By Bethany Lindsay,
Vancouver Sun February 18, 2014
Buy a condo in Vancouver’s notorious real estate market and you’ll likely walk away with a lighter wallet and a sinking feeling you might have overspent. But what if you knew you were also providing a home for a family living beside a garbage dump in Cambodia, one of the world’s poorest countries?
With its official launch today, Vancouver-based World Housing hopes to make that a reality by partnering with real estate developers, starting with Vancouver-based Westbank, developers of the Shangri-La and Fairmont Pacific Rim hotels, who want to donate a new home in the developing world for each unit sold here at the new Bjarke Ingels tower.
The project is the brainchild of Pete Dupuis and Sid Landolt, longtime partners in the luxury real estate business, who call it the world’s first one-for-one real estate gifting model. They both say that adequate housing can be life-changing for people struggling to survive in the impoverished slums that surround landfills.
“When you give someone a home, they become completely independent,” Dupuis said. More…