Poor Dave.

Victoria city councillor Dave “Vacancy Chain” Thompson.

He’s getting slaughtered. The issue appears to have quieted after a few weeks, but honestly, it has miles to go before the tread’s worn off.

He has, in the last week or two, had the crap beaten out of him by a significant number of Times Colonist letter-writers who take issue with the entire vacancy-chain concept, one of those too-perfect theories produced by social alchemists and bean-counters.

Why life won’t conform to such theories is a mystery to us all.

In a slightly haughty TC opinion piece, Thompson lectured us on the vacancy chain, a Darwin-esque housing cycle theory that rationalizes housing and vacancy health in a community.

Thompson’s spurious economic contention is that apartment vacancies in Victoria are created via some cyclical “move up” process.

Implied is the idea that the process delivers beneficial impacts on rental affordability.

It reminds me of the long agos, when social thinkers and economic optimists pointed, hopefully, to the rise in post-war wealth and social status of many in the working class as they moved up in position and opportunity.

Here’s to yesteryear — dreams came true back then.

Times, conditions, social narratives and economic........

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