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Historical Causes (Past): How have global factors shaped my issue?

• our global economy is set up to favor some while disadvantaging others. large wealth gap/ wealth disparity
• housing prices continue to rise as people buy second, and third houses while others cannot afford one
• individuals who have taken advantage of the resources in their region (sometimes exploiting their region) turn elsewhere/ set their sights higher towards untapped resources of other areas- whether it be overseas or across borders.

Current Problem: What other parts of the globe share this problem? How is it the same and how is it different?

• Chinese people moving into Vancouver, Seattle and other places around the world with low interest rates and less regulation thus more opportunities to amass wealth
• Different because many Chinese/ foreigners purchase second/ vacation homes in different areas to link them to another point on the globe.
• Many Californians coming to Idaho are buying one home here and putting the rest of their money into the bank (look at Californians house flipping in Boise/ becoming landlords/ purchasing rental properties- interesting parallel)
• Foreigners moving in drive up prices for locals and alter fabric of communities

What’s Been Tried (that does not or only partially works): How have other places tried to deal with this problem with less-than-perfect results? What have international organization done that hasn’t been effective?

• Implementing more economic regulations on these people, higher taxes
• growing cities- but in the wrong ways. Instead of building affordable housing, building hotels, offices, and expensive homes.
• raising minimum wage- doesn’t prohibit people from selling expensive houses and taken their living money elsewhere where life is less expensive, but at the cost of locals working minimum wage jobs compared to their former minimum wage in another state that was twice as high.

Solution: How have other parts of the globe / international bodies dealt with this problem? Are they more or less effective?

• Vancouver tried to bring economic opportunities to local by awarding Chinese Canadian passports if they bought property in Vancouver, backfired
• Raising minimum wage- research results
• Building more affordable housing- research results

Implications (Future): What will happen to the globe if my local issue is not addressed? What will happen if it is addressed the way I propose?

• People will be financially insecure, rises in homelessness, furthering wealth gap/ disparity
• Rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer
• If addressed the way I propose, the playing field will be somewhat leveled and local communities will be enriched by growth, not infringed upon

Local Current Problem: dearth of affordable housing, incomes too low to sustain Boise lifestyles/ livelihoods, Californians moving in and making house hunting for cash-strapped locals nearly impossible, local Californians met with harsh reception by afflicted locals.

Global Current Problem: dearth of affordable housing in Vancouver for locals, housing prices rise but incomes do not follow suit, Chinese businesspeople moving in and buying second, third, fourth real estate properties to have a stake in the place/ for Canadian citizenship- but houses sit empty, local communities in Vancouver now dominated by the Chinese (who take educational opportunities from local kids and advertise their businesses in Mandarin- communities divided)

What’s been tried locally: growth developments in infrastructure (building hotels, office buildings, expanding roads) to keep up with population growth and emerging prominence as a Northwest destination- to the expense of Idahoans who must deal with construction- related traffic, living in a state of flux in which communities are unsettled by construction (the noise, eye-sore, the inconvenience)

What’s been tried globally: Mother Jones describes, “More than 5,000 British Columbians have signed a federal legislative petition that Starchuk launched last year to eliminate automatic ‘birthright citizenship’ for children born in Canada to non-Canadian mothers.” Apparently, “The Conservative member of Parliament sponsoring Starchuk’s birthright citizenship petition is Alice Wong, who came from Hong Kong in 1980.” This shows that not only white Vancouverites harbor resentments against the emergence of mainland Chinese coming to the city.

local historical causes: historically bad city planning and infrastructural developments, priorities out of whack- city planning monopolized by business/ economic interests and does not prioritize citizens.

global historical causes: “Vancouver’s Pacific Rim strategy was even more grandiose. Recruitment efforts focused not on North America, but on booming Asia. And instead of courting companies, Vancouver went after individual investors and entrepreneurs, or “business immigrants,” using a simple but highly attractive enticement: a Canadian passport. Under a new federal program, enacted partly to assist Vancouver, foreign nationals with a net worth of about 800,000 Canadian dollars ($600,000) would be fast-tracked for permanent Canadian residency if they agreed to loan half of that amount to the provincial government, interest-free, for five years.” -Mother Jones.

“Although many of the first wave of business immigrants, from Hong Kong and Taiwan, had fully intended to start or invest in Vancouver businesses, few found much success, says Ley. Despite sharing a dialect with Vancouver’s ethnic Chinese (most of whom had come generations earlier from Hong Kong), new arrivals were often flummoxed by Canada’s business culture and its regulations and high taxes. Entrepreneurial success was even more elusive for later arrivals… And the city’s existing ethnic Chinese community was hardly welcoming. Beyond the differences in language, Ley says, locals were often put off by newcomers’ politics and lifestyle, not least their propensity for ‘showy wealth.’ Frustrated, some returned to China. (Today, about 300,000 Canadian passport holders reside in Hong Kong.) Others kept their Vancouver homes but ‘commuted’ to China for work — a practice captured in a saying, ‘Hong Kong for making money, Canada for quality of life.’”

local solutions: raising the minimum wage, building more affordable housing units, taking a page out of Vancouver’s historical book and requiring out of staters moving into Boise with a net worth of about $600,000 to loan half of that amount to the local government, interest-free, for five years to aid in building more housing structures.

global solutions: cut people off from buying houses once they own 3 (or necessitate that they rent out the properties at an affordable rate- implement a global standard of practice for fair landlord-ship) so community members are supported not screwed over.

local implications: Once measures are enacted to minimize housing insecurity, Idahoans will no longer resent Californians for coming in and encroaching on the rights to which they feel entitled, nor will they blame individual Californians for structural inequities.

global implications: the divide between the ultra-rich owners/ proprietors of multiple properties and those struggling to afford their first house will be lessened.