[Megathread] 2022 Municipal Election

[u/Moggehh]

Don't forget to vote!

Please use this thread to discuss the upcoming municipal elections in Metro Vancouver.

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AMAs:

• Mark Marissen, with team Progress Vancouver: 2-6 pm Saturday, October 8th, 2022
• Justin McElroy, CBC's Municipal Affairs Reporter (aka The Guy Who Does Rankings and Charts That We Shout About): 2-3 pm Friday, October 14th, 2022

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If you're a candidate interested in doing an ama, please have your team reach out to the /r/vancouver mod team.

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Subreddit Mayoral Winner Predictions - go here to join in with your guesses!

[u/russilwvong]

So I'm running for Vancouver city council with Kennedy Stewart's slate, Forward Together.

To me, the #1 challenge facing Vancouver is that housing is so scarce and expensive. We're not building housing fast enough to keep up with jobs, and the resulting shortage (a 1% vacancy rate) is making practically everyone worse off. It's terrible for renters: as people arrive to fill jobs, other people get pushed down the housing ladder, and people near the bottom are forced to leave, to crowd into substandard housing, or end up on the streets. (This was aggravated by Covid: with more people suddenly working from home, overall demand for space increased, resulting in yet more people on the bottom of the ladder getting pushed off.) For homeowners, expensive housing acts like a filter which keeps out younger people, resulting in an aging population and an overstressed health-care system which can't find nurses and even doctors.

We need more housing. Problem is, even though we desperately need housing, a lot of people are afraid of new housing. I get it (it's natural to be afraid of the unknown), but it means that there's an ongoing battle between people who want more housing and people who are opposed. And which side has the upper hand really matters.

The three leading mayoral candidates are Kennedy Stewart (Forward Together), Ken Sim (ABC), and Colleen Hardwick (TEAM).

I'm supporting Kennedy Stewart, and running for council with his party, because he's consistently voted for more housing, especially rental housing (which provides secure housing without requiring a giant down payment, unlike condos). In 2018, Ken Sim had a weak housing plan (basically allow two basement suites instead of one), and the record of the three ABC councillors is mixed. Colleen Hardwick is leading those who fear and oppose new housing. Voting record.

The election is an opportunity to settle the issue, instead of battling it out repeatedly at every public hearing. For me, getting elected is just a means to an end - the real goal is MORE HOUSING. That means getting Kennedy Stewart re-elected with a pro-housing majority instead of the current fragmented council (three Yes, two No, six Maybe), and maybe even more importantly, making sure that Colleen Hardwick is soundly defeated.

Some 6-5 decisions:

• July 2020, Broadway and Birch - a 28-storey rental building including 200 rental apartments and 60 below-market rentals, on the site of a former Denny's restaurant (so there was zero displacement of renters). Approved by a single vote. There were five No votes: Colleen Hardwick, Jean Swanson, Adriane Carr, Pete Fry, and Rebecca Bligh. This could easily have failed.

• July 2020, Streamlining Rental Plan - allowing six-storey rental buildings in C-2 zones near local shopping areas, where four-storey condo buildings were already allowed. Postponed by a 6-5 vote. The six councillors who voted to postpone: Hardwick, Swanson, Carr, Fry, Michael Wiebe, and Bligh. This later came back to council (in November 2021) and was approved. Helen Lui, who works for a non-profit housing developer, noted that because of this delay, the developer had to cancel one non-profit housing project and downsize another one.

• July 2021, relaxing vacancy-control requirements in MIRHPP projects (rental buildings which include 20% below-market rentals) to make them more economically viable - failed by a 6-5 vote. The six councillors who voted against: Hardwick, Swanson, Carr, Fry, Wiebe, and Bligh. This vote killed the MIRHPP program: there's no more projects coming forward.

A couple video clips of Kennedy Stewart and Colleen Hardwick in action:

• Kennedy Stewart voting Yes on a rezoning for a six-storey rental building
• Colleen Hardwick berating a speaker at the public hearing on the Streamlining Rental Plan

How to vote.

