We’ll only get out of it with the political will to build the homes we need, especially affordable homes, and to protect tenants from bad actors.
Under Ken Sim, tenants don’t trust our tenant protections - and building new apartments is only legal in a small part of the city.
We can do better. I will fight for homes you can afford and tenant protections you can trust.
I will strengthen the tenant protections in the Broadway Plan area and expand them across the city.
I will ensure renters have the right to return to a comparable unit at the same rent they were paying before displacement, providing them with comparable housing nearby, with a rental top-up while redevelopment is occurring.
I will further strengthen the Broadway Plan protections by ensuring that developers must prove that they are 100% compliant with the tenant protections before receiving their permits.
I will work with City staff to develop remedies that can be levied on bad actors after permits have been issued, to ensure ongoing compliance. I will protect existing rental housing by prioritizing redevelopments that can occur with no displacement, ending incentives to displace renters, and easing development pressure on high-rental neighbourhoods.
I will actually enforce our renter protections.
I will bring back the Renter Office as a Renters' Advocacy Office and endow it with enhanced enforcement powers and a strong mandate to protect tenants from bad actor landlords. All City departments involved in housing and planning will be directed to engage with the Renters’ Office to ensure renters’ interests are protected.
I will fight Ken Sim's ban on net-new supportive housing.
Ken Sim’s divisive and dangerous motion to ban badly-needed supportive housing has passed Council. If implemented, it will make our homelessness crisis worse.
But city staff still need to report back on implementation, and at that point, there will be another vote. We will have another chance to fight back. At Council, I will fight for proven measures like supportive housing every single day.
We must build complete communities by allowing six floors and corner stores across Vancouver.
This means ending the apartment ban. Using zoning tools to allow six-story apartment buildings across the city, especially in single-family neighbourhoods near transit, and allowing co-op, non-profit, and public housing to build higher and faster. Focusing on developing rental housing in neighbourhoods like Shaughnessy that have a very low population density and are close to transit hubs. Staff will be directed to approve these projects with no hearings required.
This also means expanding corner stores across the city. Allowing more commercial use at ground floor level (corner stores, restaurants, small-scale retail, cafes) and live-work spaces across all neighbourhoods, and planning more ground-oriented spaces.
We must develop public housing.
This looks like converting the Vancouver Affordable Housing Agency into a public housing development agency with the right of first refusal to purchase land before it goes up for sale to the private sector. In collaboration with the province, the Housing Agency will build city-owned rental buildings and public amenities and lease land to co-op, non-profit, and Indigenous housing providers. Housing built by the City will be for people at a range of income levels, including a significant portion of deeply affordable units.
We must support Indigenous-led housing initiatives.
This means ensuring that city planning supports the ongoing collaborative work of reconciliation and complements developments by Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh, such as the Sen̓áḵw, the Heather and Jericho Lands projects.
We must protect non-market and social housing.
This means renewing existing leases and supporting the continuation of non-profit, co-op, and temporary modular housing. Where city plans involve redevelopment of affordable sites, ensure that additional units of co-op and non-profit housing are constructed.
We must fuse housing and climate policy.
We must ensure we are on track to meet our climate goals and minimize waste by increasing housing density, preventing methane gas in new buildings, retrofitting existing buildings, and using net-zero technologies.
"Vancouver has lots of jobs, but extreme restrictions on housing supply, resulting in sky-high prices and rents. It’s like pushing down on a balloon: whenever the city allows more housing to be built in a particular place, like the Broadway corridor, there’s tremendous pressure for redevelopment. Long-time tenants in old rental housing are extremely vulnerable. I’m glad to see that OneCity has solid, practical ideas to enforce tenant protection policies, and to allow more housing across the city, reducing the pressure on any one spot."
"Vancouver suffers from a dire shortage of housing, but as we build, we need to ensure that tenants, especially vulnerable tenants, are protected. Lucy Maloney understands that we must both fix onerous municipal processes and requirements and ensure that people's rights are respected and protected, and that they are not displaced. This is the way to solve the housing crisis: more homes, of all kinds, faster, leaving no one behind."