Sep 14, 2022: Two out of five mayoral candidates turn out for debate

Hosted by Residents for Community Control on City Development, the neighbourhood campaign event drew about 200 members of the public. Kennedy Stewart, Ken Sim, Mark Marissen, Colleen Hardwick and Fred Harding were invited to take part, but only two candidates showed up —  Hardwick and NPA mayoral candidate Fred Harding.

The candidates were asked about their views on affordable housing and whether the Broadway Plan, which calls for high concrete towers in most Vancouver neighbourhoods, will bring down the cost of housing.

Fred Harding:

Harding supports the Broadway Plan. Developers, he said, must be encouraged to build more housing to increase supply in the City. The former police detective said developers face too many obstacles — long development permit application wait times, the high cost of lumber, the uncertainty of community amenity contributions [CACs] the City collects on each development (Harding advocated for a set fee) — which are forcing them to leave the city and build elsewhere. Harding criticized the foreign buyers’ tax and the speculation tax, saying they have done little to bring down the price of housing. He warned the crowd that there are 400,000 Canadian passport holders in Hong Kong and that “we have to prepare for that.”

Harding believes the Broadway Plan will eventually bring housing prices down. “They will go down if the cost of building [units] goes down.” While the Broadway Plan was the stated topic of the event, on more than one occasion Harding was either unable or unwilling to answer questions relating to the topic of housing, and switched to policing, his area of expertise.

Colleen Hardwick:

Hardwick will repeal the Broadway Plan if elected. While she supports development, she says it must be planned development. Hardwick told the audience that she is still waiting for a housing recalibration she requested from staff more than a year ago. Hardwick made the request after it was brought to light that Statistics Canada’s growth projections for Vancouver did not match the City’s own housing targets—72,000 new homes over the next 10 years. The amount, she said, is more than double Stats Canada’s projections. “Why would they [Kennedy Stewart’s administration] be doing that?” she asked, pointing out that the current Council approved every single application[but one]” in their last term.  The Broadway Plan, Hardwick pointed out, calls for 18 to 40 storey buildings to be built across Vancouver, with three towers permitted per block. “Three out of [every] five [lots] are being sold to investors. The City says [densification] is about increasing affordable housing. It’s not. It’s about how much [money]they can extract…It’s not based on a [development] model.”

She told the crowd that the supply and demand argument in Vancouver’s unpredictable housing market is a “perpetual myth. It’s just not true. The City says it’s doing it for us, but neighbourhoods and people were not given any say [in the development of the plan].”