Three decades ago, city hall planners weren’t spending hours on end trying to figure out how to get richer people to move to the area to “revitalize” businesses.

 Why are so many storefronts in the Downtown Eastside boarded up? Look no further than government policies for a big part of the answer. Low-income residents have lost a huge amount of purchasing power.

 Thirty years ago, as now, most Downtown Eastside residents depended on low-wage work, pensions, unemployment insurance or welfare for their income. The purchasing power of three of those sources of income has declined drastically.

 In fact, if we want to know how to quickly revive business in the Downtown Eastside, just restore the spending power of the current residents to 1975 levels.  That would pump about $2 million a month into the cash registers of the community.

 In 1975 the minimum wage in BC was 122 percent of the poverty line for a single person in a city. Today the $8 an hour minimum wage is only 78 percent of the poverty line for a 37.5 hour week.

 To look at it another way, a single person would have to make $12.51 an hour at a full time 37.5 hour a week job to have the same purchasing power as a minimum wage worker had in 1975. A person who depends on today's $6 an hour so-called training wage, will only make 58 percent of the today's poverty line with a full time minimum wage job.