Transcript
Speaker: I'm Jane Williams. This is the Red Eye Podcast. You can hear our live broadcast on Saturday mornings from 10 till noon at 100.5 FM in the Lower Mainland.
Speaker: Coming up in this episode, Ian Mass with CityBeat for March 1st. Today, he reports back on last week's council meeting. It was a busy week in Vancouver civic politics.
Speaker: Lots of attention on the downtown east side. The candidates for the April 5th by-election to replace councillors Carr and Boyle became clear. The integrity commissioner, the aquatic center, and lots more. And Red Eye Collective member Ian Mass is here with his City Beat Report. Hi, Ian.
Speaker: Hi, Lorraine. Yeah, lots of focus this week on the downtown east side with Mayor Sims' proposal to temporarily pause new supportive housing investments in Vancouver, garnering much of the attention.
Speaker: In addition, planning staff also reported out on what they've been working on in the downtown east side. What what did staff have to say? Well, it was a progress report saying they'd been working on this downtown east side report for the last year and a half after council passed a motion back in November 23.
Speaker: yeah It was called, quote, uplifting the downtown east side and building inclusive communities that work for all residents. The motion itself that was passed back there a year and a half ago is quite detailed about what council wanted staff to do. And so they've been working away on five service areas, much of which reflects Mayor Simms concerns about the downtown Eastside.
Speaker: They're working on single room occupancy redevelopment, a regional approach to homelessness and mental health and substance abuse, land use and housing policy, which is kind of code for maybe rezoning the downtown Eastside.
Speaker: community economic development and social infrastructure. And so, counselors seem to be impressed with the work to date by staff, although some ABC counselors wanted a different kind of detail.
Speaker: They are just convinced, the ABC counselors, that there's significant overlap and inefficiencies and the dreaded city mission drift, and that's all happening on the downtown east side.
Speaker: and they want to prove it. So they asked for, and I quote, a comprehensive list of nonprofit and non-governmental organizations operating in the downtown east side and the total funding allocated from all sources with the goal of gaining a comprehensive understanding of service provision and service delivery outcomes. So that's a big report for sure if they decide to pass it.
Speaker: And guess what? They did. But that request right there got Councillor Rebecca Bly, who just got kicked out of the ABC caucus because she wasn't towing the ABC line and agreeing with what Ken Simm wanted. That got her up on her feet saying this was a politically motivated motion, which won't help a thing.
Speaker: So ABC Councilor Lisa Dominato, Green Party Councilor Pete Fry agreed with Councilor Bly. But as I already told you, ABC won the day and we're going to get yet another hefty report about the downtown east side.
Speaker: Wow. Now, Mayor Sims' proposal to temporarily pause new supportive housing investments in Vancouver was debated at City Council. Give us a rundown on what he's proposing.
Speaker: Well, there's three interconnected parts to this with only the pause on the supportive housing coming to council directly this week. The first part, which council heard about this week, is that temporary pause on any city contributions of land or funding for supportive housing developments.
Speaker: Sim wants the city to focus on replacing the single-room occupancy hotels and the temporary ah modular housing that needs replacing. He gives, in his motion, lots of exceptions to the pause, including housing projects currently under development or replacement of existing supported housing projects and supportive housing for seniors, women, and families and youth aging out of foster care.
Speaker: SIM is calling this a temporary pause, which Vancouver will lift when other cities in the region take on their fair share. And apparently there's going to be a review at least twice a year to see if the other municipalities are in fact pulling their weight, whatever that weight is, since it hasn't been defined.
Speaker: SIM leans heavily on the idea that Vancouver is home to 80% of the region's supportive housing and more than 67% its shelter spaces, but only has of the regional population.
Speaker: Interestingly, staff said that 80% of the van Vancouver's homeless people actually became homeless, were residents of Vancouver before they became homeless. Mayor Simm doesn't talk about that particular part, just that they're taking too much.
Speaker: So the second part of this three-part thing is the updating of the downtown east side area plan. That was passed back in 2014 by Gregor Robertson's council.
