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Planning for Livability & Affordability

Our Promise to You

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TEAM will restore trust in local government through more transparent planning and development approval processes; prioritize affordability for owners and renters; implement development efficiencies that save time and money; and use participatory community-based planning to create the housing and infrastructure to support livability and affordability in the scale and context of every Vancouver neighbourhood.

​How We Will Get There

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​TEAM will support livable, inclusive, and affordable communities with amenities and services to meet the needs of residents. This will be accomplished by:

• Participatory Planning within the Context of Every Neighbourhood: Ensure that new development is transparently planned with local residents and businesses participation, within the scale and context of each neighbourhood, in parallel with the needed infrastructure and amenities;

• More Housing Type Options: Allow for population growth that includes a healthy mix of housing options, for both rental and ownership tenures, and also prioritizing housing affordability; 

• Development Efficiency: Improve planning, permits, and development efficiency while prioritizing quality, due diligence, transparency and democratic process in the public interest, not just focusing on developer proformas;

• Challenging Provincial Overreach: Work with other municipalities to change the recent provincial overreach into municipal planning jurisdiction for their one-size-fits-all approach.

​The Issues

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Since the 1970's the City has tripled the number of housing units, more than any other centre city in North America, yet we have the most expensive housing, not the least. Housing affordability is clearly not just about adding more supply. The City's current approach to planning and development ignores the concerns of residents and the impacts of growth on livability, affordability and sustainability. 

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The City’s growth targets are well beyond what can be justified by census data from Statistics Canada. This promotes widespread development growth above infrastructure capacity. Subject to economic cycles such as the current correction we are in, the resulting upzoning raises overall land values and costs to the public to finance growth. The more affordable older housing stock is demolished, replaced by more expensive units, residents are displaced with some forced into homelessness. The City’s planning processes are often complex and slower than needed, yet the consultation process is opaque, rushed and misleading. 

Recent BC zoning Bills 44, 46, 47 (2023),18 (2024), & M216 (2025), have transferred planning, zoning and building authority from municipalities to the Province in a one-size-fits-all approach. The City of Vancouver is currently complicit and implementing these policies even beyond what is mandated by the Province. This is causing massive disruption and displacement to residents and businesses, both for owners and tenants. The imposition of Official Development Plans (ODP) and the elimination of public hearings for rezonings deemed to be consistent with such ODPs, means further limits on public participation in the development approval process.

​TEAM Perspective and Action Plan

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TEAM will change the current direction the city is heading in order to implement our above promises and objectives. 

Action Items:

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1. Participatory Planning within the Context of Every Neighbourhood:

Ensure that new development is transparently planned with local residents and businesses participation, within the scale and context of each neighbourhood, in parallel with the needed infrastructure and amenities.

• Giving a meaningful voice to local residents and businesses in any planning process affecting their community;

• Working with residents in all neighbourhoods to restore the essential bond of trust between citizens and City Hall by making public consultation meaningful and incorporated into planning outcomes;

• Restoring neighbourhood-based participatory planning processes that create opportunities for higher density, especially near transit and neighbourhood centres, while also working within the local character and context of each neighbourhood, not generic development policies based on arbitrary circles and corridors as per current practice;

• Ensuring all City planning decisions are based on a transparent process with real verifiable data rather than promoting unlimited growth with arbitrarily inflated targets, and by making accurate pertinent information readily available to the public, for example on growth, zoning, housing and land stock inventory, vacancies, and pre-sale condo market data;

• Rethinking the Broadway Plan, station area plans such as Rupert/Renfrew, and the Vancouver Plan which are being implemented through area-wide prezoning and adoption of an the Official Development Plan (ODP) without meaningful public input; 

• Rethinking the Jericho Lands development plan based on more ground-oriented and low- to mid-rise building forms;

• Reconsidering the City's support for the UBC SkyTrain extension (UBCx), and related development planning, with meaningful and informed input from the public. Through the City's influence on the Mayors' Council of TransLink, ensure that the business case for UBCx viability and alternatives includes all the facts; 

• Implementing as part of the Official Development Plan process, a publically transparent system-wide review of current and future infrastructure and amenity needs and capacities;

• Considering in the planning process the capacity limits of city infrastructure, the costs of expanding infrastructure, and to ensure that growth is not too concentrated in any areas beyond what the city infrastructure can support. This includes not only utility infrastructure (storm/sanitary sewers, water, electrical, data, gas), but also social benefits, schools, parks, amenities, transit and services;

• Reconsidering how infrastructure and amenities are funded that is viable to both the public and industry;

