A #vanre thread:

There’s a lot of revisionist history going on since @Dave_Eby made a statement on the study @Ayan604 did on non-anglicized Chinese names in Dunbar.

That study was one of the reasons @RWong1975, @razamirza and others like me got involved w/ @HALT_YVR.

1/

People seem to forget that in 2015 when @Ayan604 published his study, the BC Liberals had deliberately not collected data on where homebuyers were coming from.

This data simply didn’t exist, yet there were already rumblings about what was causing housing unaffordability.

2/

Meanwhile, the Urban Development Institute was welcoming mainland Chinese buyers with open arms. There was a profit to be made and @christyclarkbc’s campaign financing chair Condo King Bob Rennie would not be denied.

3/ https://twitter.com/mortimer_1/status/1130672832327823360

Any discussion about global capital flowing into #vanre from countries such as China were quickly labelled “racist” by white folks profiting from this financialization of our local housing market or the white politicians whose campaigns were bankrolled by them.

4/

If we want to talk about #StopAsianHate and #vanre then we should talk about why we are revisiting the work of @Ayan604, who has done more to bring data to the forefront of this conversation than anyone else, rather than the actions of the folks in my prior tweet. 5/

When @razamirza, @RWong1975, Gary Liu and myself started speaking out as @HALT_YVR, we knew it was important for POC and Chinese-Cdn voices to be part of the conversation.

We had to make it clear that this wasn’t about the colour of our skin but the colour of money.

6/

We knew that without appropriate policy to address the inequality of locals earning local incomes being unable to afford homes in the communities they lived in, xenophobia and the hate against people like us would only get worse.

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We knew that as Chinese-Canadian and immigrant voices that we could spark the right conversations and help people understand how to talk about the impacts of global capital inflows from an emerging superpower into a small city like Vancouver.

8/

I’m incredibly proud of the work we have done. I’m proud of @Ayan604 for so deftly navigating a very tricky position in order to deliver insights to explain with data what we were seeing on the ground.

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I’m grateful for the work of journalists like @GoldinYVR, @ianjamesyoung70, @scoopercooper, @bobmackin, Kathy Tomlinson who helped shine a light and for those in the media like @jonmccombVO, @CBCStephenQuinn, @steeletalk who carried on necessary and important conversations.

10/

I’m thankful for the work @Dave_Eby did as housing critic and I’m hopeful that in his capacity as Attorney General and the minister responsible for housing he will continue to institute policies that help British Columbians have affordable homes

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In short, I regret nothing. It pains me to think how much worse it could have been if the lies and deception of our prior governments, the corruption and the self-interested spin of lobby groups like the UDI and local realtor groups continued to control govt policy

12/

How much worse would it be for Chinese-Canadians today if the global flows of capital continued to flow in and our housing prices started to challenge Hong Kong’s home price to income ratio?

I shudder to think. Give Andy the keys to the city already.

13/ https://twitter.com/jhwfung/status/1352137476937195521