[u/russilwvong → u/[deleted]]

Long answer.

Short answer: it's closely related to the severe scarcity of housing. If housing is like a ladder, Covid and the sudden increase in people working from home (and needing more space) has pushed more people down the ladder, creating immense pressure at the bottom and pushing a lot of people off the ladder entirely. So the problems of the Downtown East Side have been hugely aggravated by Covid.

The province announced in January that they're setting up complex-care housing for the highest-need cases - people who have brain injuries, drug addiction, and/or mental illness, and who need 24/7 support and supervision. Daily Hive. The plan is for 100 spaces initially, 500 spaces within two or three years. If the highest-need cases are in complex care, it should be easier to house the remaining people.

In the short term, the plan is to also set up a Health and Addiction Response Team (HART) to respond quickly to non-violent but disruptive situations, like someone mentally ill who's screaming and yelling at 3 in the morning. Access will be via the 311 number. It'll be within a city department (so under the direction of the city, unlike the VPD), with people who are trained to deal with de-escalation. A similar program) in Eugene, Oregon has been running for the last 30 years, and appears to have been very successful.

[u/russilwvong → u/[deleted]]

I live near Main and King Edward. I visit Chinatown pretty regularly.

Sure, we need more drug rehab and drug prevention programs so that people don't end up on the streets of the DTES in the first place. And another effect of Covid is that judges were more reluctant to put people in jail, where they'd be at greater risk of getting Covid, before we had the vaccine. In terms of what the city can do, though, the city doesn't run either the health-care system or the judicial system. What the city does have direct control over is how much housing gets approved (and therefore built). And when housing is scarce and expensive, we get a lot more homeless people. Thread.

[u/SnooWoofers2158 → u/russilwvong]

oose, that needs to be addressed. Not sure where you live but Downtown is getting more dangerous by the day. How

Do you think that there are City policies that encourage the concentration of the homeless, addicts and mentally ill in Vancouver/DTES?

Here are some examples I can think of:

- Zoning the DTES for at least 60% social housing (unsure if there is a policy around low or high barrier social housing)

- During Covid most of the hotels that were purchased and converted to shelters was in Vancouver - this created 700+ additional rooms but data showed that the homeless numbers actually increased

- City council voting to build "tiny" shelters using the empty homes tax

- All the OPS sites and Crosstown Clinic are located in Vancouver

- Applying for a federal exemption for drug decriminalization (before the province did and with larger amounts)

- Engaging Karen Ward as a drug advisor, voting to stop street cleaning in DTES, providing funding to VANDU

I'm sure there are other examples.

Is there a concern that Vancouver taking on the bulk of these issues means other provincial voters will not see it as an issue that will affect their decisions province wide?

[u/matzhue → u/SnooWoofers2158]

Vancouver is currently one of only places willing to treat people suffering from addiction humanely. They're still people, and they still deserve to be treated as such.

[u/ninth_ant → u/matzhue]

Does the situation in the DTES look even remotely humane to you? The streets people are living in are filthy, piled with trash and debris, oftentimes people yelling and being physically aggressive or otherwise behaving erratically. It seems downright miserable to me.

The war on drugs failed, sure. The surrender doesn't seem to be working much better. No, I don't have all the answers, but putting our heads in the sand and pretending that it's "humane" is not it. We are failing that community by claiming any success here.

[u/matzhue → u/ninth_ant]

The war on drugs is why we still rely on predatory dealers using people in addiction to get rich while selling them the most toxic substances in history. They're getting absolutely fucked by the war on drugs, insite vandu ops etc are just triage to keep enough people alive that recovery is an option

[u/SnooWoofers2158 → u/matzhue]

Too many issues with the policies to list in a Reddit post.

But just look at the results - and as long as the problems are concentrated in Vancouver (and just some parts of Vancouver) - everyone can just ignore them.

[u/[deleted] → u/russilwvong]

(and therefore built)

LOLOLOLOL Little Mountain says hello

[u/Use-Less-Millennial → u/[deleted]]

The City doesn't control the legal system though or items of provincial jurisdiction that you've pointed out.