to view the property, and of course we jumped at the chance.

This 8,000 square foot house is listed at $13.5 million dollars, down from the original $15 million. The agent is a lovely woman named Wendy Tian, of Sutton West Coast Realty. Her number is (604)375-6030,  just in case you've an extra twenty million or so kicking around and a fierce yearning for a to-do project. This is one of those very residences which has been empty for years. The man who bought it was originally planning to turn it into a fifteen thousand square foot home, complete with an inside/outside pool. It will stand in place of the old pool which sits there now, in view of the neighbouring Canuck Place Children's hospice, which is simply the best neighbour a person could hope for, at least if karma has anything to do with it.

The owner's contractors had already begun taking the house apart, so it is without its fixtures and fittings.

He had a full set of blueprints drawn up, and all of the permits are in place, but after work had begun, the owner decided that he would rather build his mansion on the hill in West Vancouver, where he can enjoy a beautiful view.  He bought another property, and began work on it there. And so this house sits empty, uninhabited and unliveable. 

I asked Wendy whether she'd had any offers to date, because I had heard that bidding wars were becoming quite common here in Vancouver. She said that when it was first listed at $15 million, a woman offered $13 million, and the owner declined. Then just a week or so ago, "A kid from China offered the list price for the property, as long as nobody told his parents about it." And Wendy told me that she replied to him that "No, sorry. We won't do that sort of thing." Apparently the boy wanted to store his car collection here, but he didn't want his dad to know what he was up to. !!!! That's some kinda garage. We won't even mention the money laundering that happens in Vancouver Real Estate Transactions. Nope. Not a word.

You will find a fair few massive, unbelievably expensive homes scattered throughout the lower mainland, and increasingly they belong to foreign nationals who don't even spend a fraction of their time here. And despite the price of property here in southwestern BC, which impacts the price of everything, from food to clothes and beyond, wages have not even begun to catch up. That means that what would have been a comfortable, middle class salary ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago is now too small to make ends meet. What used to be middle class is today the working poor, folks struggling to afford their lives. People who used to hold a reasonable expectation that they would buy a home, and pay off the mortgage in twenty odd years must now dream an impossible dream. I met a couple the other day, both of whom hold masters degrees in their chosen fields. They have a baby, and would love another, but they can't afford two children. They also can't afford to buy a place, not even a two bedroom condo, and although they are both working full time, they are struggling to make ends meet. They are the very definition of middle class, and yet (depending on your definition of impoverished), they are also the working poor.

But Vancouver real estate wasn't always so far out of reach. Let me introduce you to the Vancouver Special.

These wonders of architectural mediocrity were createded to maximize square footage to a standard city lot, and were designed with the primary living space on the top floor, and secondary bedrooms on the ground floor. This made it a simple thing to build an inlaw suite, which, when rented out made it easier to pay off a mortgage, or to bring granny over from the old country to help care for the little ones. Between the mid sixties and the mid eighties thousands of these places were built to provide an affordable housing solution to immigrant and working class families. You'll still find them today, scattered all over town, though of course you will find way more of them east of Main than on the west side.

Given the obscene price of real estate and painfully low average wages, you would think that the Government would step in and create a buffer for the populace by building some affordable housing. After all, any self respecting G8 government would by nature be aghast at the possibility of being at the center of a crisis of homelessness, but our leaders don't care, just so long as their patrons are raking in the dosh. They hung us out to dry. Our federal and provincial governments both ended any and all support for affordable housing, preferring instead to build bigger prisons.

Now let me introduce you to the Vancouver Especially:

Vancouver Especially

This is a scale model of the original Vancouver Special, created especially for the 2015 Bienale by artist Ken Lum, as a commentary on the soaring cost of living here in the Lower Mainland. Mr Lum (creator of the East Van Cross) received $45,000 in grants to build this exhibit, which is what it would have cost to purchase one of these boxy residences in the mid 1970's. Originally, he had planned to build a replica the exact size of what $45,000 will get you in today's housing market, but that would be much too small for this project. Instead, he etched a $45,000 space into the front of the display.

Talk about living in a shoe box! Actually, with the rise of micro condos, shoebox housing is the only option left for plenty of people.

For a while, a fair few creative individuals were staying financially afloat by mooring their live-aboard boats in False Creek indefinitely, but with the coming of the Olympics, the tides turned, and the city put an end to that.

Vancouver has a rich history of sqautting, and an equally strong record of evicting those willing to take a housing crisis into their own hands. The Bank of Canada surprised everyone early this year when they dropped interest rates even further, despite what analysts have been saying for years about an overheated property bubble. If they drop it any further, they'll have to pay us to borrow money for a mortgage. And frankly, what with the price of housing, we're going to need all the help we can get. The obscene price of real estate in Vancouver isn't going to change any time soon, however. Not even if the bubble bursts. There is just such a limited supply, and an ever increasing demand.

Some people are doing what they can. Atira, the Vancouver Women's Resource Society, created Canada's first recycled shipping container housing development on Alexander St, just down the block from the city's very well patronised homeless shelters.

There are other examples of sustainable housing in the city, too. Cob houses are an interesting alternative to the bricks and mortar more commonly found around town.

And apparently yurts are making a comeback, too, providing a fresh perspective on the ancient issue of finding shelter from the elements. That's a whole new take on a tent city.

But the problem here isn't about the price of building a structure, it's about the cost of the land itself, and the ever widening chasm between the average person's earnings and the cost of living in the city where the jobs are.

Something is rotten in the country of Canada, Horatio. It's not right. The banks are all making record profits whilst the middle class simply disappears. Fewer and fewer Vancouverites can afford the roofs over their heads, even as a teenaged boy is prepared to drop fifteen million dollars on a Shaughnessy estate to house his secret car collection. Something has got to give. It's inevitable. Who knows? Maybe change will happen organically, and withougt resistance. Men like Warren Buffet give me hope. And then there's John Caudwell. He is one of the wealthiest men in the UK, a truly self made man, who is giving half of his fortune to charity. He retired from his mobile phone empire to pursue a new direction and now he strives daily to become the greatest philanthropist the country has ever seen. His Instagram account has all of the usual photos of the life and times of a young and influential billionaire and his beautiful wife and kids, but one photo stands out:

The CBC recently aired a BBC interview with Mr Caudwell, which ended with his line "All I need is my health and my bike." Hear hear. I couldn't agree more.