PHOTO BY DARREN STONE/TIMES COLONIST

University of Victoria professor, Alzheimer’s researcher, Airbnb operator, and resident of James Bay, an affluent neighbourhood of Victoria which includes the provincial legislature and Royal British Columbia Museum, Debra Sheets made an appearance in Tuesday’s Vancouver Sun to complain about new legislation to reduce the impact of short-term rentals.

Since I hate media pieces which make people like her appear as suffering, I feel like collecting some articles together in one spot so if anyone searches for her on Google, they’ll see her repeated lines.

Again, she is not at all new to the media as she regularly makes appearances in her fight against any legislation against her ability to protect her “investment”. I should note that since she is a public servant, we know that she made CA$156,000 in 2022.

One of the earliest appearances she has made in the press was in 2017 when she and her Greater Victoria Short Term Rental Alliance created a GoFundMe to launch legal challenges:

Debra Sheets has a business licence for her STR unit in The Janion building, which lies in a transient zone. She’s concerned about the licensing fee potentially being as high as $2,500, which is significantly higher than the $110 she paid this year.

“I feel that’s completely and ridiculously unfair,” she said, adding that she would support a legal challenge to the fee. “I’m not doing anything illegal … that’s a lot of income to lose every year, not to mention that it’s decimated the value of my unit.”

As of today, units in this building can be found going for CA$1.1 million. If this page is any indication of how much she paid for her unit when it was renovated in 2016, she would be able to sell it for double at a minimum. I am glad to see that her unit’s value was not decimated as much as she feared.

The GoFundMe raised just over a quarter of its goal. I guess they were all bleeding money collectively then.

In 2020, when vacation rentals were suffering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she once again appeared in the news:

Debra Sheets, a member of the Greater Victoria Short Term Rental Alliance, said she doesn’t see many short-term rental owners offering their units for long-term lease.

“I will never go to a long-term rental, you face so much long-term risk,” said Sheets, who uses Airbnb to rent out her micro-loft in the Janion building overlooking the Johnson Street Bridge. “You cannot evict someone if they’re not paying rent.”

Sheets said she’s currently renting the micro-loft for $75 a night, half the typical rate.

Property owners struggling to cover a mortgage without tourist dollars are more likely to put a unit up for sale, she said.

She has seen six units in the Janion, which is zoned for short-term rentals, listed for sale.

Sheets said the lack of tourists is just one more challenge faced by short-term rental owners, who are already hit with the speculation tax, commercial taxes similar to hotels and a $1,500 City of Victoria business licence fee.

“I think short-term rentals provide crucial income to families,” she said.

She knows of one property owner with a suite who uses profits earned during the high season to offer below-market rent to students from September to April.

Sheets is also concerned that municipalities could follow the Town of Sidney’s steps to ban short-term rentals.

Debra is concerned about “long-term risk” but never took into account that legislation would be brought in down the road to limit her investment. Real estate is too sacred to have any risk I guess.

She wrote to the Town of Sidney stating the following:

What is the logic behind banning STRs? It is a protectionist move that seems to be a response to the hotel lobby which is eager to eliminate STRs. The evidence is strong that AirBnb’s offer a different service than hotels- they do not compete. Would you shut down Italian restaurants because they might compete with Mexican restaurants? If Sidney does not allow STRs then people will go to communities that do.

[…]

My time is very limited these days as the pandemic has increase my workload to support nursing students to graduate from the University of Victoria. But this issue is very important to me and I must speak out. I am not eligible for rgtiree savings accounts and my STR is my sole plan for retirement security. Your vote to support hotels over individuals who have a small business has threatened my future. I hope you will reconsider.

So of course, this struggling professor at UVic was in the media again this week and the following came up:

If passed, short-term rentals in B.C. can only be offered in the host’s principal residence, which includes one laneway house or basement suite on someone’s property. The new rules would impact municipalities with a population of 10,000 people or more and in smaller communities within 15 kilometres of a larger municipality.

[…]

Sheets, whose principal residence is in a rental home in James Bay, purchased the 250-square-foot unit in 2017 with the intent of renting it on Airbnb to fund her retirement.

The Janion building is specifically zoned for short-term rentals and so isn’t subject to a City of Victoria bylaw that, like similar laws in Vancouver and Kelowna, already restricts short-term rentals to one’s principal residence.

So she still has that unit mentioned earlier. Its value is definitely higher than what she bought it for. I guess since she now claims to be retired, she should consider selling, considering she has more than this single unit as an STR:

The retired UVic nursing instructor said she invested all her money in buying the units and now owes just over $1 million in mortgages.

She sees an uncertain future following the province’s decision to prohibit short-term rentals unless the unit is a principal residence, which is not the case for Sheets.

Hey Debra. How about instead of being a leech on housing supply you go about selling off all of your units? It’s obvious that your inaudacious investment has become a risk and thus it’s probably time to live off of your ill-gotten earnings.

