Tag Archives: city council

#VanPoli | Housing & Development | Making The Vancouver Plan Irrelevant, Pt. 1

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Vancouver Planning Staff and Developers Set to Turn Vancouver into Manhattan West

A core element of Colleen Hardwick’s successful 2018 run for office as a Vancouver City Councillor was the need for the city to draft a visionary planning document — to be called The Vancouver Plan — a bold, comprehensive and inclusive city-wide, neighbourhood and heritage community development plan for all residents living in the City of Vancouver, a 30-year plan that would focus on creating opportunities to integrate new housing, recreation centres, jobs, and amenities across our city.

As a first order of business early in her inaugural term of office, working with three term Vancouver City Councillor, Adriane Carr, Councillor Hardwick seconded a pioneering motion that would have staff employed within the Planning Department at Vancouver City Hall draft The Vancouver Plan (initial title, the City-Wide Plan) document, towards the creation of a livable, affordable and sustainable city, a single, city-wide plan that would guide future growth consistent with key community priorities, a guide to our city’s future growth …

  • The provision of affordable housing in all of Vancouver’s 22 neighbourhoods;
  • Working on a meaningful climate action plan, and environmental sustainability;
  • The provision of well-paying jobs city-wide & in neighbourhoods + economic growth;
  • Prioritizing public and active transportation needs for Vancouver residents;
  • Arts & culture, and the provision for related community amenities;
  • Infrastracture, including community pools, ice rinks and recreation centres.

Public input would be sought in The Vancouver Plan engagement process, which continues through until this day.

The final draft document of The Vancouver Plan is set to be presented to the public and to members of Vancouver City Council in early spring of 2022.

In the video above, the narrator of the visionary Vancouver Plan intones …

“Now more than ever, it’s important to reduce our use of carbon fuels, and adapt to climate change. To advance these big ideas, we need to rethink our low density neighbourhoods. To that end, we could help shape future growth more in major transit areas. New housing, jobs, child care centres, and public plazas would be built along these transit corridors.”

Remembering for just a moment that The Vancouver Plan is far from having completed its community engagement process, and is not due to be presented to both the public and Vancouver City Council until spring 2022, this past Wednesday, November 3rd, the Planning Department presented The Broadway Plan to the members of Vancouver City Council, a fait accompli document that will add 50,000 new residents along the Broadway corridor, framed by Vine Street to the west, 1st Avenue to the north, Clark Drive to the east, and 16th Avenue to the south.”

As reported in The Daily Hive Vancouver by civic affairs reporter Kenneth Chan …

“The emerging direction of the densification strategy calls for increasing Central Broadway’s population by up to 50,000 to about 128,000 residents — an increase of 64% compared to 78,000 residents today. This would be achieved by growing the number of homes in the area from over 60,000 today to up to 90,000 units, with much of this is intended to be more affordable forms of housing.

Added office, retail, restaurant, institutional, and creative industrial spaces would grow the number of jobs from 84,400 today to up to about 126,000 jobs.”

The residential and employment targets outlined above would occur over a period of the next 30 years, through until 2050. Tower heights between 30 and 40 storeys will be built in areas around the stations. Shoulder areas adjacent to the immediate area surrounding the stations — generally within a two or three block radius — will see height allowances of 20 to 30 storeys.

Example of a “Centre” area near the future South Granville Station, November 2021. (City of Vancouver)

Example of “Shoulder” areas along Broadway in the Broadway Plan, November 2021. (City of Vancouver)

More details on the “Broadway Plan” may be found both in Mr. Chan’s story in The Daily Hive, and John Mackie’s story in The Vancouver Sun.

The question has to be asked: if the reasoned, thoughtful and neighbourhood resident consulted 30-year visionary document, titled The Vancouver Plan, is not due to be presented to Vancouver City Council until spring 2022, why are the members of Vancouver City Council being asked by the City Planning Department to approve The Broadway Plan as early as next week, on either November 16th, 17th or 18th?

