GEOG

Housing

REITS: Real Estate Investment Trusts

large companies that own massive real estate portfolios.

to produce income for their shareholders, not primarily to provide housing. These firms target older buildings, which serve as de facto affordable housing for vulnerable populations

Use Value

A things utility in serving a humans want or desire. what it can do for you. Designates a thing’s utility or use in satisfying a human need or want and is directly related to it physical material properties.

Exchange value

The price of something. The value that a commodity can be exchanged for other commodities on a market.

( ratio is often expressed through money )

Enclosure

The privatization of land under the justification that it was not being efficiently used.

Leads to comodification

Commodification

turning property to realestate.

A process in which the economic value ( exchange value ) of a thing comes to dominate all its other uses( Use Value) .

What makes something a comodity

because they have dual nature, because they are at the same time objects of utility and bearers of value.

Deregulation

moves wealth from the private to public sector

Financialization:

Turns housing from a necessity into an investment. Managers, bankers, and rentiers produce profits from real estate through buying, selling, financing, owning, and speculating.

Globalization

Housing markets are starting to become more responsive to global economic signals than to local ones. ( they advertise to foreign buyers sometimes before local ones.

When did comodification begin? and what does this process look like in vancouver?

 when land became privatized. ( Private property ) the process was called enclosure.

Broadway plan

A 30-year transit-oriented development project along Broadway to

make the Broadway Corridor Vancouver’s “second downtown” through Densification

Densification

Using the same amount of land to house more people. ( Building upwards/ more tiny spaces)

Rent gap

It’s the gap between the current value of property and its potential value

The difference between the median market rent, and the median surveyed rent ( what they are making v/s what they could be making if they redeveloped.

Delta rent:

The difference between the current minimum tenant rent and the maximum new tenant rent.

it is the incentive for landlords to evict current tenants who pay low rent to up the price without redeveloping.

Neo-liberal Capitalism:

the for profit privatization of land

Possible solutions to the housing crisis

1. Vancouvers Broadway plan

2. Tenant Unions & Organizing: by the people, for the people.

Proximate vs Structural

Proximate; The common every day “obvious” causes

Structural: The root cause, the Larger combination of social arrangements, relations, patterns

What are the solutions to the housing crisis

1. Vancouver Broadway Plan ( Market based approach)

• A 30 year Broadway plan to create Vancouver’s second downtown

• Aims to increase housing through densification. ( creating more housing from the same amount of land )

2. Forming Unions and Organizing: ( Tranja’s approach)

• Meeting with those who are directly impacted

• calling on the community to make the change they wish to see.

Vacancy control:

A policy that protects tenants by tying rent increases to the unit. requiring the new tenant to pay the same amount of rent as the previous tenant.

What structural factors does Vacancy control target?

• Deregulation: less wealth transfer taking place

• limits Financialization: Turning housing into less of an investment.

• Commodification: equalizes the exchange value to the use value

Filtering Theory

creating higher value housing with the assumption that higher income individuals will move into them. in doing so, their old residence will go to lower income families.

BCGEU on housing solutions:

1. Approach rent control as evidence- based social policy

2. Enact interventions directed against institutional investors

3. Nest regulatory approaches alongside complementary policies

4. Eliminate cost-pass through and above guideline provisions

5. Develop multi jurisdictional legislation and enforcement mechanisms

6. Focus policy development on those most impacted and with the least power

7. Invest deeply in the non-market supply of housing.

Non-market housing

Housing that isn’t controlled by the capitalist market. its produced and maintained without profit involved.