Brandon Yan was born in Vancouver, moving to Langley as a child — a city where his family was one of the few families of Chinese origin.
As an adult, Brandon lived in Burnaby while attending the Simon Fraser University campus in Surrey, graduating with a Masters in Urban Studies.
For the past four years, Brandon has called Kitsilano home, where he rents in a pet-friendly apartment building with his partner Sam and their dogs.
Since completing his Masters degree, Brandon has served on the City of Vancouver’s City Planning Commission. At present, the truly accomplished Mr. Yan is employed as the Education Director for Out On Screen.
VanRamblings Endorses Brandon Yan for City Council
Today, VanRamblings heartily endorses OneCity Vancouver’s Brandon Yan as a must-elect candidate for Vancouver City Council. We urge you to vote for Brandon for just a few of the following reasons …
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Brandon Yan, as an out and proud queer man, represents an absolutely necessary and critical voice on the next City Council to speak for the interests of Vancouver’s activist LGBTQ community;
- With Brandon Yan’s background in transportation issues, ranging from regional planning to development and land use, Brandon Yan would be a key voice on City Council and the Metro Vancouver Board, working with elected officials across the region to develop and deliver on an improved transit system across our region to meet the needs of citizens, while contributing to the sustainability of life on the Lower Mainland;
- The next City Council, and our Mayor, are likely to be almost exclusively Caucasian, with few if any persons of colour represented on Council. As such it is critical that a City Council member with the lived experience as a person of colour, and particularly a person of Chinese origin given that 35% of Vancouver’s population is Chinese, is elected to City Council.
Brandon Yan is an activist, accomplished person of colour and conscience who it is absolutely necessary we elect to City Council October 20th;
- Youth. There is a youth revolution going on. We see it in the United States with the students of Parkland, we see it in our own city.
In Vancouver, Brandon Yan is the voice of his generation, a voice that must be heard on the next City Council.
- Competence. There are City Council candidates seeking office in the 2018 Vancouver civic election who possess one per cent of the understanding of civic governance that Brandon innately incorporates into his daily lived experience.
As a member of Vancouver’s Planning Commission from 2014 to 2016, Brandon Yan was provided with a keen opportunity to understand how the development process at City Hall functions — and to say that he was unhappy with the experience is to understate the matter.
Brandon Yan wants to shake things up a City Hall, incorporate respectful community consultation in development in neighbourhoods across our city, and ensure that the voices of the community are not just heard, but that citizens in neigbourhoods across Vancouver will determine the livability of their neighbourhoods, to serve citizen interests and not the interests of members of the city’s planning department;
- Brandon Yan is a disruptor, a man in hurry to ensure that purpose built rental construction, co-and-co-op housing built on city land, and a regional transit system that meets the needs of citizens comes to pass sooner than later. Being a young man with a plan for change, and the wherewithal, intelligence, commitment and experience to make it happen, Brandon Yan is one of the stars in the shining firmament of the current election cycle, a man so accomplished that he puts many of his well-meaning but underqualified competitors for City Council to shame.
When we go to the polls, we want to elect the best of us, a City Councillor who will work towards the realization of a fairer, a more just, a more responsive, a more environmentally sound, a more consultative and a more respectful plan for our neighbourhoods that meets the needs, desires and aspirations of our citizens.
Make no mistake, Brandon Yan is that person.
- Youth. There is a youth revolution going on. We see it in the United States with the students of Parkland, we see it in our own city.
When you go to the polls, either next week when advance polling stations open, or on election day, Saturday, October 20th, remember the name Brandon Yan, OneCity Vancouver.
Vote YAN, Brandon, the seventh name from the end of the Councillor ballot and easy to find, a must, must, must vote when you go to the polls.