You’re not the only problem causing the housing crisis, but you most certainly do not help it.

This past week, New Westminster made it clear that it wished to see a North Fraser BRT connecting 22nd Street Station on the Expo Line to Marine Drive Station on the Canada Line.

On paper, this idea makes sense. 22nd Street is a major hub for buses coming in from New Westminster and south of the Fraser River and Marine Drive provides a link to options in South Vancouver and to Richmond and the airport. However, BRT stands for “bus rapid transit” and it’s the “rapid transit” part that has me irritated.

Sometime around 2004 or 2005, TransLink was considering options for the Evergreen extension of the Millennium Line which included a possible use of existing rail routes from what is now Marine Drive Station through New Westminster towards Coquitlam Centre. This would have used DMU (diesel multiple units) along the former BC Electric (now CN) Westminster-Eburne Line.

Instead, an alternate route was chosen for this extension, but TransLink and the City of Burnaby still consider this as a future potential transit link. However, the desire right now is to go with the cheaper option of BRT when in reality, I feel like it’s longer-term a bad idea.

There are cons against this idea of mine of course. For example, the railway link itself is almost 300 metres downhill across a highway from the proposed hub at 22nd Street–the height difference is 50 metres too. This really speaks to the impracticality of having the two points linked I will admit.

However, the pros are numerous. For one thing, we’re away from cars and the area around 22nd Street Station itself is notorious for traffic jams due to its proximity to the Queensborough Bridge.

By instead placing the terminus of this line at New Westminster Station itself (which would be a mere 50-75 metres away), we’d be able to take advantage of a more practical terminus while still connecting to a hub.

As for how active the existing rail line is, the yard near New Westminster Station is fairly active and is so right past the Queensborough Bridge, but around 2020 or 2021, CN put a concrete barrier just as the line crosses over at Glenlyon Parkway. It seems that sometime in the past few years, its last customer for local rail service ceased to be. This and the fact that the Marpole Line which this line once connected to is no more, CN seems fit to just consider the whole right of way fallow.

The Expo Line itself was built alongside a former BC Electric rail line. For many decades after the Central Park Line closed, many governments argued to return local passenger rail service along its right of way (something I am writing about for next week on @VancouverTransit I might add). This is how we ended up with SkyTrain and it has proven to be an integral part of our region.

We now have a disused rail line connecting to major centres (Marine Drive, River District, and downtown New Westminster) which is ripe for the taking. BRT is going to be subject to the whims of Metro Vancouver traffic whereas we could purchase a half-dozen DMUs and run them along this right of way with a lot more frequency. We’re going to need to buy new vehicles for this new rapid transit link, so why not just buy some trains?

Sure. We’re going to have to probably buy rights to the railway or outright buy it. There is also going to be a need to build stations and probably a short rail link to get us to Marine Drive, but the benefits to going this route are huge.

I don’t have hope in this ever becoming a reality, but honestly I think it’s the better idea.

Update (November 17, 2023)

I had to make a trip down to the River District today and opted to snap these photos for a possible future blog entry. In positive-ish news, TransLink did not opt to go with the route I hated.

A few weeks ago, I completed Final Fantasy XVI and I still feel like it has the best story since VI. However, since time has passed and I have been able to process a lot of what I saw in the story. The ending in particular was not what I expected and I want to bring it up.

One of the themes in the story is the predominant slavery of those who are marked as bearers or dominants. Throughout the lands of Valisthea, crystals are used as a source of aetherial power to produce water, fire, healing, and so on and those who are marked as bearers are capable of using those powers without the need of crystals. Dominants are similar to bearers but also hold the power of Eikons (think Ifrit, Shiva, and Bahamut for examples).

As a result, bearers are mere tools to keep everyone else fed, warm, and quenched; and dominants are objects of war. Due to a blight facing every kingdom, each state is desperate to maximize their use of crystals, bearers, and dominants.

Being a bearer and dominant doesn’t just leave you to a life of servitude, but also leaves you cursed to an a death where your body petrifies due to the channelling of aether through their bodies. Every use of said power further damages one’s body–and once your body cannot do anymore, you’re discarded as your usefulness to society is no more.

Society for the most part saw bearers and dominants as lower class even compared to the impoverished. Amazingly, the game didn’t go about coming up with slurs for them, but it did make it a point to make classism quite obvious. Bearers were tattooed with a mark on their face so it was easy to tell when looking at someone.

This sort of treatment against bearers was not entirely shared across Valisthea. One of the kingdoms our protagonist, Clive came from a kingdom (Grand Duchy of Rosaria) where bearers were revered and not cast aside. However, said kingdom fell to an invading force and the haven for them was no more. One of the havens, Martha’s Rest was established as a haven for bearers, many of whom were near-death.

