If you’re a homeowner in Richmond, congratulations. If you’re not, take a hike.
I’m either a young Generation Xer or an old Millennial. Living in Metro Vancouver, it’s probably more apropos to slot me into what I’ll call Generation Screwed.
For the vast majority of my Richmond friends — who form a very diverse group — owning even a townhouse in this city is out of the question and the exodus is on.
Council’s decision to tap into casino reserves to the tune of about $2 million is not only classist — and possibly ageist — it should beg concern from everyone’s conscience.
Richmond has done a good job building up its infrastructure, but it has a ways to go and younger people can rightfully be left a bit puzzled as to how council was so willing to break with procedure to give property owners a tax break.
The money diverted was money for future generations.
Coun. Alexa Loo noted that during university she accepted the fees she was charged by the school to pay for a future gym because she used the Student Union Building her dad paid for.
Later, I would at least look at that gym. Then, I paid for a new SUB that I would never use, but perhaps Loo’s kids will, some day.
That $2 million council decided to give back to property owners would have accrued interest to help pay for something like a new community centre in Steveston or even a few metres of heightened dyke.
I’m glad my parents had free bridges, cheap homes, well-paying jobs, job security, no sales taxes and the Beatles.
But it’s now up to my friends and I to pay back the billions of dollars of debt generated by those older generations on capital projects (that cannot be hidden in this global economy) while simultaneously being asked to scrape together enough money to build new things (see bridge tolls, sales tax, transit tax, increased government fees), not to mention subsidize increasingly complicated medical services for those older generations.
Seniors living in homes on fixed incomes, including the Canadian Pension Plan (which I hope exists when I retire, but I’m not holding my breath) deserve sympathy, which is something that best works both ways.
Seniors have the ability to defer their taxes with sub-prime lending rates, but that’s just another subsidy from future generations.
It should be noted the extent to which council bent over backwards to save homeowners from what amounts to about $20 each, on average.
Yet, while council subsidized homeowners (the upper class), it deferred paying out health, social and safety municipal grant applicants (the lower class) to the tune of $260,000.
The excuse not to increase grants? Council wanted to follow procedure and wait for a forthcoming review of casino revenue expenditures, which includes distribution of grants.
I understand those grants are contentious, and arguments from the city that the province needs to step up certainly holds weight.
But all those souls are now left to fend for themselves in 2015 as they wait for the bureaucracy to decide to top up the grants.
Meanwhile, homeowners will immediately claw back that $20, after council bounced that whole review procedure.
I ask, is it worth it? Is it worth knowing we’ve taxed the future, again?
Graeme Wood is a reporter for the Richmond News.
