WHY SHOULD WEST ENDERS VOTE?
October 15 Election Will Impact Us All

by Carol Reardon

Most Vancouverites do not participate in municipal elections. Six out ten eligible voters don't even bother to vote. And yet, we all love to complain about the City on matters that range from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Some say that our at-large voting system is to blame for low voter turn-out. It requires candidates to campaign throughout the entire city, making it difficult for candidates who do not already have a city-wide public profile to garner the 40,000+ votes necessary to win a seat; and the lists of candidates on the ballot are lengthy and confusing for most voters.

Others say that municipal politics is just too boring to hold people's attention.

There may be some truth to these theories. But there is something that the City does have some control over that is worthy of our interest and attention this time around: the housing crisis.

The acute shortage of rental housing, particularly rental housing that is affordable to low and middle income residents, is a serious issue in this City and should strike a chord with West Enders. According to the City of Vancouver's 2022 Housing Needs study, approximately 86,000 existing residents are under-housed and the population is expected to continue to grow. Over the past several years, rents have skyrocketed and the vacancy rate for rental units hovers close to zero percent.

This housing crisis is the culmination of several complex factors and is not unique to Vancouver. Some of these factors are beyond the control of the City of Vancouver. But there is one contributing factor that Vancouver mayor and council do have control over: the long-standing ban on building new apartment buildings outside of the West End and Downtown Areas. For decades, about 80 percent of the developable land in Vancouver has been zoned residential. What this means is that developers have to apply to the City for a spot rezoning and go through a public hearing process to build even a low-rise apartment building. Cast your mind's eye over the neighbourhoods outside of the Downtown peninsula: you will soon realize that not much new rental housing apartments have been built in the rest of Vancouver.

Why should this matter to West Enders? When developers are prevented from building apartment buildings in most of the city, they turn to the neighborhoods where apartment buildings already exist to meet demand. Tenants are renovicted so that existing buildings can be renovated and sold as condominiums or rented at much higher rents; or torn down to make way for new developments. Sound familiar?

The City has tried to address these problems by placing a moratorium on condo-conversions in the West End and adopting rental protection policies. But the bottom line is that we need to build more apartment buildings where previously there were none, instead of building them where there already was one.

In May of this year, Council approved the Broadway Plan, which allows apartment buildings of various heights to be built along Broadway Avenue from Clark Drive to Vine Ave (but developers still have to apply for rezoning and go through a public hearing). In June, Mayor and Council approved the Vancouver Plan, which allows for modest forms of densification in residential neighbourhoods, but not apartment buildings.

There are party candidates in this municipal election who want to turn back the clock and keep residential neighborhoods just the way they are today; there are party candidates who are content with the zoning changes made already; and there are party candidates who want to get rid of the apartment ban and allow more high rise apartment buildings at transit hubs and low-rise apartments in residential neighborhoods.

I am not going to tell you how to vote. But I hope that you will consider doing a little research, talk to candidates who show up to campaign in the neighborhood, and take the time to vote.

Are there a lot of candidates to sort through? Yes. Vancouver always ends up with a lot of interesting characters running for office. But the City has put together a Voters' Guide 2022 on the City's web-site. It tells you what you need to know about voting, including deadlines for voting in advance and by mail, poll locations, and provides an interactive ballot that allows you to review candidate profiles and construct a mock ballot that you can print out for information purposes.

Hard copies of the Guide are available at community centres, libraries and other public facilities. You can vote by mail before October 11, at Advanced Polls (October 1, 5, 8, 11, 13), or on Election Day on October 15.

Carol Reardon is is a long-time West End resident with a Masters Degree in City Planning from MIT and a lengthy career in Administrative law.

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Kevin Dale McKeown
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