I am both glad and disappointed that the game explored this idea of classism and discrimination. The part of me that is glad is that it at least did so and did so in such a way where it didn’t come up with language mimicking slurs. The other part of me is disappointed because it flirted with this whole concept, but it felt like it become more of an afterthought later on the story.

When we start to face more of the antagonist, Ultima, we learn that everything going on in this world were of his own design–he is a “god”. However, we also learn from him that he is not infallible as he never considered that humanity would develop consciousness in such a way where emotion and free will were front and centre. This was seen as a flaw by him and thus all of the events we see in the game are orchestrated by him as a way to undo this ‘mistake’.

Before facing Ultima towards the end of the game, Clive makes a remark that humanity will have generations of hardship facing them once victory was achieved. He made it clear that he had hope for the future, but it wasn’t going to come without much conflict, implying violence and strife were going to be in its future.

One thing I will say is that Ultima yammered (I honest to goodness hated how much he spoke because it was annoying as hell) a lot about his disdain for humanity’s deviance from his design. He really wanted undo this and create the world anew, but was eventually overpowered by Clive who had become more powerful than him.

With Ultima’s death, we were left with Clive at the end facing the source of all aetherial power and by sacrificing himself, he destroyed it, leaving all humans without the ability to channel aether anymore, ending the curse from further progressing. Everyone learns of his death through just knowing including one particular red star (Metia) in the night sky fading out.

The thing is, it gets weird due to what comes up afterward.

Post-credits, we are given a scene in the future in a world that looked much livelier than the one which had faced severe blight. A child is made to start a fire to make a meal and he makes a quip about wishing he had “the power of an Eikon” in order to start said fire–instead of a crystal, he’s seen using two pieces of flint being hit against each other.

His mother tells him to stop believing in fairy tales just as he gets a fire started. We then cut to a scene where a nearby book is shown to have the title “Final Fantasy”, as written by Joshua (Clive’s brother). When the game opens and ends, Clive is narrating and he is narrating at the end. So did he really die? The game makes it seem like he is dead as it shows a part of him petrified on a beach, having succumbed to a curse, but then there is a book written by him.

I don’t think Clive died. However, as this is the end of the story, we’re left without actually knowing much of what happens between Clive on the beach and then however long in the future where we see this mother and child. Who wrote the book with said ending? Someone had to have written the book and I doubt that anyone took Joshua’s name. Someone had to have taken the book and we know Joshua was dead.

The ending is in my opinion kind of frustrating all the while interesting. I would like to know how classism affected bearers after aetherial power was no more? I imagine it was quite bleak, but then after a few generations, bearers would probably just simply exist as a concept but never in practice. Surely some of these bearers created offspring, and if so did they find themselves subjected to mistreatment as well?

I guess Clive’s remarks about it taking generations to resolve the conflicts humanity will face after his victory were alluding to the questions I have in my previous paragraph.

In any event, the game was good and I do hope that more people can play it so they can read my thoughts and have context.

Also Jill rules. I feel like she was kind of ruined as a character at a few points in the game, but I otherwise liked her quite a bit.

One of the things I witnessed last week was a situation where someone in a local online queer space took exception to rules put in place to make moderation easy for everyone. They didn’t take kindly to our decision to not relax the rules and a desire for us to not expose ourselves to content we voluntarily would have to handle were an issue to arise. As a consequence, they opted to have the last word and left said space.

How did I feel? I didn’t feel any remorse over the matter.

When I was younger, I was bullied quite a lot. The bullying was horrifying because I went to a small private school with no alternate classes for each grade. If you were in Grade 6, you were in the Grade 6 classroom and there were no alternatives. This led to me having a massive breakdown during my time in said grade and my school and parents required me to see a psychologist despite the fact that the bullying came from elsewhere. The 1990s were so great weren’t they?

As I entered adulthood and was able to leave that time of my life behind, I had a lot of trouble getting on in some online spaces. I hadn’t learnt how to find my space online and a lot of it was due to my having not reconciled with aspects of my queer identity. Trying to fit in was difficult and I didn’t know how to be myself there.

Coming out, I was able to figure out the spaces I belonged in with some trial and error. I listened to myself and didn’t attempt to try and fit in where I didn’t belong or I found hostile.

Does my experience line up with this person in the opening example 1:1? Absolutely not, but at least for me, I know where I belong and don’t fight these communities where I may not fit.

A space that doesn’t cater to me and my interests, desires, needs, et cetera is not a space for me. I think that this a healthy approach and one that takes a lot to learn how to grasp. Yearning to return to a community after being removed either voluntarily or forcibly is unlikely to be a healthy behaviour to continue with.

Creating your own community is healthier.

I must make it clear that this does not of course excuse anything rotten such as bigotry, classism, and the like, but the above thinking applies to how I want to socialise. Awful communities must be called out, but not all communities where I don’t feel like I fit in are necessarily awful in themselves.

Pender Island in British Columbia