One year of Northern Capital News

And the province’s Airbnb legislation may force local landlord to do … exactly what the legislation is intended for. Plus, a trip to Vanderhoof!

October 30, 2023

It was exactly 365 days ago that I set up this newsletter, describing it as “Prince George twitter but in newsletter form.” In a very short introductory post I said I wasn’t sure what it would be or if anyone would want to read it. Day two was a short post about trick-or-treating and by day three I had added a small news roundup that would come and go. After a month I had about 130 subscribers, which was mind-blowing to me, and was averaging about 2,000 daily readers, according to the stats provided by Substack, though I’m not sure what qualifies as a “reader” versus someone who clicks on to the page and leaves.

The newsletter has evolved over the past year — for one, it’s significantly longer than it started out being, as I find myself with more things to say, though I’ll still send out the occassional short missive once in a while, and took most of the summer off. For another, the audience growth is far bigger than I had supposed — I’m now at more than 800 subscribers and averaging around 7,000 readers daily, which again I am not sure what it means, but if even half of those people are actually engaging with something here is pretty astounding.

I also don’t want to overstate things: 800 people is less than one per cent of the population of the greater Prince George area. 7,000 is more impressive, I suppose, but still less than 10 per cent, though apparently is more than could sit in the CN Centre, so that’s cool. Still, for comparison — Hell Yeah Prince George has more than 46,000 members. This is by no means the biggest game in town.

And, to be honest, I like it that way. My past experience, first with Facebook and then with Twitter, is that the bigger you get, the more likely it is your audience isn’t going to be on board with you — not even in the sense of disagreeing with certain points, which is fine, but coming at things from such a wildly different perspective that it is just easier for them to receive comments in a negative way, even if they weren’t meant to be that, or straight-up engaging in bad faith. I welcome more readers, but I appreciate the slower, organic growth that comes from people sharing posts with their friends through email and word-of-mouth, which seems to be the primary discovery venue for Northern Capital News. For every batch of new readers I get, I’m also assuming several others are dropping off as they lose interest, and that’s fine, too. I’m making this for myself and other people who want to read it, not for stats or monetization. It is a hobby that takes a few hours of my week and I’m more than happy with what I get out of it in return.

People want to be engaged and informed but they don’t want to be stuck in a cycle of having to constantly scroll-refresh at all times of day in order to feel like maybe they have some sense of what’s going on. 

And what is that? Well, I started this newsletter suggesting it be a replacement for Prince George Twitter. At the time, I was reexamining my relationship with news feeds and algorithms and what it meant to have your social graph and primary sources of information controlled by entrepreneurs who could buy, sell, wildly alter or shut down these so-called “public spaces” based on a whim. I felt increasingly like by posting in these spaces, I was encouraging people who wanted to follow local news — and, indeed, that is why many of my followers were there — to be caught up in this cycle, as well, and that didn’t feel good. In the year that I’ve been on here, I’ve completely gotten almost completely away from posting about news online except in the form of this newsletter. It forces me to slow down, which I appreciate AND I am especially glad to hear from so many people that it’s helped them have a healthier relationship with the news, as well. People want to be engaged and informed but they don’t want to be stuck in a cycle of having to constantly scroll-refresh at all times of day in order to feel like maybe they have some sense of what’s going on. It wasn’t my intention when I started this to help people break away from algorithms but the fact that it is is a huge bonus.

On that note: In the past I’ve toyed with the idea of starting an adjacent community to Northern Capital News — a Facebook group or a Discord server or something like that, where people could talk to themselves or each other and while I still occassionally think about it, I don’t see it in the cards right now. The idea of managing/modding something like that feels like a little too much to me at the moment, and in some ways is the opposite of what this newsletter is trying to accomplish. I really do welcome every piece of feedback I get in the form of comments and emails even though I’m actually really bad at responding to them (sorry!), I do read them all, so that’s been great. I’m also thinking of transferring it off of substack to something that is a little more indie-web but that wouldn’t impact your experience of getting the newsletter at all, so don’t worry about that. Otherwise, I’m just gonna keep doing what I’ve been doing and I hope you keep enjoying it. Thank you so much for your support over the past year, it really does mean a lot.

A trip to Vanderhoof

On Saturday I got a notification that I could update by flu and COVID shots but there were no appointments available in Prince George until Decemember. I assume more will come open (and will be keeping an eye out) but it was a nice day and Vanderhoof had many, many open slots and there’s been a lot I wanted to check out there, so decided to make an afternoon of it.

