Delivering rental housing in your community: a forum for council candidates (2018)

Participants: Approximately 80 council candidates from Metro Vancouver municipalities

My role: I was chair of the City of Vancouver’s Renters Advisory Committee at a time when there was a civic election and the lack of affordable  rental housing was a key issue, as it had been in Metro Vancouver for many years and continues to be. At the same time and based on my observations of council meetings, public hearings and media coverage, I noticed that the housing solutions that many individual candidates and local political parties were including in their election platforms indicated a lack of understanding of fundamental aspects of the obstacles and challenges of actually completing purpose-built rental housing projects. This concerned me because it indicated that new candidates who ended up elected would have a steep learning curve when it came to understanding and advocating for effective rental housing policies, which could then further stall the creation of new purpose-built rental housing.

I therefore pitched the idea of our committee collaborating with Landlord BC to hold a free event where council candidates could learn about the obstacles and challenges of building purpose-built rental housing from a developer who had a successful track record of getting that type of housing built. This was a somewhat unusual activity for an advisory committee to take on, but the rest of the committee supported it and we were allowed to do it.

The event was extremely well-received by council candidates from across the region and from a variety of local parties. Building on its success, Landlord BC went on to host other versions of the event in other BC communities.

The Vancouver Courier interviewed me about this event on August 23, 2018.