Speaker: And the focus on that plan has always been protecting residents in the downtown east side, which is obviously dominated by the low-income population. But Sim's plan is to open up the downtown east side for more of a mix of for-profit housing and businesses, and somehow in there not drive low-income people out, supposedly, and land prices up. But You know, most people call it gentrification, and that's probably what it is.
Speaker: And the third part is another police crackdown on organized crime and gangs operating in the downtown east side. Apparently, the police won about $5 million dollars more for that particular project, but that's going to come before council later. Neither of those last two, the gentrification of the police, were on council's agenda this week.
Speaker: Well, think, Ian, it's it's probably really worth pulling out and repeating what you said there are about 80% of people in Vancouver who were homeless became homeless in Vancouver.
Speaker: Yeah, it was an interesting and surprising statistic that came out of the staff. So the thing of how many homeless are here, you know, when when you measure it from a population point of view, yeah, we're overrepresented, but People come to Vancouver because sometimes the rents are cheaper.
Speaker: You know, all kinds of reasons. But they they certainly become homeless here, not in Williams Lake or Kelowna the places, Surrey, where the mayor and council want to give you the impression that we're importing all these homeless people because of all the services.
Speaker: Now, there was a big and lively rally outside City Hall. Fill us in on what happened there. Well, I had a terrible cold, so I wasn't able to make it. I hear you were there so we could we could talk about it. But it was a big rally. I saw a lot of the press clippings on that one organized by the downtown Eastside residents outside City Hall just before council heard from over 100 speakers, most of whom said that this supported housing pause is the wrong thing to do.
Speaker: They don't want to see the downtown east side gentrified and another $5 million dollars for police in the downtown east side is better spent at alleviating poverty. I heard some great downtown east side speeches on the council feed, but despite almost unanimous opposition, ABC council passed the supported housing pause.
Speaker: Green Councillor Pete Fry, ABC Councillor Lisa Domenado, who seems to be more and more ah voting against her colleagues in ABC, and the former ABC Councillor Rebecca Bly, who was just kicked out, as I said.
Speaker: Those three were all opposed, but it passed six to three. So Friday, February 28th, that's today, the last day for candidates ah to had to declare their intention to run in the April 5th by-election to replace ah Vancouver One City Councillor Christine Boyle and Green Party Councillor Adrian Carr.
Speaker: So we're talking on Friday morning. What can you tell us so far, Ian? Well, there's five political parties, major political parties, who are nominating candidates. Three of those parties are on the left.
Speaker: The Coalition of Progressive Electors, COPE, has Sean Orr. He's been nominated by them. He describes himself as a local housing activist and a writer.
Speaker: ah One City has environmental lawyer and transportation advocate Lucy Maloney as its candidate. And Green Party has nominated Annette Riley, whose bio describes her as an award-winning filmmaker, a dedicated advocate, and a longtime Green volunteer.
Speaker: The Vancouver District Labor Council has endorsed one city and green candidates, but not the COPE candidate. They've stuck with just two endorsements. And so that center-left vote is going to be ah potentially split there.
Speaker: Two of those, when I talked about the five parties, they're on the center right. There's Mayor Ken Simms' party, a better city, or ABC. They've appointed Ralph Kaisers, a sergeant with the Vancouver Police Department and head of the police union, and a guy named Jamie Stein, who describes himself a leader in the tech industry and community and business advocate.
Speaker: The fifth party is called TEAM, TEAM for a Livable Vancouver, and that has Colleen Hardwick. She's a former NPA city councilor and 2022 mayoral candidate. Got massacred in in that vote, but she was a candidate.
Speaker: And Theodore Abbott, who describes himself as a podcaster urbanist, and he actually works for TEAM. Those are the candidates who are running. There will undoubtedly be other independent candidates, but these are the five political parties, and their seven candidates will be the main contenders for these two spots.
Speaker: So without going on too long, we'll we'll walk through but some of the issues that are shaping up as the campaign gains some steam in future City Beat broadcasts.
Speaker: Okay, well, we'll be in the flow of the election soon. But right now, Vancouver Aquatic Center down on Sunset Beach needs to be rebuilt. And Park Board was supposed to decide on a plan this weekend. What what happened there?
