Hundreds of citizens gathered at City Hall Saturday to tell the Mayor and City Council to pause the Broadway Plan and work with residents on a new plan that would avoid mass demovictions.

Residents from neighbourhoods all along the Broadway Corridor came together under grey skies carrying signs saying, “Broadway Plan Disrespects Neighbourhoods,” and “Pause the Plan.”

The Broadway Plan was approved by Council in June, 2022 and is now the official policy for what gets built along the 500-block area from Clark Dr. to Yew St. and from 1^st Ave to 16^th Ave.  The intent is to create 30,000 units of high-density housing over a 30-year period.

Speakers attending the rally told the crowd that the Broadway Plan area has some of the most affordable housing in the city, and that replacing these older apartments with more expensive towers  will price thousands of tenants out of the city.

“When the Plan was finally published in detail, I read it carefully and worked with [Vancouver landscape architect] Stephen Bohus to model what it meant — more than 500 towers by our conservative estimation,” said Vancouver architect Brian Palmquist, an outspoken critic of the Broadway Plan.

“And yet, after just two years into this so-called 30-year plan, Stephen and I have sadly been shown to be correct, with more than 90 per cent of the first 100+ proposed rezonings located in exactly the places and at exactly the heights we predicted,” said Palmquist.

“That means two-thirds of the 30-year plan’s home construction targets are in play in just two years—that’s 20,000 of the Plan’s 30,000 homes in two years rather than 30. What a bonanza for developers; what a tragedy for the affected neighbourhoods. And still no parks, no community centres, no schools in the mix.”

And the City’s planning department is soon expected to amend the Plan with even higher and more towers per block.

UBC Professor Patrick Condon, author of Broken City, echoed Palmquist’s concerns that the “turbocharging” of the Broadway Plan will produce housing that young workers and minimum wage earners cannot afford. But, Condon pointed out, “Fifty per cent of all towers can be made affordable.” We’re doing the opposite,” Condon told the crowd. The Broadway Plan, he says, is “an abdication of planning.”

Palmquist said he hasn’t found any peer-reviewed studies that show building more housing will eventually cause prices to drop. In an X post, Condon wrote:

For decades, we adhered to a simple yet powerful idea: growth should pay for growth. As we built new developments, we secured parks, school sites, essential infrastructure, and affordable housing, funded directly through contributions from that development. This system allowed us to expand responsibly and equitably. But now, with this plan, we are turning away from this tradition and bowing to an unfounded market orthodoxy. The city and the province both insist that flooding the skyline with high-rises while stripping away regulations will magically bring prices down. This is folly.

Theresa Alfed is a Vancouver tenant facing displacement. She lives in a six-storey, low-rise apartment in Fairview and knows all her neighbours. In June, Alfed and her neighbours received notice that their apartment had been bought by a developer who plans to build a 19-storey tower. Now she faces eviction along with thousands of others in the Broadway Plan area, in the middle of a housing crisis.

According to Alfed, the developer has not been helpful. She and her fellow tenants were invited to watch a one-hour Zoom meeting about what they can expect being evicted. Since then, tenants, she says, have been met with hostility and disrespect. “They [developers]want us to shut up.”

While the City has made provisions for evicted tenants who live in the Broadway Plan area, Alfed criticized the City’s Tenant Relocation and Protection Policy for not going far enough.

A petition to pause the Broadway Plan has already gathered close to 3,000 signatures.

The rally was organized by Vancouver neighbourhood organizations and the online publication City Hall Watch.

Photo Credit: City Hall Watch