Who are you?

I’m a late-career software developer based in Vancouver. I grew up in Burnaby, went to high school in Pitt Meadows, and studied math and computer science at UBC. I worked in Edmonton for most of the 1990s, moving back to Vancouver in 1998. I’m married, with two young-adult children. We live in a townhouse near Main and King Edward.

Like most people in Vancouver, I’m very concerned about housing being so scarce and expensive. Where can our kids afford to live?

There’s lots of people working on the problem, but it’s not necessarily easy to keep track of what’s going on, especially since municipal politics doesn’t get much coverage. I thought I’d try to help get the word out about major housing decisions. I started this blog before the big decision on the Streamlining Rental Plan in November 2021.

I ran for Vancouver city council with Kennedy Stewart’s Forward Together party in October 2022. I didn’t win, but I’m planning to continue making the case for more housing. I’m part of the local pro-housing crowd, centered around a Discord server. We’ve set up a group called the Vancouver Area Neighbours Association.

Since February 2023, I’ve been sending out a post every morning. I hesitate to call it a newsletter, since it’s often pretty short. If you subscribe, you’ll get each post directly to your email inbox. Feel free to forward them to anyone who you think might be interested.

I remember talking to someone who asked how to give newly elected officials a better understanding of housing - what does it actually take to get more housing built? What are the bottlenecks? My theory is that politicians have to be generalists, not specialists. Their level of understanding is going to be similar to the understanding of the general public. So if we want politicians to understand housing, we need to raise the level of understanding of the general public.

Besides housing, I’m also interested in economics, climate policy, and international politics. I’m the federal Liberal riding chair for Vancouver Kingsway (a glorified volunteer).