Nominations for political parties and candidates in Vancouver’s current civic election opened on Tuesday, September 4th and are set to close on Friday, September 14th. Vancouverites can reasonably expect to find 12 municipal parties on the random ballot when they cast their vote next month, comprising at least 75 candidates for City Council, 20+ candidates for Vancouver School Board, and an equal number at Vancouver Park Board.
For journalists, the punditry and anyone who gives a good galldarn about democracy, one cannot help but feel a sense of despair about the coming Vancouver civic election: too many civic parties without any public profile whatsoever, too few incumbents running for office (only three in Vancouver: Adriane Carr, Melissa De Genova and Heather Deal), too many candidates who are utterly unknown to the electorate, the civic election occurring almost a month earlier than the usual third Saturday of November — giving voters too little time to get know the candidates, a situation exacerbated by the new electoral finance rules brought in by the Horgan provincial government, which will result in virtually no monies available to purchase billboard or newspaper ads, or run radio or television ads singing the praises of any particular given civic party, and with the very real prospect that Vision Vancouver could be wiped off the electoral map come Saturday, October 20th, predicting the outcome of the current Vancouver civic election is a mug’s came. From an online GlobalNews story …

Retiring Vancouver City Councillor George Affleck says campaign finance restrictions, combined with the fact that the elections are taking place earlier in the year, could mean fewer voters will take part in the October 20th civic elections.

“Those two things, I think, are going to have a huge impact on turnout,” Affleck wrote in a Facebook post urging Premier John Horgan “to look at ensuring people head to the polls and vote.”

Affleck will introduce a motion at the upcoming September 18th meeting of Council requesting that the province “immediately consider enhancing the existing communications budgets for Elections BC, various regional districts and UBCM (Union of BC Municipalities) to help raise public awareness of the imminent 2018 local government elections in British Columbia on an emergency basis.”

“I think people don’t see the election coming, and you also see a lot less money spent by parties … so in general you won’t see much marketing about an election coming, and I think people will be potentially not aware as they have [been] in the past.”

Too little, too late? Will the Horgan government listen, or even care?

No one knows a darn thing about how the October 20th election will turn out, least of all Quito Maggi’s Mainstreet Research polling firm, who right up until the last minute in the 2015 federal election was predicting an overwhelming Stephen Harper majority government. Locally, in their latest poll, Mainstreet Research surveyed 862 Vancouver residents about the coming civic election. With a full 41.8% of those surveyed undecided as to whom they will cast their ballot for Mayor, the results of the survey aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, never mind your time or consideration.
Respected civic affairs reporter Frances Bula, in a story published in The Globe and Mail this past Friday, writes …

“The province’s already dismal rates of voter turnout for civic elections could plunge even lower in this fall’s B.C. election, the result of several factors that have experienced political observers worrying the vote could be decided on single issues rather than solutions to severe problems.

Low voter participation could mean councillors and mayors are elected by small fractions of a city’s total population — a trend that could favour either incumbents or candidates who appeal to a small but determined group of motivated voters angry about one particular problem.”

Later in the Friday Globe story, Ms. Bula records pollster Mario Canseco, whose company Research Co. has been tracking voter opinions in some local cities, as saying he’s noticing a much larger proportion of undecided voters this year — around 30 per cent to 35 per cent, compared with the 15 per cent or 20 per cent he usually sees in federal or provincial elections.
As Ms. Bula writes at the end of her Globe and Mail story, “In Vancouver, for example, only three of the current 11-member council are planning to run again for the same position.”
In an informal conversation VanRamblings had at a local Starbucks this past Thursday with the eminence gris of civic affairs reporting, the affable and concerned Ms. Bula also expressed a dismay shared by all those who care about the state of our civic democracy, and how we will be governed in Vancouver going forward …

“With at least eight new members of Council, it’s going to take them a year and a half to find the bathrooms at City Hall,” Ms. Bula opined to us.

