Some questions still left about Liberal refugee plan
Posted November 24, 2015 5:01 pm.
Last Updated November 24, 2015 5:03 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – We still don’t have an answer from the federal government for one of the most pressing questions: where will the refugees go once they arrive in BC? There’s concern the minuscule rental vacancy rate and sky-high prices could make getting by difficult once government assistance runs out.
People with roots in Canada and average jobs struggle to afford enough space for their families, even if they can find a suitable rental. The rental vacancy rate in Vancouver is at 0.8 per cent. It will be even harder for a refugee just trying to get a toe in the economy.
Penny Gurstein, the Director of the School of Community and Regional Planning at UBC, says the refugee housing issue exposes Vancouver’s biggest problem. “This is bringing up again the real issue about the lack of purpose-built rental housing in Vancouver. We’re losing purpose built rental housing that is affordable or even unaffordable and there’s very little that’s being done to replace it.”
Gurstein says there are two schools of thought on which lifestyle is best for refugees. “We’ve been moving more towards having neighbourhoods where there seems to be more like-minded people living together… The natural way of thinking about it is that that’s where they would want to necessarily live and that’s where they’d be relocated because there wouldn’t be as much of a language barrier and all those sorts of things.”
She thinks smaller towns could be better. “Maybe it’s better to be going to places where there was fewer in the population, it’s less dense and maybe then they would be able to assimilate easier.”
There’s no word on when we could know exactly where refugees will settle.
