Vancouver’s red-lining real estate market has led to a few casualties. Among them is local journalism. I mean that in three different, but mutually reinforcing, ways.
1. Grabbing the headlines
The focus on rising property values, a shrinking rental market and overall affordability has sucked all the oxygen out of newsrooms. And for an understandable reason — shelter was deemed a basic human right by the UN General Assembly way back in 1948, when it was enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. You can’t fault the local press for expending column inches and airtime over a human need topped only by food and water.
However, this means issues involving housing and affordability have largely displaced other newsworthy topics in the civic consciousness, including those of global dimensions. The public dialogue in Vancouver used to be about a lot more than where and how people park their butts and bucks.
2. A failure of nerve
It’s no big secret that Postmedia, the publisher of the city’s two dailies, is in serious financial trouble (in January, RBC Dominion Securities cut its price target on the shares from 50 cents to zero). Ads for high-rise developments comprise a significant fraction of the revenue for Postmedia’s local operations; so despite of the much-ballyhooed firewall between the departments of news and advertising, there’s an unspoken incentive for staffers to sing the free market hymn of rising tides and lifting boats. Or at least practise some self-censorship.
An example of this may be found in the press response to the release of a city-commissioned study that found only one per cent of single family homes were empty in Metro Vancouver.
The overall vacancy rate of available units reportedly hovered at 4.8 per cent.
A number of our print pundits predictably seized on this as proof that speculative money from foreign buyers was a market myth. Reporter Kerry Gold, less beholden to the West Coast property paradigm, quickly deconstructed this conclusion in a report for the Globe and Mail titled “Poking holes in Vancouver’s housing vacancy study.”
The author of the commissioned study was frank about its limitations, which relied on BC Hydro data on electricity use, Gold noted. “Houses that had the electricity turned off — such as old houses that sit empty as they await permits for demolition and redevelopment — were not counted in the study. They were only counted after electrical service had been restored for a full year,” she observed.
Many newly built homes were also exempt from the study, as well as houses with lights on timers or visiting caretakers.
3. A knock-off effect on revenue
Media outlets across North America have been hit hard as advertising dollars migrate to social media and online portals, even as the former seek — unsuccessfully, for the most part — to monetize their own digital footprint. Over the past two years, many print-based periodicals in Canada have shrunken considerably.
That much is obvious. Yet there may be another factor that is compounding the problem here.
A few months back someone in the news business shared an interesting theory with me. The Vancouver real estate market has not just inflated residential property values, but also leases for local retail operations. As a result, many business owners are finding it increasing difficult to turn a profit in the city and are pulling up stakes. This translates into further shrinkage of the media ad revenue base. Many large corporate chains prefer to advertise nationally rather than target local markets — so they are not about to fill this gap.
Hard data is difficult to come by on this theory. The “known unknowns” include the number of long-time retailers who have shuttered their businesses, relocated or gone bankrupt as a result of rising leases. The “unknown knowns” include the number of young people who would have started up retail operations of their own by now, but have failed to do so given the discouraging prospects.
It sounds plausible. Who would doubt a “ripple effect” on journalism from waves of foreign money crashing into our shores?
