(This was sent to the editor of the Vancouver Sun but wasn’t printed.)

Why is the builder of the condos, Marc Williams, at 138 E. Hastings, getting a private $23 million loan from BC Housing to build a condo complex in the 100 block?

The mandate of BC Housing, financed by public taxes, is to create affordable housing for the poorest people in BC, not to finance someone who used low income people to demolish the Pantages without any protection, under minimal wages, and let the ground stay vacant for almost a year so that thousands of rats moved in, and eventually forced the city to make him either clean it up or bill him for the clean up.

If the project comes, all the hell hole hotels will evict the poorest who will end up on the street, and the owners who live in expensive homes will turn them into “boutique” fancy hotels. Where will the poor people go? The businesses which serve the low income people will go belly up.

Why does the public go “up in arms” with the “artsy” Waldorf, but remain silent with the human tragedy that has been going on here for years?

It looks like it is time to sort our priorities. What is more important? People’s lives or fancy condos and artsy projects?

Christiane Bordier