Housing For All

It costs too much to live in Vancouver, and every dollar spent on rent or mortgage is money taken away from the rest of your life. 

Housing is the foundation of a good life, and it should be treated like it. OneCity is the only team with a plan to build affordable homes at the scale the housing crisis requires, while protecting the people who already call this city home.

Right now, Vancouver has trapped young families, seniors, and renters, who have no choice but to move to a new neighbourhood, or a new city, to find the housing they need and can afford. Our housing plan imagines a Vancouver where you can choose a larger home for your growing family, an affordable rental apartment, or an accessible condo for downsizing, regardless of where you live in the city.

OneCity will advance construction of affordable housing on city land, create reliable, permissive rules to increase housing choice across the city, protect tenants from eviction, and take meaningful steps to help our neighbours get out of chronic homelessness.

• The Peoples’ Builder – OneCity will construct 4,000 affordable homes on city-owned land, leveraging federal funding, innovative construction methods, and reinvestment for ongoing benefit.

• Housing choice – OneCity will allow small apartments and corner stores in every neighbourhood, so that you get a real choice in where you live in the city.

• Clear, simple rules – OneCity will fix the outdated rules so it’s cheaper and easier to build good housing. That means legalizing apartments on small lots, removing unnecessary setback requirements, legalizing courtyards, and expanding single-stair citywide.

• Housing near services – OneCity will allow mid-size apartments close to services and high-streets like Main and 4th Ave, so businesses have more customers and more people have easy access to the shops, restaurants, and services they need.

• Finish the Vancouver Plan – OneCity will finish the job of actually planning for our city that ABC couldn’t by fixing problem areas and bringing our neighbours along.

Renters make up half of Vancouver’s population, and we need to ensure we’re

• Protect existing affordability – OneCity will create a fund to acquire and protect affordable housing from unnecessary redevelopment to market rents.

• Expand and empower tenant protections – OneCity will encode the Tenant Relocation Prevention Program (TRPP) as bylaw, and expand it citywide so that we can actually enforce the rules, regardless of where you live.

• Bring Back the Renters’ Office – Only this time, it will be bigger and better than ever. We’ll actually fund it, hire staff to defend renters, work with legal advocates, and proactively monitor landlords and developers to make sure they’re following the rules.  

• Put Land Into Community Trusts – We need to use the land we’ve got left for the most public good possible. Vancouver already has wildly successful Community Land Trusts like the False Creek Community Housing Trust. We’ll take what we know works and create a new city-wide Community Land Trust Support strategy so the community is first in line to buy land when it comes up for sale and can get the funding necessary to build non-market and affordable homes speculators can’t touch. 

• Make Developers Pay for Delays – OneCity will ensure that replacement housing isn’t delayed by decades by enforcing timelines and extending rent-top ups. 

• Every Pet Gets to Come Home – OneCity will push to end ‘no pet’ clauses in stratas and leases and make it easier to find a home for you and your four-legged friend.  

It is unacceptable that in a wealthy city like Vancouver, people are sleeping rough. ABC has chosen to vilify our most vulnerable neighbours instead of helping them. OneCity will enact proven strategies to reduce homelessness and care for our neighbours: 

• End the Ban on Supportive Housing – OneCity will allow the kind of housing and supports that will actually get people off the streets and into a stable place to heal. 

• Create Safe Shelter Options – OneCity will create a Vancouver Shelter Standard to encourage new and existing shelters to meet the cultural and community needs of Indigenous, Two Spirit, and gender diverse people who too often don’t feel safe in shelters or on the street.    

• Tackle Drug Harm – OneCity will expand treatment centers, recovery homes, and informed harm reduction education so that addiction doesn’t prevent folks from finding secure housing and employment.

What this means for you:

You don’t have to move to Burnaby to afford a home big enough for your new baby, you don’t have to leave your community to downsize into a smaller home