"$600 CAD/month for a bedroom in a house that's close to frequent transit and in a low-crime area isn't hard to find if you don't have your heart set on living right in downtown Vancouver."

(Has not looked for an apartment in Vancouver in the last 10 years)

600 a month for a bedroom is definitely doable... I found two <$500/month vacancies within a year of moving to the vancouver area in 2014.. One was in Burnaby near SFU and the other was a steal in the commercial drive area with the catch of having a roommate who filled up the living room with bike parts.

You're right that it's not easy to come by though, and if you want to live within a 30 minute transit commute of downtown and have a single bedroom, it's unlikely you'll find anything for less than $750 that's not an SRO

Burnaby Heights is fairly cheap. Right on the 95 B-Line, 25-35 minutes to downtown.

And a salary that's a tiny fraction of SV (or anywhere in the US for that matter.) I recently had someone offering $35/hour for a "Lead Ruby Engineer" contract role in Vancouver. Salaries are ridiculously low there which even with cheaper housing, results in far less disposable income.

Yep, no options either, and our dollar is expected to plummet below $0.63 USD over next 3 years too so making $20-25/hr USD as a senior developer if anybody foolishly moves here.

If you're willing to convert a parking spot in an underground parking garage into a "bedroom", maybe you can swing that.

Do you still live in the 1980's? Belle Haven is not gangland.

The area bordered by US 101, Willow Road and the Union Pacific tracks is an exception. However, the rest of EMP makes Vancouver's Downtown Eastside or even the neighbourhood of Whalley in Surrey look like the most peaceful, crime-free utopia that has ever existed. At least we don't have Nortenos and Surenos blowing each others' heads off like in adjacent East Palo Alto.

Dude, what are you talking about? That triangle you outlined is virtually all of East Menlo Park that isn't office space. Anything south of 101 is not EMP (and generally pretty nice).

Have you been in the area in the last 30 years? There hasn't been a homicide anywhere in Menlo Park since 2012.

I drive through EPA daily. It is nothing like the South Los Angeles type gang land that you are trying to portray.

Even EPA has come up in the world dramatically in the last few years. As of 2014, its violent crime rate was half that of SF, only 25% more than San Jose, and roughly double that of Mountain View. I'd consider Mountain View a very safe place; EPA is basically turning into just another Silicon Valley suburb.

I think you are totally wrong on this one.