the Carnegie Community Action Project, decried the renovation of the old hotel as gentrification, adding people living on welfare or on old age pensions won't be able to afford the rents even at $850. "In my view, it's a crime that the last housing before homelessness is being converted into micro-lofts," she said. "Those rooms used to rent at welfare and old age pension rates, and now the Downtown Eastside is being gentrified by the upscaling of these hotels. It's upscale by our standards," she said, adding the pre-reno rents were around $375. "We don't have enough social housing, and we're losing our [single-room occupancy] hotels to upscaling like the Burns Block. "The city is ignoring gentrification as a cause of homelessness," said Pederson. "Many residents in a very full hotel were evicted [in 2006] by the owner who wanted to empty his building." ... "That owner made $1 million flipping it," she said. - from 'Living small on West Hastings', The Province, 19 Dec 2011 [ hat-tip jesse ] As we've said previously: "Calls for 'affordable' new-build housing are almost all band-aid solutions. They largely result in relatively low quality product at proportionally roughly the same elevated costs as all other local properties." [ 16 Dec 2011 ] - vreaa Olympic village rents for about $2-2.50/sqft per month. It is recognized as small and expensive. Most of newish yaletown is similar. $4/sqft is not cheap by any standard. This is like $4,000 for a full-size 2-bed apartment. One cannot