London, England and Vancouver, BC, Canada

In the July 5, 2013 issue of The Guardian Weekly, Patrick Collinson has an article entitled: “Number of £1m homes rises by a third”.  Some cities in the UK promote people to buy derelict homes for £1, and there are areas in the nation where many homes sell for under £50,000. This is in contrast to what is happening in well-to-do London.  A quote: “Overseas buyers are behind much of the boom in what upmarket estate agents are now referring to as a new mini city-state, PCL – prime central London. In 2012, of 7,000 new-build homes, more than 5,000 went to overseas buyers, and the estate agency Knight Frank said buyers from just two countries, China and Singapore, bought 40% of them. But buyers rarely occupy the properties, leaving parts of prime central London empty of residents. The main beneficiary has been the Treasury, which in March last year imposed a 7% stamp duty on home sales above £2m.”

Is there a similar phenomenon in specific neighbourhoods of Vancouver with unoccupied houses and condos? People in the Dunbar area decry the deterioration in neighbourliness that is a result of houses left unoccupied. Other results:

• the local economy is not supported (aside from landscape maintenance and security businesses)
• children are not enrolled in schools
• participation in community centres, places of worship, and other local organizations does not take place 
• the pool of residents for civic engagement is reduced
• the opposite of densification happens
• public transit is not used
• fewer people out and about taking walks and gardening can mean less safety