Last week, Mayor Kennedy Stewart called a special city council meeting regarding a motion he was introducing to address Vancouver’s homelessness crisis, especially the 300 or so unsheltered people now living in Strathcona Park. I’m pleased to see that at this Monday’s council meeting, councillors directed staff to look into and report back on the…
Category: developers
Is the NPA on life-support?
When the provincial NDP were elected in 2017, one of their first orders of business was a very positive change to campaign financing at the municipal level. Within months, they passed legislation prohibiting donations to municipal political parties from corporations and unions, and banning individual donations over $1,200. Vancouver’s two developer-friendly municipal parties — Vision…
Real solutions exist to homeless encampments: Look to the ’70s, and Portland’s Right to Dream Too
Nobody won at Tuesday night’s Vancouver Park Board meeting addressing the city’s latest and biggest homeless encampment in Strathcona Park. After two onerous nights of debate — in which nearly 100 speakers outlined their sympathy for the homeless park dwellers; for the board itself, having to deal with such a thorny issue; and for Strathcona…
Broadway corridor: The lesser of two evils
As you may be aware, TransLink will soon be building the first phase of an underground SkyTrain line along the Broadway corridor from the Commercial-Broadway station to Arbutus. If Vancouver city council has its way, by 2030 the new line will extend all the way to UBC at a cost estimated as high as $3.8…
Let’s build a city that’s ours
Did you know that the City of Vancouver has no comprehensive city plan? Virtually every other major city in Canada has one — a city-wide plan that stipulates what can be built where throughout the city. To their credit, our city councillors elected in 2018 have initiated steps to create Vancouver’s comprehensive new city plan,…
Cleaning up campaign donations
Those of you familiar with my blog will recall how pleased I was when the provincial government introduced regulations governing the funding of municipal election campaigns in 2018. These new restrictions prohibited donations from unions and corporations — including developers. They also limited donations from individuals to a maximum of $1,200. However, even during the 2018…
The Sen̓áḵw project: Both exciting and concerning
On Tuesday, December 10, members of the Squamish Nation approved the development of their land at the south end of Burrard Bridge. Called Sen̓áḵw, for the name of an ancient village that was originally on this site until about 20 Squamish families were forced off and moved to North Vancouver in 1913, this development will…