No matter how much you know, there’s always something new you can learn.

From this article in the Vancouver Sun there are at least 3 lessons we can learn:

1) Shaughnessy is a ‘tony’ neighborhood:

Laura De Munain moved into her family’s Oak Street house on the outskirts of the tony Shaughnessy neighbourhood in April. While working from home, the pregnant lawyer soon noticed groups of two or three people regularly stumbling around her back alley in a daze.

2) You can’t force absent owners to evict partiers from their property:

Police answered her first call to their non-emergency line and toured the property, but they “said they didn’t see any evidence of consistent living here,” according to De Munain. She says city staff referred her back to the police when she complained about drug users and squatters in June and asked the city to force the owner to board the home up properly.

3: Government hears you, but they’re not sure you mean what you say:

In the weeks leading up to this month’s civic election, a blog showcasing “beautiful empty homes” of the west side and a proposal from COPE mayoral candidate Meena Wong for a vacant home tax gained support from residents simmering with anger over Vancouver becoming a “hedge city” for foreign real estate investors.  A poll last month showed 72 per cent of respondents thought such a tax a “very good” or “good” proposal, and only 18 per cent deemed it “very bad” or “bad.”

Vision Vancouver Coun. Geoff Meggs said he, like many, finds it offensive when a perfectly good home is held empty for speculative reasons, but he doesn’t know that such a tax is “legally possible or even desirable.”

You’ve either learned something new from this writeup or it’s been a complete waste of your time. In either case you can read the full original article here.