Bailout this.

Thanks to cost overruns and the U.S. credit crunch, the Vancouver City Council is giving serious consideration to bailing out the Olympic Village.

This page says that City Hall, Millennium Development, and VANOC are getting what they deserve. The original bid for the 2010 Olympics called for one third of the residences in the Village to be converted to below-market affordable housing once the Games were over. That allocation, and other socially conscious initiatives from the previous COPE-controlled City Council made some of us a little more comfortable in casting our ballots in the 2003 referendum on hosting the Olympics. After the NPA stole the 2005 Civic election, that figure was slashed to 20%, which, along with other developers' stampede to bulldoze Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels in the Downtown Eastside, aggravated Vancouver's ongoing Social Housing problem to the crisis point it's at now.

Should the City of Vancouver bail out the real estate robber barons? This page says yes, and don't go looking back to the top of the masthead, because here's the deal: At present, only 60% of the Athlete's Village/Millennium Water developments are sold. Any bailout would be conditional on Millennium forgoing sales of the other 40% and allocating those units for affordable housing. If they don't like it, they can cut their losses and sell their whole project back to the City, who for those of you scoring at home, don't have the same financing problems given the large tax base. Gawd forbid that tax money go towards providing shelter for people in most need of it, as opposed to say, more Olympic junkets for 'Wheels' Sullivan or the NPA picking more fights with CUPE. As for the people who've already bought a property and don't like the prospect of renting neighbours drawn from ranks outside the apparent social 'elites', they can suck it up or move.

Of course, this won't happen, given that both major parties at City Hall are bankrolled by Developers who want to see Vancouver become another San Fransisco where anybody who actually has to work for a living is shoved to the suburban fringe thanks to gentrification, perpetually flipping properties, and a total disregard for any real notion of community. It's the same kind of fake economics which have terrorized Wall Street and threatened the Olympic Village's financing in the first place.