The wholesale change of government at City Hall that we are about to witness in Vancouver may bode well for voters in the long term, but in the short term it’s going to be sheer hell at City Hall these next couple of years.
Civic politics in Vancouver these past 10 years has been so easy on the Vancouver electorate, who were offered a clear choice (and an alphabetical ballot) when they went to the polls: the bike sharing, bike lane building Greenest City Action Plan endorsing, anti-racist and diversity advocating, reconciliation with our indigenous people’s promoting, LGBTQ2+ / gender variant community championing Vision Vancouver vs those dastardly NPA ‘bah humbug, decrease the surplus population’ types, bent on firing city workers in the race to the bottom, cutting a swath of social justice programmes and City Hall advisory committees in order to ensure that their rich friends and supporters would pay much less in the way of property tax, while the rest of us suffered, and who could give a good galldarn about affordable housing (to which Vision Vancouver at least paid lip service).
Well, dear and trusting reader: those halcyon days are over.
The punditry and almost everyone plugged into the civic election scene believes that Vision Vancouver is going to be wiped off the electoral map, the attacks from both their left and right flanks unrelenting, the party doing itself no favours when announcing their latest “affordable housing” initiative this summer, the new 90-unit River District Housing Co-operative “geared toward families earning $82,000 to $110,000”, with “moderate” rents ranging from $2,050 to $2,750. All well and good for the West End condominium penthouse residing Mayor of our city. The “rest of us”, though, are left shaking our heads at a civic leader and a civic government that has lost touch with the electorate, and the people of Vancouver.

Restore Vancouver, Reclaim Vancouver, Yes Vancouver, the Vancouver Non-Partisan Association, the Green Party of Vancouver, Vancouver First, Vision Vancouver, the Coalition Party (which will announce their seventh candidate for City Council, Ken Charko, on Wednesday), IDEA, OneCity Vancouver, Pro Vancouver and the Coalition of Progressive Electors — step right up folks, vote for us, we know you don’t know us, and thanks to John Horgan’s electoral finance reform legislation we don’t have any money to spend on brochures, or social media, newspaper, radio or television ads, we know you don’t have the first clue about who any of our candidates are, but trust us, vote for us, we have your best interests at heart. Honest, we do.

On Sunday, VanRamblings was approached by a candidate for one of the right-wing parties campaigning in the 2018 Vancouver civic election. This entitled individual, employing a threatening tone, “warned” us that we had better not write anything negative about her in this civic election cycle — which we thought was a pretty rich ask given that this candidate’s husband has been all over social media calling VanRamblings’ favourite candidate in this civic election, OneCity Vancouver’s Christine Boyle, “a commie”.
Nonetheless, we have no intention of deriding this person’s candidacy nor her character — politics is tough enough without that kind of nonsense.

Folks from across the political spectrum seem to have it in for OneCity Vancouver (full disclosure: VanRamblings is a member of the party), directed more at their City Council candidates than their must-elect School Board hopefuls, each of whom you must cast a ballot for next month.

Ms. Boyle’s City Council able and energetic running mate, Brandon Yan — not to mention the party itself — has found himself the target of a take down social media campaign for most of the summer months, revolving around his and his party’s “arrogance”. As if having a point of view and promoting your values is somehow untoward & deserving of condemnation.

At the centre of the criticism of both Ms. Boyle and Mr. Yan is a belief that both represent, or that somehow OneCity Vancouver is “Vision Lite” — which is pure, unadulterated poppycock. VanRamblings will address this criticism about the activists in OneCity in another column, but we’ll say this for now: Alison Atkinson and Anna Chudnovsky are co-chair founders of OneCity Vancouver, who have worked closely with Cara Ng and Christine Boyle to build OneCity into a potent political force in Vancouver. Feminists, social democrats, women of conscience and community activists, each represent the hope of our future — as has long been the case — and each of whom is very much their own person and nobody’s fool or pawn, and woebetide the individual who tells them what they “must” do.

Current sitting Vancouver Non-Partisan Association City Councillor and candidate for re-election Melissa De Genova has also found herself in for a rough ride on social media this summer, partly revolving around her party affiliation, but mostly around an utter lack of knowledge about Ms. De Genova’s many, many accomplishments while in office, sitting as a Park Board Commissioner, and over the past four years, a City Councillor.
Good thing for all of us who believe that a woman’s place is in elected office making a difference for the better for all of us that Melissa De Genova is the toughest, brooks no nonsense political figure in Vancouver politics, who although most often reasoned in response to unwarranted criticism will, if you step over the line, tear a well-deserved strip off you (just ask Aaron Jasper and Niki Sharma at Park Board, and Andrea Reimer at City Council).

Let’s face it, the dehumanization of politicians and public figures is not a new phenomenon — it’s just that it’s gotten much worse since Donald Trump entered politics, migrating with new and bilious force into Canada to our collective detriment. Malicious personal attacks and commentary where political figures are “taken down” only serves to discourage good people from seeking public service lest they become the subject of the destructive instincts that have come to plague the political arena in recent years.
Towards building a better society, our job as citizens, as political candidates and as journalists ought to be to build bridges, to find common ground, to be community ambassadors, to expect better, to act on conscience and for the betterment of our community and for our city, for the benefit of everyone in each one of the 23 neighbourhoods the comprise Vancouver.

