Three Reasons Why I Don’t Like Living in Vancouver
Rants July 29th. 2007, 3:39pmMany people here in Vancouver keep asking me, why I don’t like living in Vancouver, Canada. They keep telling me that Vancouver is one of the best cities to live in the world. Where else can we have a good quality of life as in Vancouver? Where else can we see mountain surrounding with beautiful lakes? May be I am not a “normal” person because everybody seems to like living in Vancouver.
I keep asking myself this question, why I don’t like living in Vancouver. I’ll try to give five three reasons here. I know many of you, especially the ones who love Vancouver, will not agree with me.
- The living cost is damn expensive. As an example, take a look at the Canadian housing price chart here. Vancouver housing price is twice more expensive than Toronto and 2.5 times more expensive than Montreal. Do people in Vancouver receive more salary than other Canadian cities? Check Canada Salary Wizard from CanadaVisa.com and you will find the answer.
- It is a city for retirement. There is nothing wrong with this except that we cannot put a high expectation on our career, especially in the high-tech industry. There are only a few high-tech companies in Vancouver. This is a problem for me because I make my living from the high-tech industry.
- Health system is bad. I am not sure whether this is a problem all across Canada or only in British Columbia. From my experience, the waiting time to see a doctor in Vancouver can take weeks or even months. Last time, I had a dermatofibroma and it took me 3 months to make an appointment for the surgery. Before that, I met 5 other doctors and none of them were able to cure my disease. No kidding… 5 doctors in Greater Vancouver area!
Another problem is the concept of family doctor. Here, we can only see our family doctor. We cannot go to another doctor without recommendation from our family doctor. How about a new immigrant? It is getting interesting because most of the good doctors here do not accept new patients any more.
Why am I still staying in Vancouver now? When you have a family, you have a big responsibility. Believe me, relocation is not as easy as when you are single.
July 30th, 2007 at 4:00 am
That’s three, not five reasons
July 30th, 2007 at 6:54 am
It is three. The title is three, but the posting is five. I must be so sleepy yesterday when writing it.
July 30th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
seorang laki laki akan berkelana sejauh dia bisa, dan pada akhirnya akan kembali di tempat dia dilahirkan dan berkata, aku capek….ini rumahku…dimana aku besar dan dilahirkan….
July 30th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
@verry: Haha… good point. Mungkin itu yang bakal terjadi nanti.
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:53 am
If you don’t like it leave. How is it more difficult to relocate as a single person?
You don’t have to consider children or your spouse’s considerations at all. You really are very unfortunate if you believe that Vancouver is such an awful place to live and you don’t have the courage or strength to do something about it. Are you a victim of your own life?
Take responsibility for yourself and leave our beautiful city alone. It certainly doesn’t need people like you.
February 3rd, 2008 at 10:28 am
@Darren: It is actually not me. If you read Canadian newspaper these days; many of them mentioned about un-affordability of housing price in Vancouver. Really… it’s not only me who feels so; otherwise local newspaper here won’t mention this issue several times in their headlines. This city is very nice for rich people, for sure.
Here are some links that mentioned the problem about housing price here in Vancouver:
- Vancouver Sun - Affordability continues to fall -
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=396ccc45-94ef-46cf-a1ce-c0346551c413&k=98966
- Vancouver Condo Info - We’re number 1! (in lack of affordability) - http://vancouvercondo.info/2006/09/were-number-1-in-lack-of-affordability.html
February 3rd, 2008 at 10:53 am
[...] there was someone left a comment on my old posting, Three Reasons Why I don’t Like Living in Vancouver. He said that it’s better for me to leave the city. It doesn’t need people like me. In [...]
February 17th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
The rent is so crazy expensive. The only people who can afford to rent are those who have lived in their place for at least a cew years. For Vancouverites, moving/changing apartment is out of the question. No matter where i look, even in Po Co, my rent would be more expensicve than what it is now. And I live downtown! Will we ever catch a break out here on the west coast? Perhaps, we should stop with all of the tourism, ESL students and TV propaganda…people like it here too much and they stay. Well, this is my home…and it sucks being smoked out by overseas investors.