First of all, this bakery is delicious. It alone would be worth the trip. I know lots of people have already told me this but I just hadn’t had the chance to try it and holy cow have I been missing out. I was also recommended pizza and Filipino fusion and while they weren’t in the cards this time, I definitely want to try them out. Beyond that, a bit of downtown shopping and a stop at the skate park which has some really fun features rounded things out. The community events board had a lot of fun things coming up — including an anonymous art show, which lets people display their work without the fear that comes with having their name attached, which is cute as heck. And I really want to try out the theatre sometime. When a place is close by, like Vanderhoof or Quesnel, it can be easy to never visit since you’re often on the road to somewhere else, but I’m trying to make more of a point of getting to these places regularly.

As for the vaccinations… I’ll be keeping an eye on this.

The province’s Airbnb legislation may force local landlord to do … exactly what the legislation is intended for

Higham has eight houses/duplexes in Prince George she rents through the Airbnb platform and she is not interested in turning them into long-term rentals. She doesn’t want the headaches that come with being a long-term landlord.

“They would all be sold,” Higham said.

She estimates there are 260 Airbnb listings in the Prince George area, of which about 200 are active. She says most people who operate Airbnb properties bought them as investments and the short stays they provide offer a significant rate of return and most are not likely to convert them to monthly rental properties.

Which is … exactly the point? I understand the frustration that people who bought properties under the previous rules with the intention of using them as short-term rentals feel at having the rug pulled out from under them but the explicit reason this legislation was passsed is because the provincial government is concerned there are too many people hoarding properties for the purpose of using them as short-term rentals, rather than having them be available to people looking for more permanent housing. The fact that someone who owns eight properties they don’t live in is planning to sell them off under the new rules is exactly what the legislation is intended to accomplish so I’m not sure why it’s being presented as a threat??? Like, if this realtor is correct and the legislation puts 200 more duplexes, apartments and houses on the market in Prince George, that is 100 per cent a win from the perspective of the provincial government which is changing the rules for the explicit purpose of putting more homes on the market. Anyways, seeing the Prince George Citizen comments section full of people applauding the NDP government might give you a sense of whose side a lot of folks are on, here.

Mayor Simon Yu, one year in

As mentioned last week, My Prince George Now published parts one and two of an interview with mayor Simon Yu about his first term in office. To be honest, there’s not a lot here we haven’t heard before — his hope the city will be an economic hub, the fact it’s good to hear different perspectives — but there are a couple of insights I think are worth noting. The first is the fact he didn’t have a clear idea of how much he didn’t know about being a mayor:

I was not aware of so many files are intertwined, with provincial, federal files, and we have to, as a Mayor, have to do so much advocacy and so much work to address some of the issues that traditionally are not municipal issues.”

This seemed pretty clear on the campaign trail. While Terri McConnachie, who had experience as a city councillor, talked about incremental change and the need to work with other levels of government to accomplish things Yu — and the other mayoral candidates, who also had never held office — had some pretty simplistic approaches. Just build more houses! Just crack down on crime! Well, a year in and there are still people living in the cold and I haven’t heard Yu mention building emergency housing in a while. And on that note, he also addresses the split between the city and the province when it came to the decision to shut down the camp at Millennium Park in the most fulsome way I’ve seen:

“The provincial government did not exactly see the safety issue as strongly as the council when we had to decamp First Avenue and George Street for Millennium Park,” Yu said.

“They feel we should have better consultation, and I agree in one sense, that we should have better consultation with our Indigenous partners to make sure there’s better data gathering prior to taking the action to move the people, to ask the people not to stay in that area. But overall, personally I’ve invested quite a bit in terms of getting to know the people there. I’m just glad the decampment was done in a peaceful manner.”

Yu said there needs to be better communication with local Indigenous groups, NGOs and the Provincial government.

“That was the only hiccup, but I think during the [Union of BC Municipalities convention], we had a couple more meetings with many different Ministries, differences of views have been expressed and I think we’ve turned a page. I hope the HEART and HEARTH program to be rolled out in the coming months will be rolled out smoothly and quickly, winter is fast approaching.”

“I’m confident in the months and year ahead we will do a better job as a team, as a whole, between ourselves, the First Nations, and the provincial government to address this important piece of work based on the spirit of the MOU.”

Two Three more years left to see if this happens.

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