And why, if The Vancouver Plan is a city-wide and neighbourhood visionary development plan for Vancouver as we head towards 2050, why is the City Planning Department taking a piecemeal approach to presenting any number of development plans in the pipeline to Council now — months in advance of the presentation of The Vancouver Plan to the public & members of Vancouver City Council?

Tomorrow on VanRamblings, we’ll present 1) several more “visionary” large scale developments currently in the Vancouver development pipeline — of which you may not be aware — that are destined to have a major impact on the livability of our much cherished Vancouver home; 2) a continued exploration of VanRamblings’ ongoing thème du mois — “A city for whom? Benefiting whose interests?”; and 3) whether the tens of thousands of housing units set to be built as envisioned in proposed Vancouver development plans to be presented to Council even before the final draft of The Vancouver Plan will be made public, will result in an overbuilt city that will cater explicitly to wealthy and offshore investment interests and their developer friends, rather than to the implicit and explicit interests of Vancouver residents living in the 22 neighbourhoods across our city.

The 70+ storey Bay Parkade development — due east of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and sandwiched between Seymour and Richards streets — one of seven 65+ storey downtown developments approved by Vision Vancouver (the first two, the Shangri-la Hotel on Georgia, and its neighbour across the street, Holborn’s “Trump Tower”), the Bay Parkade development will be presented to Council for approval sometime before the 2022 Vancouver civic election.

#VanPoli | An Apartment on Every Block | Mass, Arbitrary Rezoning

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The graphic above courtesy of retired Vancouver architect, Brian Palmquist. “All the blue and orange areas up for grabs” in a mass rezoning of 16 of 22 Vancouver neighbourhoods.

Has there ever been a Vancouver City Council more seemingly in the pocket of developers than our current Vancouver City Council?

Oh sure, our Mayor and Councillors do the right thing on occasion — as they did last week in referring the redevelopment of False Creek South to the city’s Planning Department — but, objectively and overall, the commitment to “growth” in our city continues unabated, as it did in the decade Vision Vancouver was in power at City Hall, and as continues on through until this day.

Densification of our city is an inevitability, as more and more people move to our little burgh by the sea. The question arises, though: in whose interests, and to whose benefit will this densification of our city take place?

Where is the clarion commitment to non-market co-operative and co-housing, and supportive social housing that will house the broad swath of Vancouver residents who earn the median income of $44,000 for single persons, and $65,000 for couples (figures provided by Statistics Canada), seniors on fixed incomes, single parents of little means, the creative community, and persons living at the shelter rate?

A corollary to those questions is the question posed by UBC professor Patrick Condon In his latest article in The Tyee …

“The presumption is that by increasing rental stock all along the shown routes rents will drop to affordable rates. But will they?”

Today, VanRamblings will present two informed perspectives on a document titled Streamlining Rental Around Local Shopping Areas , the massive 348-page report provided by city staff to Vancouver’s bealeaguered City Councillors for action.

Click on this link to listen to Patrick Condon’s interview on The Early Edition.

In his column in The Tyee, Dr. Condon writes …

“The importance of this motion cannot be overemphasized. In effect this proposed bylaw change, in combination with the Broadway plan, probably predetermines the density, tenure and affordability of most of the city. If this is true, what then is left for the city to decide in its ongoing $18 million city-wide plan, three years in the making?

Providing affordable housing is the existential need in our city. Our service workers, many of who are our sons and daughters, are being forced out of this city in droves. This Trojan Horse of a seemingly technical change will, if passed, benefit mainly the land speculator, whose pockets are already stuffed to overflowing.

Our housing crisis and accompanying urban land value inflation is far worse than experienced by either Cambridge or Berkeley. We should do no less than what they have enacted, and find a way to stream land value gains into affordable homes for those who need them.

The crux of the matter is this: the mass rezoning of Vancouver, if passed by Vancouver City Council, will “allow for six-storey mixed-use, unaffordable market rental buildings development” in residential neighbourhoods across the city.

