Editor:
My elderly friends and I find ourselves in a bind. We live on the Sunshine Coast, but have for years kept a small apartment in Vancouver for many reasons:
• We have grandchildren there, and go over to help out or attend events in which they participate.
• Our children cannot accommodate us overnight in their small home.
• Our out-of-town children visit periodically, using the apartment for a few days to catch up with their Vancouver friends, before joining us in Gibsons. The apartment is a family resource.
• There are health issues. We come in for doctors’ appointments and hospital visits. When one person of an elderly couple is hospitalized for days/weeks, it is helpful to have a small footprint in Vancouver.
• I regularly visit my elderly mother residing in an assisted-living home there.
• We plan to remain in our Coastal home as long as our health continues. However, many of us, knowing that the stock of seniors’ assisted-housing on the Sunshine Coast is woefully inadequate, find comfort in having a small place to move back to, closer to our children when the need arises (which it will).
Currently, this comes to usage less than 180 days of the year. It could take only one significant illness or hospitalization to tip the scale to more than this amount.
The vacancy tax was never meant to affect people such as us. It was meant to curb the speculation in real estate, mainly by offshore investors that have made urban housing unaffordable, and unavailable. And yet for people like us on fixed incomes, this tax will cause undue hardship. The number of exemptions need to be expanded to accommodate people in our situation.
Rainer Borkenhagen MD, Gibsons
