If The Youth Can't Rent, They Probably Won't Stay

"Talk to Vancouverites in their 30s or younger, and you learn why, despite a booming economy, a lot of them doubt they'll spend their futures here. Which can't be good for the city's own future."

"Young people, of course, tend to rent while taking a city's measure and working toward owning a home. In Vancouver, the rental vacancy rate is under 1 per cent. Landlords, therefore, can be very picky, and so a caste system has developed among prospective tenants. To be young is to occupy a bottom rung. To be young, male and not in graduate school, the very bottom."

"Almost all the new rental housing coming on line is investor-owned condos, and so those rents are in sync with the city's famously skyrocketing house values. The result, according to a report in the newspaper Georgia Straight, is a crisis placing hundreds of young Vancouverites at risk of swelling the homeless ranks."