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In response to Mary Reagh’s letter of June 23: Please do not confuse my vote against former Mayor Doug McCallum as a vote for current Mayor Brenda Locke. Furthermore, even if my vote had been for Locke, it would not have been because of the RCMP platform she ran on. It was to have someone other than McCallum in the mayoral chair. This entire RCMP-Surrey Police Service debacle should not have occurred in the first place, but since it has, both Surrey and B.C. residents are having to face the financial outfall of this fiasco.
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You are correct, she was voted in — by a small margin, mind you, but voted in nevertheless. But don’t assume the votes that went her way were based solely on the RCMP platform.
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Jennifer Spoke, Surrey
Why I got out of the rental business
Re: Living alone in Vancouver is a luxury few can afford
This op-ed brings up the story of a buyer who wanted to purchase a Rolls Royce luxury car. The buyer wanted to know how much gas it consumed. The salesman told him, “If you cannot afford the gas, you certainly cannot afford a Rolls Royce. A Rolls Royce is not for you.”
The same is true for a buyer or renter of a house or apartment in Vancouver. It was not always that way.
After being transferred from Chatham, NB. to Comox on Vancouver Island, I bought a very small house, on a very large corner lot. This was way back in 1967, approximately. I paid $9,000 cash for it. I bought two other houses in Vancouver for $14,000 and $17,000 using the first house as collateral for a loan to finance the downpayment of the last two houses.
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It did work for a few years, until it all became too much — property taxes, plumbing costs for plugged toilets, an increase in interest rates on mortgages, and the failure of my real estate agent to collect all of the rents — and I was forced to sell all three houses, all for some capital gain that recovered the rental losses. It had a serious emotional impact on me and my family, and I was happy to no longer have the stress of being a landlord.
Fred Perry, Maple Ridge
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