OT: The OT Thread

[Egghead1999]

Own app or just tapatalk?

own apps, coding from scratch, way better than using stupid CSS (??) for the mobile

 

[Egghead1999]

Say NO to another Olympics held in Vancouver.

Why?? by the time Vancouver will hold another Olympics, C19 should not be a topic at all.

I was working at gas town (near that stupid clock) when Vancouver held the oly. I could not tell the difference,

 

[RussianRacket]

Has nothing to do with COVID-19

 

[McDavid is too whiny]

I have to pay @Mr. Canucklehead $50/month to keep my account active but I must accept all the adds

This was funny.

 

[F A N]

I have to pay @Mr. Canucklehead $50/month to keep my account active but I must accept all the adds

Heh. Mr. Canucklehead for AGM!

 

[Reverend Mayhem]

Why?? by the time Vancouver will hold another Olympics, C19 should not be a topic at all.

I was working at gas town (around that stupid clock) when Vancouver held the oly. I could not tell the difference,

I don't know that we're ready to host again. Money would be better spent elsewhere. Like, affordable housing or actually trying to help the homeless. There's a buttload of things we could do rather to improve the city rather than a 3-week carnival.

 

[Hit the post]

I don't know that we're ready to host again. Money would be better spent elsewhere. Like, affordable housing or actually trying to help the homeless. There's a buttload of things we could do rather to improve the city rather than a 3-week carnival.

Yeah I could see spending a TON of money on this when we have a ton of homeless everywhere in the city (and no, I don't have any answers for how to solve that) would have such great optics. Politically, I could see a Liberal having an easier sell in the interior of Alberta during an election.

It's like talk of a new hockey arena. It'll gain no traction with the public unless it's pretty much completely privately funded.

 

[Egghead1999]

I don't know that we're ready to host again. Money would be better spent elsewhere. Like, affordable housing or actually trying to help the homeless. There's a buttload of things we could do rather to improve the city rather than a 3-week carnival.

That is not a good reason not to host OLY.
You cannot fix the homeless like this. If money could fix it, it would fix it when gas was 39.99. It is because money did not stay in the homeless area to "growth"

 

[Egghead1999]

Yeah I could see spending a TON of money on this when we have a ton of homeless everywhere in the city (and no, I don't have any answers for how to solve that) would have such great optics. Politically, I could see a Liberal having an easier sell in the interior of Alberta during an election.

It's like talk of a new hockey arena. It'll gain no traction with the public unless it's pretty much completely privately funded.

Don't believe liberals can breakout from the Edm area.

 

[Hit the post]

Don't believe liberals can breakout from the Edm area.

True, there are a FEW isolated pockets in Alberta like "Redmonton". But that's about it. It's still like if you say the words "National Energy Program" three times in Alberta and this guy will pop-up:

 

[ziploc]

I have lived in the DTES for the last 18 years, and have spent most of my life working with the homeless. It's why I was so angry with the first Olympics here, and was involved in some of the tent villages and protests, even though I love the Olympics as a sporting event. I have a strange hope, however, that if the First Nations are centrally involved in the bid there could be provisions in the bid for housing and better services. Lack of safe, affordable housing really is one of the major obstacles to people being housed. It's not the only obstacle by a long shot, and there are tons of ideologies out there competing for power, attention and money on this issue. But good, safe, affordable housing is a major piece.

 

[Bam19]

I’m curious how you would solve the housing crisis with money. The issue is lack of supply. A house went up for sale in my neighborhood last week and they had 50 showings in a a week and got like 12 offers.

The problem with supply is we don’t have more land and there are a ton of people that want larger homes which results in massive demand and price growth. Which then trickles down. To smaller properties as people get priced out of larger. Everywhere I drive there is tons of development. But until we functionally change society and move more people away from the lower mainland/Kelowna nothing with change.

 

[bandwagonesque]

Zoning is probably the biggest obstacle to building more housing. I was in Seattle recently and spent most of my time in a neighborhood very much like Commercial Drive or Main street. Instead of 2-3 stories of condos above the commercial level, there were 5-6 stories, and they looked great. Everyone has slightly (or very) different preferred solutions based on their own aesthetic tastes, but I think making mixed-use neighborhoods a little busier is a good tradeoff for creating housing where more people actually want to live.

