How Vancouver’s mayoral candidates plan to make housing more affordable

Voters in Vancouver’s municipal elections were presented with a range of proposed solutions to the city’s chronic unaffordability — but one question looms over all mayoral candidates and their pledges.

That’s whether they’ll be dealing with the kind of fragmented council that incumbent Kennedy Stewart has faced for the past four years.

Statistics Canada data released last month confirmed that British Columbia leads the country as the province with the highest rate of unaffordable housing, largely due to the number of people paying high rents to live in downtown Vancouver Life.

The unaffordability of real estate prices and income in the city is also routinely ranked among the worst in the world.

“[People] cannot find adequate housing, whether to buy or rent, and so I think how to bring more housing to the market has become the dominant question,” said Hamish Telford, a political scientist at the University of the Fraser Valley.

Mayoral candidates in the Oct. 15 election are offering flagship housing pledges ranging from increasing the housing stock to improving the permitting process and tearing up the city’s current housing plans on behalf of more cooperatives.

But putting those plans into action — for whoever wins the top job — could be complicated.

The lack of protective spells leads to complications

Because Vancouver is one of the few major Canadian cities without boroughs, it can be dizzying to keep track of the 15 people running for mayor and the 59 seeking one of 10 council seats.

In an attempt to bring order to the chaos, candidates often line up as slates under different party banners, but Telford thinks it’s unlikely that the next mayor will have a council majority from the same slate.

“It will then really be the mayor’s job to make this divided council work,” he said.

“And while they all agree that the main problem is housing, they may have different approaches to how to tackle the problem – and that’s going to be the challenge for anyone who becomes mayor, to get the council to get into one direction.”

Stewart, a former NDP MP, was elected mayor in 2018 after running as an independent.

After four years in what he described as a “split” council with representatives from four different parties, he formed his own party – Forward Together – to run with a list of candidates seeking a majority.

He believes the party has a good chance but says his experience has prepared him if that doesn’t happen.

“Regardless of the circumstances, I know I can move forward with this plan, although it would be much easier with a majority,” he said.

Stewart’s 2018 campaign promised voters 85,000 housing units over 10 years. Last year the council approved 8,800 units, he said. In this campaign, the pledge has more than doubled to 220,000 units in 10 years, with the majority being rental or council housing.

To get there, he’s relying heavily on the city’s Broadway and Vancouver plans, which aim to increase housing density in large parts of the city, and the completion of major construction projects that are being delayed by developers, he says, because he has concerns about whether the existing Council would give the green light.

“This council is totally fragmented and that’s why when you bring a big project to the council, it’s so unpredictable whether it will pass or not,” he said.

At the same time, he has promised rent protection for those whose houses are being renovated.

“If your building is to be renovated, all your costs are covered and you can then move back into the new building replacing your old building at the same or lower rent,” he said.

Pitched faster allowed

Four years ago, Non-Partisan Association mayoral candidate Ken Sim lost to Stewart by less than 1,000 votes. He said he’s spent years preparing this time around and is confident he and his new ABC Vancouver party could win a majority and would be happy to work with others.

In terms of housing, Sim would like to speed up the city’s approval process and pre-approve some housing designs.

“If you wanted a simple renovation permit, you should have it in three days. If you wanted to build a detached house or a terraced house or a terraced house, you can get your permit in three weeks; for professionally designed low and mid-rise buildings within three months and complex structures within a year, less than six to 12 years that people are now waiting for,” he said.

Mark Marissen, Progress Vancouver’s mayoral candidate, did not respond to a request for comment. The party’s platform includes a promise to provide all Vancouver renters $1,200 per household and a year-long property tax waiver for all first-time home buyers.

In a press release, Marissen said Progress plans to more than double housing starts across the city, primarily with “soft” four- to six-story family-oriented housing.

“It just makes sense to capture this new value and send it directly to those most in need,” Marissen said in the release.

Housing and the related issue of homelessness have cited a number of pre-election polls as issues of central concern in Vancouver, but crime and law and order also featured prominently during the campaign.

For the first time, the Vancouver Police Union hosted a mayoral debate and took the unprecedented step of endorsing one candidate, Sim.

Sim has pushed for the commitment to hire 100 more police officers and 100 more mental health nurses to address public safety concerns, which he says could be funded without cutting core services.

“We intuitively know that for every dollar invested in this program, we should be saving at least as much, if not more, in avoided downstream costs for the system,” he said.

The NPA, which has four of its five council members resigned during the current term, is represented by Fred Harding in the mayoral race.

Harding, a former West Vancouver police officer, is a fierce advocate for law and order and promises to deal with a “public safety crisis” in the city.

He wants to ask either the federal or provincial government for about $50 million a year over the next few years to bolster the city’s police force, possibly bring back retired officers, or offer short-term secondments from other police departments.

While acknowledging that it would be unusual for any other level of government to step in and fund the city police force, Harding said he was confident Ottawa or the province would come forward.

“It’s also really unusual for a city to be in a crisis like Vancouver. Remember, we’re not talking about a bad situation, we’re talking about a crisis,” he said.

Regarding housing, the NPA also promises to speed up the permitting process, although Harding was unable to provide specific targets.

Proposal for cooperative housing

On the other side of the housing debate sits Colleen Hardwick, who aims to move from city council to mayor under the banner of TEAM for a Livable Vancouver.

Hardwick said having a vote on the council for the past four years that felt like a solo vote would accomplish little “other than make me uncomfortable”.

“I knew it was important to build a team with a majority of six votes to bring about much-needed change in the city,” she said. The mayor gets a tiebreak vote in the event of a deadlocked council of 5-5.

Hardwick doesn’t believe the solution to Vancouver’s expensive housing is to increase inventory, which puts her at odds with her former party, the NPA.

She has instead promised to repeal both the Vancouver Plan and the Broadway Plan, saying the extra homes they are proposing are not needed and would increase housing costs overall.

Instead, she proposes spending $500 million to build co-op housing on city-owned land to generate revenue for the city and create 2,000 units.

Hardwick wants to appoint a downtown Eastside commissioner to audit the services offered to residents.

“The intention is that the Commissioner will act as a catalyst to bring the other levels of government together to complete this review because by doing so it will help us understand how we can be more efficient in dealing with homelessness,” she said.