The Editor,
Re: Offshore dollars pose possible cause to poverty rates, Letters, Nov. 30, Face it folks, poverty lives here, Letters, Dec. 9.
Its interesting reading both Julie Halfnights and De Whalens letters with regards to Statistic Canada and their report on child poverty.
I have to agree with both of them. The statistics are misleading and, yes, there is poverty in Richmond.
I recall the last federal election giving out details from the Census data in Richmond and it stated the annual family income in Richmond was $67,627 per year ($53,489 per household) and a single detached house was in the $650,000 average range.
This data was collected when we had a hot economy. We all know salaries havent really gone up much in the last six years, but real estate certainly has.
That $67,627 per year is family income, which often means two working parents and, in this day and age, probably one or two grown-up employed children still living at home.
The relationship between these two statistics simply does not add up especially when you consider the average detached house in Richmond is now in the $900,000 range.
What bank lends out $700,000-$800,000 mortgages on a $67,000 average family salary?
Even with some misleading statistics that dont tell every individuals story, it seems quite clear there is a lot of undeclared income and imported offshore wealth to compensate for this huge gap.
Richmonds wealth is not made up of average families working nine to five.
When my family moved to Richmond in 1978 an average five-year-old house was $80,000 and the average family income was, say, $15,000 per year.
The average house was 5.3 times the average salary. In 2011, that same house would list for $1,000,000.
For a family to have the same purchasing power in the real estate market today, they would have to earn $188,679.00 per year.
Of course that same house is now forty years old, has shag carpeting and a harvest-gold coloured bathroom!
I believe this trend has created a large underclass in the community that does require resources such as the food bank, many that never considered themselves as poor.
I graduated 20 years ago from Richmond High School and find I am one of the very few that still live in Richmond.
Most of my graduating class simply cant afford to live and raise a family in the city where they grew up and have long since packed up and left for Langley, the Fraser Valley and the Okanagan.
Ken Moffatt
Richmond
