Is That Coffee I Smell???

This morning my wife pointed out a very lucid letter to the editor (title: Cheaper to buy a house in Penticton than it is to rent one in Kelowna ) which should be a wake up call for the community we live in. The wake up is the alarmingly fast growth of the separation between the rich and poor here in Kelowna. Soaring housing prices and rental costs are driving the work force away from the wealthy they are supposed to be here to serve. Every year we watch as a new housing development goes up on yet another hillside overlooking the town (no I will not call it a city). It is truly becoming an overgrown resort community with an underdeveloped service network. The astounding thing is that people will cock their head and stare in wonder when you mention people moving away because 'How could they not want to live here??' Wrong question really. It should be 'How could they not afford to live here??'
The link in the title of this post will take you to the letter that Dawn Weber wrote to the Capital News in Kelowna and there you will read about the skilled trades in another town like this one who were priced right out of the town they were building. I just happen to be a skilled tradesmen here in Kelowna and I am making pretty decent cash. The fact is though that I am still scraping by. My wife also babysits five days a week to supplement our income and at the end of each month we find that we have lived, but we have yet to save. To put it into perspective I found a site through a friend that puts your income into your place in the world population. I found that I am at #424,629,412 in the whole world for income. With the world population being estimated at 6,525,825,813 some simple math tells me that I am in the top 7% of the world's wealthy. So it begs the question of what percentile you have to be in to make it a sensible option to move here. If you are considering it, please do your math.