Not to mention which, should Council approve the staff report, there would be NO community consultation and no option for residents to address Council on future rental projects approved by staff for construction in their neighbourhood.

In the report currently before Vancouver City Council, our elected representatives not only have to digest all 348 densely-packed pages of the report, and make some sense of the lengthy document and what it portends for the city going forward, but vote on the most significant change to zoning — a mass rezoning of 16 of our city’s 22 neighbourhoods, sans much in the way of any palpable, informed input from residents now, or more particularly, in the future — Vancouver has ever witnessed.

Take a look at the graphic above. The city’s Planning Department envisions, and recommends to the members of Vancouver City Council, the approval of three to six storey apartment-style buildings along arterials in 16 of Vancouver’s 22 neighbourhoods — as well as, three and four storey townhouses and apartment buildings along residential streets one block away from the arterials.

All in the name of what? Greed? A “gentle densification” of our city that will make living in Vancouver more affordable for families — is that the goal of The Plan?

In his substack article titled Rental—Streamlining or Steamrolling? , architect Brian Palmquist writes …

More than a generation ago, anything more than single family homes in the RS districts of the city, which are much of this report’s focus, was forbidden. Basement suites were illegal and their closure was vigorously enforced by city staff — laneway houses as we now know them were nonexistent.

Fast forward to this report, where the same staff who impose burden after burden on even the simplest laneway rental home are proposing that RS homeowners solve the affordable housing shortage largely caused by staff’s work pace and fee demands, by accepting a massive up zoning affecting 16 of Vancouver’s 22 neighbourhoods — the other 6 are already subject to special, as-yet not revealed zoning such as the Broadway Plan and the Vancouver Plan.

Speakers presenting to Council may talk about various of the negative impacts of these proposals as they sit before you. As for me, I consider the proposal before you to be not so much streamlining as steamrolling.

VanRamblings presents the columns written by Patrick Condon and Brian Palmquist as edification on the Streamlining Rental Around Local Shopping Areas report before Vancouver City Council, and currently up for debate.

The key questions: Vancouver. A city for whom? Benefiting whose interests?

[Disclaimer. VanRamblings acknowledges that the members of Vancouver City Council are hard-working, dedicated public servants, who mean well for our city, and approach the very difficult work in which they engage each day with principle and integrity.  VanRamblings’ rhetoric is meant only as a ‘shot across the bow’, a reminder to our elected representatives that it is us who they were elected to represent, not the special interests who whisper, almost constantly, into their ears.]

#VanPoli | The Worst Council in 50 Years?

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The current Vancouver City Council is the worst, most inept, least productive, least progressive City Council Vancouver citizens have witnessed in 50 years.

In the amalgam of Green Party, OneCity, COPE and “independent” (formerly Non Partisan Association) Councillors, we have a group of 10 Councillors and a Mayor who cannot seem to get along with one another, do not work in common cause to benefit the electorate, and genuinely don’t like one another.

Burnaby City Council vs Vancouver City Council, 2018 – 2022

In May 2019, Burnaby City Council adopted a ‘best in Canada’ tenant assistance policy that provides support for tenants displaced from rental buildings with 5-plus apartments, mandating developers cover tenants’ moving costs (up to $1,400), and pay the difference between a tenant’s current rent and the rent in the new building tenants move to, while providing the …

Right of first refusal to displaced tenants to move into the replacement building once construction is complete, at the same rent as they paid before being displaced (subject only to the provincially mandated maximum annual increases), as well as mandating that developers will again have to cover moving costs when tenants move back into the new building.

The Burnaby City Council tenant assistance plan created inclusionary rental zoning bylaws, which requires of developers one-to-one replacement of demolished rental apartments, and that at least 20% of new housing developments in Burnaby will be secured as rental, in perpetuity.

Did Vancouver’s City Council’s purported, on the side of working people ‘left saviour’, OneCity Vancouver’s Christine Boyle, or the three-person environmental Green Party contingent, the Mayor, or any one of the five (now former) Non-Partisan Association City Councillors even consider implementing a tenant assistance policy similar Burnaby’s — and, now, New Westminster, as well?

