Opinion: TEAM is taking a different position on five mass upzoning plans that council members, regardless of party, unanimously approved
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“No other party is offering the change that Vancouver desperately needs,” says the civic party TEAM for a Liveable Vancouver.
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Although TEAM is not the only Vancouver party making such broad claims, when it comes specifically to housing development there is something to its argument that “no other party is offering” what TEAM is promising.
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TEAM is taking a decidedly different position to five mass upzoning plans that Mayor Ken Sim and all council members, regardless of party, unanimously approved in the past four years.
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To begin, TEAM, which is putting forward former councillor Colleen Hardwick for mayor, has announced it will repeal the updated Broadway plan, which has led to more than 150 mostly tower projects being slated for 500 city blocks.
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Saying such strategies mostly drive up land prices and don’t provide affordable housing, TEAM would also repeal the 2025 Jericho plan, which gave the green light to 60 residential buildings, mostly highrises, on Indigenous-owned land in Point Grey.
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In addition, TEAM would reverse the 2025 Rupert and Renfrew Station area plan, which upzoned 200 city blocks, mostly quiet side streets in northeast Vancouver, for apartment blocks up to eight storeys.
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TEAM would also repeal the citywide Vancouver plan of 2022 and the 2026 Vancouver official development plan, the latter a 30-year blueprint to boost population density, including by prohibiting public hearings on many proposed residential developments.
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In July, TEAM also stated it opposed the controversial proposed Villages plan, which was slated to create 17 new high-density hubs across the city. When the Villages project went to a vote a few weeks later, the majority of council chose to turn thumbs down on it.
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Despite the current Vancouver council being made up of parties of the political right, centre and left, members of each have consistently supported each dramatic upzoning initiative, before most got cold feet this summer on the broad Villages plan.
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Robert Renger, a retired senior planner in Burnaby who is an independent watchdog of Vancouver politics, said city hall has a “really revolutionary council in terms of giving benefits to developers” through top-down policies ostensibly designed to foster more market housing.
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That’s regardless, Renger said, of whether the elected officials have been members of the dominant centre-right ABC Vancouver party (which includes Mayor Sim), or of the centre-left Green party, OneCity or COPE.
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The mass pre-zoning for higher density on vast swaths of the city, Renger said, hands profitable “entitlements” to developers. It also, he said, reduces council’s ability to require builders to provide infrastructure, as well as amenities such as community centres.
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Meanwhile, the Green party’s Pete Fry, who last week emerged as the consensus mayoral candidate for Vancouver’s three major “progressive” parties, has recently accused the TEAM party of being “really Ken Sim-esque.”
