Overall, things are going well for facilities for the 2010 Olympics. There's ski jumping and cross-country skiing at the Callaghan Nordic Centre in Squamish. They just had the Canadian Luge Championships at the Whistler Sliding Centre, and the Canadian Bobsled Championships are happening there March 21-22. The University of British Columbia ice hockey team has completed their first season in their new arena. The World Single Distances Speed Skating Championships is happening at the Richmond Olympic Oval, and there will be public skating there starting June 1. The new Skytrain line to the airport and Richmond isn't open yet, but they've been running test trains along the route since December.

The outstanding headaches for the Olympic organizers are still security costs (latest estimate: $900 million) and construction of the Olympic Village. Yes, the village will be completed on time, but it took an act of the British Columbia Legislative Assembly and a $450 million loan from the City of Vancouver to keep it on track.

My humble suggestion is, if you live in a city that is working on a future Olympic bid, give strong consideration to billeting athletes and coaches, or put up portable housing on an empty piece of land.

Here's an article by Miro Cernetig in the Vancouver Sun that gives you an idea of the sort of problems that the Olympic Village has created: Social housing to cost $595,000 per unit.

I happen to agree with Cernetig's basic premise; $595,000 per unit is a lot of money to pay for social housing, and it would make sense to just sell the units to the high-rollers and use to money to put up social housing on something other than premium waterfront real estate.

The original plan was to sell the condos at prices from $450,000 to $6 million. They've actually sold 265 of the 1,100 units (with 252 units reserved for social housing), but times have changed. (Go to http://www.millenniumwater.com/ if you're one of the aforementioned high rollers. No, I couldn't find any prices on the site.) Simple arithmetic indicates that the units would have to sell for an average of $562,000 in order for the City of Vancouver to get all of its money back. The already-sold units were described as "mostly lower-value properties", so they could well be running below this $562,000 break-even point.

Yes, Vancouver taxpayers will probably get their money back, but it's probably going to be a headache for City Hall for years to come.