 

[M2Beezy]

Zoning is probably the biggest obstacle to building more housing. I was in Seattle recently and spent most of my time in a neighborhood very much like Commercial Drive or Main street. Instead of 2-3 stories of condos above the commercial level, there were 5-6 stories, and they looked great. Everyone has slightly (or very) different preferred solutions based on their own aesthetic tastes, but I think making mixed-use neighborhoods a little busier is a good tradeoff for creating housing where more people actually want to live.

Wheres that in Seattle?

 

[Reverend Mayhem]

I’m curious how you would solve the housing crisis with money. The issue is lack of supply. A house went up for sale in my neighborhood last week and they had 50 showings in a a week and got like 12 offers.

The problem with supply is we don’t have more land and there are a ton of people that want larger homes which results in massive demand and price growth. Which then trickles down. To smaller properties as people get priced out of larger. Everywhere I drive there is tons of development. But until we functionally change society and move more people away from the lower mainland/Kelowna nothing with change.

I mean, you both asked and answered. We don't have much land, yes. But, you can make upgrades on currents lots that are currently becoming derelict. You can build in the sky. All of this doesn't really matter if you are doing it sporadically in certain pockets. There needs to be sweeping upgrades that provide opportunity to buy en masse to not cull, but reach proper demand levels. Currently, the powers that be seem to be content with the way the current market is outside of some band-aid fixes on issues such as foreign ownership, where the only reason they really acted is to keep good faith with the voters.

The truth is, most development companies don't care, and it's not hard to see why. Why spend all their money on an asset that won't be so fast to pay for itself, much less turn a profit? If they can't get owners/renters in ASAP after they break ground, they won't have capital to move on to their next project and so on and so forth. I don't blame them for this, but the buck should be stopping somewhere and it is not. No one really *cares* that the demand is so hot, it's lining their pockets. There's no incentive outside of a political power grab to do anything about it. And the government sure as shit isn't going to ask the GP for another tax raise to build the homes themselves. So, they'll be re-appropriating funds somewhere in the budget to make it work, if they wanted to, themselves. And if they wanted to sink their teeth into another Olympic venture, if you are one of the many younger than 30, and still renting, you should be asking some tough questions.

The Olympics were great, but it's like buying a bunch of cheesecake and devouring it yourself while the rest of the household starves and watches in fleeting enjoyment.

 

[bandwagonesque]

Wheres that in Seattle?

Pine/Pike and Capitol Hill

 

[Reverend Mayhem]

That is not a good reason not to host OLY.
You cannot fix the homeless like this. If money could fix it, it would fix it when gas was 39.99. It is because money did not stay in the homeless area to "growth"

It's not a good reason TO host it, either. There are obviously several different reasons why you shouldn't host. Someone with much more expertise on finance could probably explain better than I could. The 2010 Olympics were great, we had a fun time, let's let it go. There are plenty of better ways to improve city infrastructure than the motivation to have a big circlejerk on how great our city is.

 

[Egghead1999]

I mean, you both asked and answered. We don't have much land, yes. But, you can make upgrades on currents lots that are currently becoming derelict. You can build in the sky. All of this doesn't really matter if you are doing it sporadically in certain pockets. There needs to be sweeping upgrades that provide opportunity to buy en masse to not cull, but reach proper demand levels. Currently, the powers that be seem to be content with the way the current market is outside of some band-aid fixes on issues such as foreign ownership, where the only reason they really acted is to keep good faith with the voters.

The truth is, most development companies don't care, and it's not hard to see why. Why spend all their money on an asset that won't be so fast to pay for itself, much less turn a profit? If they can't get owners/renters in ASAP after they break ground, they won't have capital to move on to their next project and so on and so forth. I don't blame them for this, but the buck should be stopping somewhere and it is not. No one really *cares* that the demand is so hot, it's lining their pockets. There's no incentive outside of a political power grab to do anything about it. And the government sure as shit isn't going to ask the GP for another tax raise to build the homes themselves. So, they'll be re-appropriating funds somewhere in the budget to make it work, if they wanted to, themselves. And if they wanted to sink their teeth into another Olympic venture, if you are one of the many younger than 30, and still renting, you should be asking some tough questions.

