Immigration, Housing and Foreign Buyers in Vancouver: Examining News Coverage of Racialized Issues

The Vancouver housing and affordability crisis of the mid-2010 decade was marked by fervent discussions of the impact of foreign buyers and offshore money putting upwards pressure on housing prices, driving them out of reach for most locals. Throughout the news coverage of this issue, there appeared to be an outsized focus on the ethnicity of these wealthy foreign buyers, specifically the buyers of ethnic Chinese descent, giving an impression of a bias against this particular group. This raises the question: was the local news coverage of the housing crisis biased in a negative way against the Chinese community, or did it appear that way due to other circumstances? This thesis will aim to prove the presence of bias, should there be any to be found, through an examination of newspaper coverage in Vancouver from 2013 to 2018, as well as other academic disciplines, like urban studies.