Not on your life they didn’t, a point made comprehensible in the tweet below.

As Charles Menzies — a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia — wrote on Twitter yesterday in response to VanRamblings’ Tuesday column, about how some folks have deemed current Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick to be “right wing”, he wrote …

Tom ‘Not So Terrific’ Campbell, controversial Vancouver mayor, 1966 to 1972

In 1966, running as an independent, a brash Tom Campbell defeated Non Partisan Association mayor, Bill Rathie, to become Vancouver’s 31st mayor. From the outset, Campbell heralded a pro-development ethos that would make even Vision Vancouver (not to mention, our current City Council) blush, as he advocated for a freeway that would cut through the downtown east side, demolish the historic Carnegie Centre at Main and Hastings, and bring about the construction of a luxury hotel at the entrance of Stanley Park, as well.

Vancouver’s West End neighbourhood, circa 1960, pre high-rise construction

In the West End, where Campbell — a wealthy developer — owned substantial properties in the neighbourhood, the newly-elected Mayor all but ordered the demolition of almost the entirety of the well-populated West End residential neighbourhood — housing mostly senior citizens in their single detached homes — as he made way for the rapid construction of more than 200 concrete high-rise towers, irreversibly transforming Vancouver’s West End … forever.

All of these “changes” augered controversy among large portions of the Vancouver populace, leading to vocal, often violent protests throughout Campbell’s treacherous tenure as Mayor, finally leading to his defeat at the polls in the November 1972 election, with the election of a majority, progressive T.E.A.M. (The Electors’ Action Movement) Vancouver civic administration.

Mayor Art Phillips discussing his legacy project, the Property Endowment Fund

Since 1972 and the election of the T.EA.M majority Vancouver civic government, whatever their stripe over the years — Non Partisan Association, COPE or Vision Vancouver — have strictly adhered to the dictum of Abraham Lincoln, “a government for and by the people.” Can the members of our current City Council honestly say that their primary goal is to serve the “public good”?

How Can VanRamblings Write That The 2021 City Council is the Worst in 50 Years?

A diverse — not — set of Vancouver City Council aldermen, circa 1933

Say what you will about Vision Vancouver Councillors.

At least they got along with one another, and saw themselves as a team working to make Vancouver a greener and more  livable city, while also working to achieve the laudable goal of eliminating homelessness in our city.

Vancouver’s current Council? How do they fare in an objective analysis?

Unlike any City Council elected to Vancouver City Hall over the course of the past 50 years, the current contingent of Vancouver City Councillors have steadfastly continued to spot rezone across the city, causing land prices to skyrocket, while not listening to the citizens who elected them to office.

Absolutely bereft of humility, most of the 10 members of Council have arrogantly set about to enact policy that is “good for us” because ‘our’ Councillors “know better” and were elected to govern not listen — despite what the citizens of the city say we all need — all the while building ever more unaffordable condominium and market rental complexes.

All this while barely paying lip service to the provision of “social housing” and “affordable housing” — which Council continues to define in the same manner former Vision Vancouver Councillor Kerry Jang elucidated as …

“Affordable housing is something that somebody can afford.”

Isn’t it so much hyperbole to call this Council the worst in 50 years?

To deny the Councillors their innate humanity, while failing to take into account that all 10 Councillors and our Mayor are dedicated servants of the people, who week-in and week-out work anywhere from 50 to 75 hours a week, more often than not sitting in Council chambers from 9:30 a.m. until 11 p.m., on behalf of and in the social, financial and environmental interests of  Vancouver citizens, as creditable and exemplary servants of the public good?

Maybe.

Over the next 360 days, leading up to the upcoming and always critically important Vancouver civic Election Day, on Saturday, October 15, 2022, VanRamblings will set about to support the claims we make, while introducing you to the next contingent of civic candidates seeking elected office in Vancouver.