The Olympics were great, but it's like buying a bunch of cheesecake and devouring it yourself while the rest of the household starves and watches in fleeting enjoyment.

Given Singapore, HK and other places exp. Most of the homeless / housing problems can be fixed or created within ten years. First of all, no one dares in Van / TOR to start fixing housing issues because Gov't is eating the cakes too. Then, touching the homeless issues, do you know how many NGOs depend on the funding?

 

[bandwagonesque]

Drawing more attention and international visitors to the city also may inflate housing prices in itself. I know a lot of old guard Vancouver types who say the city changed a lot after Expo 86. The people who build and own infrastructure don’t really care who uses it and who gets left out.

 

[mriswith]

I remember the argument for the 2010 Olympics at the time was that the tourism increase would pay off the infrastructure, so it was like getting a bunch of infrastructure upgrades for free. I have no idea if that ended up being true or not. I know Whistler's yearly tax revenue is astronomical, or at least it was pre-pandemic.

It'd be nice if people could get behind infrastructure upgrades without needing a big event, but the Olympics has a way of unifying the political will for it.

 

[Egghead1999]

It's not a good reason TO host it, either. There are obviously several different reasons why you shouldn't host. Someone with much more expertise on finance could probably explain better than I could. The 2010 Olympics were great, we had a fun time, let's let it go. There are plenty of better ways to improve city infrastructure than the motivation to have a big circlejerk on how great our city is.

I understand where you are coming from
I am not pro- or anti- Oly, Just that no OLy does not mean more $ to improve city infrastructure or build more affordable homes, maybe just more "WE Charities"

 

[Just A Bit Outside]

Since my work shipped me to Russia for essentially the entirety of the 2010 Olympics, f***ing rights I'd want it to come back.

 

[Reverend Mayhem]

I understand where you are coming from
I am not pro- or anti- Oly, Just that no OLy does not mean more $ to improve city infrastructure or build more affordable homes, maybe just more "WE Charities"

Then vote for a more competent, less corrupt political party, and stop letting big money brainwash "you" to vote against your interests. We already got stuck with a giant receipt from the first Olympics, and the IOC is not an entity I would wish to be in business with moving forward.

 

[Hit the post]

Then vote for a more competent, less corrupt political party, and stop letting big money brainwash "you" to vote against your interests. We already got stuck with a giant receipt from the first Olympics, and the IOC is not an entity I would wish to be in business with moving forward.

IOC or FIFA?

Might be a tie as to who is more corrupt.

 

[RandV]

I remember the argument for the 2010 Olympics at the time was that the tourism increase would pay off the infrastructure, so it was like getting a bunch of infrastructure upgrades for free. I have no idea if that ended up being true or not. I know Whistler's yearly tax revenue is astronomical, or at least it was pre-pandemic.

It'd be nice if people could get behind infrastructure upgrades without needing a big event, but the Olympics has a way of unifying the political will for it.

I've always figured that argument was a bag of magic beans. It's easy to calculate how much all your infrastructure cost by the time your Olympics are starting. Outside of the initial burst of tourism it's going to be far harder to calculate how much of a $$$ benefit hosting it was 10 years later, any attempt is probably just going to be a lot of guesswork, and the people that say that have long since stopped caring because this was a sales pitch and we paid up front. They'll be off selling their monorail to the next city. At best you can say it spurs government to spend on some needed infrastructure that they may have otherwise hesitated on the cost, like a skytrain route to the airport, which can be unpopular in modern 'fiscal' policy.

If a group is looking at hosting the Olympics in Vancouver again my first question would be how much infrastructure do we have left that can still be used, like the Richmond Oval. I wouldn't want the city/province to spend billions for the IOC but if we could host it without needing to build more stuff then maybe it could work?