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When I saw the title, I wondered how a survivalist story got to front page on HN. Then I read it and saw it was really a story about high rents, and then of co

When I saw the title, I wondered how a survivalist story got to front page on HN. Then I read it and saw it was really a story about high rents, and then of course it made sense. My sense of where the highest rents are doesn't keep up with the times though. Tokyo became relatively inexpensive long before I figured it out. New York beat London at some point, and when Vancouver had overtaken San Francisco I was floored.

goatherders 7y ago
I spend about 70% of my time in Vancouver. My rented house there is half the size of my place in Austin and costs 3x as much. My wife and I joke occassionally that we could leave Van for almost any other place on earth - including Manhattan - and see our COL go down.
- flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
  That's true but why would you? Vancouver is an awesome/beautiful place to live. They don't even have the building restrictions that san fran does. They're building like crazy in that city and the price per square foot just keeps going up because it's in high demand. The rents are high for good reason imho.
  - nathancahill 7y ago
    High demand != foreign (read, chinese) investment.
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      The foreign investment is part of the high demand.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        High demand for a place to offshore money != high demand for a place to live. The former is why the price per sqm is high. The latter would communicate that a place is actually nice to live in.
        chrisseaton 7y ago
        The market doesn't care why you are demanding a property.
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        It doesn't, but the question is about whether or not one wants to live in a location - which is only one of many market forces at play in determining rent prices.
        AngryData 7y ago
        Maybe it should when the very future of that market is decided by those factors. If people aren't going to be living or utilizing those spaces the market value and actual demand will continue to deviate until at some point where it crashes and fucks over the people living there. Meanwhile the foreign investors, who likely won't be hurt by losing a property they didn't even use, won't give two shits.
        flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
        Vancouver is actually nice to live in, and the price per sqm is high.
  - goatherders 7y ago
    Oh we love it there. It just happens to be very expensive. Thankfully the favorable exchange rate at the moment helps with other COL expenses (groceries).
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
The bigger issue I see is the low quality police work. Back "in the day" it wasn't uncommon for US police to frame random black guys for crimes in order to consider the crime solved. Sticking a homeless guy in prison over something that's a natural right in other parts of the world and in the presence of substantial doubt that it was even his (plausible other reasons for his DNA to be on the gun and no motive to have it in the first place) seems to be about the same level of quality.
- pjc50 7y ago
  The lack of proof that the gun was linked to him sounded quite alarming. What I suspect happened was like the #twitterjoketrial: once anti-terrorism police had got involved, it was impossible to de-escalate it and admit it was just a homeless guy and not a secret terrorist bunker. (The setup is superficially very similar to "stay behind" operations, so I can sort of see how someone might have panicked)
  - J-dawg 7y ago
    It's definitely alarming. These cases of selective enforcement seem to happen at random. I think you're right that it's mostly face saving. Recently they even turned on one of their own: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/mar/04/met-officer-faces-sack-over-child-abuse-video-despite-appeal https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/mar/04/met-officer-...
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    It's basically "We don't know what this, so let's call it terrorism" - which apparently includes any form of social deviance or unsanctioned initiative.
riazrizvi 7y ago
To me it's a story of creative disruption, which belongs in a community of entrepreneurs.

goatherders 7y ago

I spend about 70% of my time in Vancouver. My rented house there is half the size of my place in Austin and costs 3x as much. My wife and I joke occassionally that we could leave Van for almost any other place on earth - including Manhattan - and see our COL go down.

flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
That's true but why would you? Vancouver is an awesome/beautiful place to live. They don't even have the building restrictions that san fran does. They're building like crazy in that city and the price per square foot just keeps going up because it's in high demand. The rents are high for good reason imho.
- nathancahill 7y ago
  High demand != foreign (read, chinese) investment.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    The foreign investment is part of the high demand.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      High demand for a place to offshore money != high demand for a place to live. The former is why the price per sqm is high. The latter would communicate that a place is actually nice to live in.
      - chrisseaton 7y ago
        The market doesn't care why you are demanding a property.
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        It doesn't, but the question is about whether or not one wants to live in a location - which is only one of many market forces at play in determining rent prices.
        AngryData 7y ago
        Maybe it should when the very future of that market is decided by those factors. If people aren't going to be living or utilizing those spaces the market value and actual demand will continue to deviate until at some point where it crashes and fucks over the people living there. Meanwhile the foreign investors, who likely won't be hurt by losing a property they didn't even use, won't give two shits.
      - flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
        Vancouver is actually nice to live in, and the price per sqm is high.
- goatherders 7y ago
  Oh we love it there. It just happens to be very expensive. Thankfully the favorable exchange rate at the moment helps with other COL expenses (groceries).

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

The bigger issue I see is the low quality police work. Back "in the day" it wasn't uncommon for US police to frame random black guys for crimes in order to consider the crime solved. Sticking a homeless guy in prison over something that's a natural right in other parts of the world and in the presence of substantial doubt that it was even his (plausible other reasons for his DNA to be on the gun and no motive to have it in the first place) seems to be about the same level of quality.

pjc50 7y ago
The lack of proof that the gun was linked to him sounded quite alarming. What I suspect happened was like the #twitterjoketrial: once anti-terrorism police had got involved, it was impossible to de-escalate it and admit it was just a homeless guy and not a secret terrorist bunker. (The setup is superficially very similar to "stay behind" operations, so I can sort of see how someone might have panicked)
- J-dawg 7y ago
  It's definitely alarming. These cases of selective enforcement seem to happen at random. I think you're right that it's mostly face saving. Recently they even turned on one of their own: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/mar/04/met-officer-faces-sack-over-child-abuse-video-despite-appeal https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/mar/04/met-officer-...
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  It's basically "We don't know what this, so let's call it terrorism" - which apparently includes any form of social deviance or unsanctioned initiative.

riazrizvi 7y ago

To me it's a story of creative disruption, which belongs in a community of entrepreneurs.