In 2018, when you go to the polls next month, vote for better — as most Vancouverites did in last year’s provincial election — vote for parties and candidates committed to building affordable housing, vote for candidates who have a vision for the future that serves your needs and those of your family, vote for fairness and equity, vote for social justice, make sure that more than half of the candidates for whom you cast a ballot are women, vote for members of Vancouver’s vibrant and diverse ethnic community, and fer damn sure, vote for many members of our LGBTQ2+ community.
In Vancouver in 2018, we need a City Council which reflects us, all of us.

On a warm and pleasant Tuesday evening, a friend and I were walking through my old stomping grounds, the Grandview-Woodland neighbourhood where I was raised, proselytizing about COPE – The Coalition of Progressive Electors and OneCity Vancouver, the only two civic political parties where all five of the City Council candidates — from COPE, Order of Canada recipient Jean Swanson, must-elect rabble-rouser Derrick O’Keefe, and his principled running mate and well-experienced City Councillor, Anne Roberts, to OneCity’s must, must-elect Christine Boyle, and her indefatigable running mate, Brandon Yan — are committed to a massive public sector housing construction programme, ensuring that the concerns of the 18,000 families in Vancouver who are paying more than 35% of their income for housing will be addressed through ready availability to affordable housing in public, purpose-built housing co-ops, co-housing & truly affordable rental housing.
Make no mistake: the 2018 Vancouver civic election is about one issue and one issue alone: the provision of affordable housing, housing as a human right that will guarantee to each and every one of us that we will not have to move elsewhere because housing in Vancouver is the preserve only of the wealthy, a Vancouver where families of every description may be assured that if living in truly affordable housing is a necessity for themselves and their family, comfortable, well-constructed housing which will require no more than 35% of their income to put a roof over their heads, in safe, secure, warm and inviting public housing — you know, a place you can call home, your home, where you can grow a garden, paint your walls, and sleep each evening in comfort and security, surrounded by neighbours and within a community that truly cares for you, is on its way.
A pipe dream, you say? “Unrealizable, not going to happen,” you’re thinking to yourself. Just because life, and providing a safe, secure home has been hell these past few years doesn’t mean that will always be the case.
Certainly the candidates running with OneCity Vancouver and COPE — for whom it is mandatory you cast a ballot on October 20th — don’t think it’s a pipe dream — they’ve got their heads screwed on straight, and have a plan.

Here’s how it works: Vancouver has $15 billion of city-owned property in their much-ballyhooed Property Endowment Fund (established by the TEAM civic administration of Mayor Art Phillips, in the early 1970s) — parks, school grounds, City Hall and industrial lands, as well as leased commercial, office and retail properties — $1.7 billion of which is available on a leasehold basis for development of affordable housing co-ops, co-housing and rental housing. Factor in the Crown land owned by the provincial and federal governments, and their commitment to turning over Crown land for the development of affordable housing, and you have a land bank of billions of dollars all set and ready on which to construct affordable housing.
Cost to citizens of acquiring lands to construct affordable housing: zero.
Construction cost to citizens to build affordable housing? Nada, nothing, zero, zilch. Read on and we’ll tell you why.
Each time a Vancouver developer — you know, big-time real estate developers like Terry Hui’s Concord Pacific, Michael Audain’s Polygon Properties, Ian Gillespie’s Westbank Projects, Andrew Grant’s PCI Developments, Robert Fung’s Salient Group, the Aquilini Investment Group, BOSA Properties, Peter Wall’s Wall Group, Peter and Ron Toigo’s Shato Holdings, just to name a few of Vancouver’s more prominent real estate developers — each time any developer builds a massive tower or two, the city is due what is termed a “community amenity contribution (or ‘CAC’)”.
Here’s a recent example of a community amenity contribution made by a developer: upon approval of the Reliance Development of the Jimmy Pattison-owned property at Drake and Howe / Burrard and Drake, Reliance / Pattison were required to pay the city $42.6 million in CACs, monies that should have been applied to the construction of social and affordable housing — but wasn’t, because Vision Vancouver’s Mayor Gregor Robertson and Councillor Kerry Jang actually had the temerity to suggest that there was “no shortage of affordable housing in the West End” — although a new community centre, child care centres, the Jim Deva Plaza, among other necessary amenities contributory to the livability of our city were built.
Much the same thing occurred when the Amacon and Onni Group built the Brava condominium development at Davie and Seymour — part of their CAC required them to construct the Vancouver International Film Centre, home to our annual film festival, and the much-beloved Vancity Theatre.
All of the CAC information provided directly above is in aid of answering your next question. If the properties on which affordable housing — housing co-ops, co-housing, rental housing — are provided “free” on a leasehold basis, who pays for the materials & housing construction? The answer? Easy, peasy, nice & easy: the developers do, out of their CAC.