Speaker: Well, my lovable Vancouver Aquatic Center, all my kids learn to swim there. swam there lots of times. It's a beautiful place. And the pressure's on to get this done, or at least started, because the park board needs to get shovels in the ground quickly.
Speaker: or the approved money the voters gave them in 2021 will disappear. Naturally, costs have gone up. So I think they're about $21 million sure already.
Speaker: The problem is that the park board can't decide whether they want to build a fifty meter pool or pool. Lots of people are urging them to stick with the 50 meters, especially the competitive swimmers.
Speaker: But staff and architects are proposing 25 meters with ah leisure pools and lazy rivers and all the trappings of a ah leisure center. So the park board has given staff and the architects one more chance to fit a 50 meter pool and into the Sunset Beach location without breaking the bank.
Speaker: And they've given them one month to do that. And so we'll hear back in about a month. Now, the city heard back from the integrity commissioner this week about a complaint Councillor Pete Fry made about the ABC park board commissioners. What did she have to say?
Speaker: Well, Councillor Pete Frye's complaint was that the ABC commissioners were illegally making decisions by caucusing and deciding votes behind closed doors.
Speaker: And after investigating, the integrity commissioner said, yes, ABC was caucusing and making decisions privately. And that's against the province's open meeting laws.
Speaker: which say municipalities must make decisions publicly and not have pre-meetings to decide how they're going to vote. ah Interestingly, ah ABC's response was to disagree with the integrity commissioner, saying that they'll not stop caucusing in private. I suspect they'll be a little more careful about it.
Speaker: But there's no real consequence other than censure. And since they have a majority at on council, they're not going to censure. It'll be interesting to see what the park board does about this. But anyways, that's where that stands.
Speaker: I think there's another complaint by Pete Fry in the works, too. And we should be hearing about that relatively soon. And you've got two quick development stories.
Speaker: Yeah, one's up in ah the old Safeway site, way up in West Point Gray by the university. That's been vacant since 2019, that site up there. And the street itself, I haven't been up there for a long time, but apparently it's not in great shape from a retail point of view.
Speaker: So this week, council heard a proposal to rezone this site. what the developer wants to do is put two 19 and 21-story towers and then two six-story buildings. It's ah quite the design.
Speaker: It's going to contain about 571 rental units with ah commercial space on the ground floor, including a grocery store, which they don't have up there. ah West Point Grey residents are not happy about this densification.
Speaker: There's not enough parking. It's too dense. There's no community facilities. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And they told council that this week. But unfortunately, council, there were so many of them telling council that there was an equal amount of people saying, build, build, build, but they ran out of time. And so any decision is going to be postponed to March 11th.
Speaker: An even denser development is being proposed for the Jericho lands, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations. People have a huge development going on down there.
Speaker: It's just down the hill from the old Safeway site. And Council's going to hear about that in April, but there's considerable a local opposition. It's been brewing for a long time about that proposal too. So nothing but political turmoil in West Point Grey.
Speaker: And finally, ah the city, after buying a market rental house building at 49th and Main, the city has decided to be a developer. They're going to build something from scratch.
Speaker: And they're going to start with some land they own at Pacific and Hornby, right at the ah north end of the Granville Street Bridge there. And they want they're going big. They want to build a 54-story tower with over 1,100 market rental homes.
Speaker: You know, the city's taking more and more money from their property endowment fund to pay for day-to-day operations. So they hope that this kind of development they're getting into is a way to make some money, replenish their property endowment funds, and not raise taxes so high. They did that this year. They took a bunch of money out of the property endowment will fund and got the tax increase down.
Speaker: But this isn't without its risk. The city lost a lot of money. when they got involved in the Olympic Village real estate deal back a couple of decades ago. So we'll see what happens with this one.
Speaker: And there you go. That's all that fits. Thanks so much, Ian. Great to talk to you. Oh, good. Thanks. Red Eye Collective member Ian Mass was here with his City Beat Report.
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Speaker: And you can follow us on Blue Sky at Red Eye Radio. I'm Jane Williams. Thanks for listening.
