David Ley: What is puzzling to residents is that on significant housing and development issues, government and opposition have coalesced into a single voting bloc — councillors have accepted, without evidence, the argument that more housing supply means more home affordability.
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Government and opposition are basic building blocks in democratic societies. The task of opposition parties is to ensure that the governing party is competent and accountable, to make its administration uncomfortable.
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Vancouver city council for the past four years should have fitted that mould. ABC Vancouver, the governing party, lies toward the right end of the political spectrum and has pursued pro-development land use policies. It has promoted significant upzoning to permit higher density housing construction throughout the city. Councillors representing three self-identified progressive parties, the Greens, One City and COPE, should normally form an opposition, critical of ABC policies.
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A voting mystery
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Sunrise
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But what is puzzling to Vancouver residents is that on significant housing and development issues, the outstanding legacy of this council, government and opposition have coalesced into a single voting bloc. When we examine city hall voting on development issues, including the most important, the Broadway plan (2022), the Vancouver plan (2022) and the current official development plan (2026), the progressive councillors have been absorbed into ABC’s priorities.
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Among Vancouver’s municipal parties, only TEAM for a Livable Vancouver has consistently opposed these plans, calling for gentle development, and plan review and replacement.
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The mystery becomes even more puzzling when we identify the losers from the plans. To achieve high densities, affordable older rental apartments and secondary suites are demolished. Their evicted occupants, lower- and middle-income tenants, are precisely the groups whom progressive politicians normally advocate for, expecting support in return on election day.
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Moreover, in neighbourhood after neighbourhood, residents have been appalled, often angered, by unexpected upzoning and intrusive redevelopment they neither asked for nor wanted. The scale of resentment at council policy became evident recently, as one ABC councillor identified a “tsunami” of public protest over the so-called “villages” scheme. Though withdrawn due to neighbourhood pushback, “villages” remain within Vancouver’s official development plan.
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The villages scheme revealed that not only tenants are penalized by new development plans. Homeowners too are discovering their new-found vulnerability to neighbourhood changes plotted by city hall. Residential zoning that offered some predictability and protection to owners, to preserve their home and neighbourhood, has been torn up.
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Instead, the new official development p;an zoning map permits small apartmetn buildings to be built on any block, six-storey apartments on many of them and residential towers on a surprising number — for example, north of 16th Avenue and between 33rd and 49th avenues on Vancouver’s west side, and on even more blocks on the east side.
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To disrupt the residential lives of both tenant and owner voters is a serious own-goal for ABC and the progressive parties alike. So why have they done it?
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The mystery unpacked
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Avoiding conspiracy theories, a charitable explanation is that all councillors have uncritically accepted the argument that more housing supply, made possible by substantial upzoning to increase residential densities, means more home affordability. But this is an article of faith propounded by pro-growth interests and isn’t an evidence-based position.
