The Tyee. June 9, 2021. Patrick Condon is always worth a read and his latest column no less so. This time he makes a case for providing affordable housing by separating the connection between property value assigned to building and to land (where all the speculation occurs). He advocates zoning specifically for non-market, non-profit housing to weed out speculators at no cost taxpayers. Although his focus is on Vancouver, his arguments are equally applicable to Nanaimo (and most other cities in Canada, for that matter). Assuming his proposal is sound, the question becomes whether local governments will pick this up and put it into action. Vancouver failed to do so in its first attempt, but as Condon argues, not for the right reasons. Nanaimo now has an opportunity to take the lead – but whether the majority of our current Council can think outside the traditional real estate box is a question not yet answered. [ARTICLE LINK]