Let us be very clear here: there is no impediment to building affordable housing NOW in Vancouver. We have the city-owned and Crown land available, on a 66-year leasehold basis. Construction costs would be paid out of developers’ community amenity contributions. And, the city would not charge either development permit application fees for the construction of this public housing, or assess any property tax on public housing either.
Where does the money go, then, that is collected by the City in rental, mortgage and housing charges?
Again the answer is easy: 5% of the monies are set aside to pay for a salaried property manager, and staff; 10% of monies collected are set aside for ongoing annual maintenance of the housing, while another 15% is set aside in a “replacement reserve fund” for — some years down the road — major structural renovations, replacement of boilers, flooring, appliances, kitchen counters and cabinetry, windows and doors, as well as roofing, inner courtyards and balconies, among other items requiring replacement.
And in the interests of democratic engagement, the decisions as to how the monies would be spent on annual maintenance and replacement reserve would be left to the members resident in the affordable co-op, co-and-rental housing, providing them a say & power in the livability of their home.
Remaining monies would be turned over to the City housing department to be applied toward the construction of supportive social housing.
The market could continue to build single family housing with basement suites and coach houses, and market rental would continue to be the purview of the development community. Those persons in our community intent on achieving the “American dream” — private home ownership, and increased equity in their property — would be free to carry on as they wish.
And, the rest of us, who live by the credo, “each according to her need?”

We’d be living with our families in safe, secure housing — with security of tenure, where we’d pay no more than 35% of our income for our housing, where if we were living in a condominium style building, seniors living on a fixed income, persons with disabilities and those on income assistance would pay only the shelter portion of their income for housing, while one third of the members comprising middle income workers and the creative community would pay much under the “low end of market” rate as determined by the annual Canada Mortgage and Housing Market Survey, while those earning $55,000 or more in 2018 income would pay a “low end of market” CMHC rate of $1100 for a bachelor, $1300 for a one-bedroom, $1600 for a 2-bedroom, and $2100 for a 3-bedroom, a median market charge that although dear is still much under the current market rate.
Surely, every person that my garrulous and engaging friend Daryl Morgan, and a shy and surprisingly reserved me spoke with during our two-hour plus walk through Grandview-Woodland — the woman who is moving back to Montreal with her boyfriend at month’s end because $2780 plus utilities is too much for them in their rental home, even if they’re sharing that home with a single parent friend, and even if they realize $2780 is good rent for a home in this market, leaving that friend wondering where she’ll find housing for herself and her daughter; or the young, professional woman we met along Semlin Drive who is paying $1150 for a tiny bachelor-style, barely livable basement suite, who loves the city and her access to the mountains for hiking, skiing, downhill mountain bike riding and all the outdoor sports that keep her healthy and sane in a city she loves but can’t afford, where hope for a better place to live lies nowhere on her horizon — would love to see Christine Boyle, Derrick O’Keefe, Jean Swanson, Brandon Yan and Anne Roberts elected to Council to ensure the construction of affordable housing that would allow them to live in the city they love.

The woman moving to Montreal, having a yard sale at her home on East 8th Avenue, had the song Billy, by Drama Duo, a dark and passionate musical collaboration between Na’el Shehade & Via Rosa, playing on the stereo. I love, love, love discovering new music!

Brandon Yan stands for openness, humanity and social justice, and stands against hate and oppression, and he finds himself under attack?
Here’s what VanRamblings knows: Brandon Yan is a bright, articulate and socially conscious person of conscience, an activist, involved citizen who …

• Served on the City of Vancouver’s City Planning Commission from 2014 to 2016 — which means he knows about the development process at City Hall backwards, forwards and inside out, knows all the players, and is intimately familiar with development policy, all that has come before and all that is on the order paper under the current regime at City Hall;

• Completed his Masters in Urban Studies at Simon Fraser University, researching civic education and public engagement practices, and is …
• Currently employed as the Education Director for Out On Screen, which on top of all of his other qualifications also means that Brandon Yan is committed to promotion of the arts in our city.

Qualified candidate for Vancouver City Council, thy name is Brandon Yan.