Vancouver Would Be Cooler If is a column that advocates for things that exist in other cities that could serve to improve or otherwise celebrate life in our own.

(via) Skyrocketing rents aren’t unique to Vancouver. Many city’s around the world are similarly suffering the same ‘phrenomenon’, but very few local politicians are effectively taking on the greed of those corporate landlords who see nothing wrong with pricing residents out of their own neighbourhoods. But that might be changing in Berlin, where rents have doubled in the last decade. The Senate of Berlin identified the situation for what it is – an emergency – and recently approved a citywide rent freeze for five years. The bill becomes law when it passes through Parliament in January (it is expected to do so) with the freeze being retroactive to June, so landlords can’t jack up the rent in one last frenzied orgy of avarice. Vancouver would be a lot cooler if it had the courage to do the same.