• Making it easier to retain heritage and character buildings through (a) a more flexible development and permit process that removes the bias towards new construction, (b) zoning with incentives for retention and disincentives for demolition, recognizing that the greenest building is the one that already exists, (c) retention incentives to allow multiple secondary suites through the Secondary Suite Program and/or infill development;

• Supporting new incentives for the retention and conservation of Vancouver’s valued heritage resources and character buildings through tax and fee exemptions, and more prioritization to make heritage retention incentives meaningful and a desirable development option;

• Listen to local small businesses and the City’s 22 Business Improvement Associations to clearly understand business issues, and implement policies and services to ensure the long-term viability of our local business districts;

• Plan for the arts and culture sector to ensure that there are affordable spaces for artists to work and perform by protecting the more affordable industrial lands, theatres, community centres and publicly owned buildings;

2. More Housing Type Options:

Allow for population growth that includes a healthy mix of housing options, for both rental and ownership tenures, and also prioritizing housing affordability.

• Providing a broad mix of housing including co-ops, co-housing, secondary suites, multiple conversion dwellings, infill, laneways, duplexes, multiplexes, townhouses, and apartments, that fit within the local built form scale and context;

• Recognizing that supply alone won't fix housing. Since the 1970's the City has tripled the number of housing units, more than any other centre city in North America, yet we have the most expensive housing, not the least;

• Planning for a diversity of affordable housing options, while respecting the established neighbourhood context and built form character,  to accommodate social, supportive and co-op housing and housing for families, youth, seniors, frontline service workers, people with disabilities, and other household types; 

• Creating true housing affordability, not just below market rentals or average CMHC rental rates, especially larger units for families; 

• Withdrawing current rental programs that do not create meaningful affordability, create buildings that are out-of-scale with the surrounding neighbourhood, and serve to inflate surrounding land values (e.g. Moderate Income Rental Pilot Program (MIRPP) and the Secured Rental Policy);

• Support a diversity of buildings by type and age, by balancing new development with the retention and rehabilitation of older buildings to support affordability and sustainability across the city; 

• Protecting the existing stock of affordable rental buildings by reversing current policies that targets existing older more affordable rental buildings for redevelopment; 

• Providing incentives to landlords to maintain rental properties rather than upzoning them for demolition; 

• Working with provincial and federal government housing and services agencies to ensure they provide the non-market, supportive and social housing and services our city needs, within the local neighbourhood built form and context, to house residents who are lower income, housing insecure, or homeless;

• Requesting federal funding to support the increased population due to their immigration policies, which even though immigration is reduced, it continues to have high costs downloaded to the City and Province. 

• Avoiding policies that unfairly impact low-income residents that affect affordability;

• Using City-owned lands for more affordable housing, Vancouver has a past history of successfully working with communities and funding agencies to build livable affordable housing that fits into the context of neighbourhoods;   

• Providing affordable housing incentives based on transparent and open project details, including financing and operating agreements, that fit into the scale, context and zoning of each neighbourhood, a mix of income levels and unit sizes, with needed services, supports and amenities and through meaningful ongoing consultation with the community in the zoning & development processes and good neighbour agreements for operating; 

• Ensuring that onsite parking minimums are retained in the Parking Bylaw for new construction to allow for future electric vehicle charging in the transition to zero emissions, and for the needed parking amenity for each development;

• Making it easier to add electric vehicle charging in residential homes by reviewing and simplifying the Building Code and regulatory requirements;

• Avoiding excessive new housing development in areas in which local school capacity is full and commuting of students would be required;

3. Development Efficiency

Improve planning, permits, and development efficiency while prioritizing quality, due diligence, transparency and democratic process in the public interest, not just developer proformas. Actions include:

• Simplifying and making the zoning, development and building permitting processes more publicly transparent to reduce costs and approval times for all new development and renovations; 

• Ensuring that quality, due diligence and democratic process in the public interest are not compromised by implementing processing efficiencies;

• Make it a priority to identify bottlenecks in the permitting process and ensure staff are properly trained to handle permits appropriately;

• Streamline processes for smaller projects with more flexible on-site review for renovation building permits;

• Re-establish the One Stop Renovation Centre and similar service for approval of small construction projects – making it easier to build laneway housing, secondary suites, duplexes and small scale ground oriented infill development without land assembly;

• Planning for the public interest rather than planning based on developer proformas where form follows finance; 

• Reinstate third-party appeals to the Board of Variance that used to be in place for 50 years as a check and balance to the discretionary powers of the Director of Planning;

• Ensure that members of the Urban Design Panel have a strong track record for representing the public interest in design and planning;

• Develop a professional standard for all development photos and renderings: Proposal photos and 3D renderings must accurately portray impact on the entire neighbourhood and skyline (including all surrounding buildings) and be created using a 50mm lens and appropriate focal length (or equivalent perspective in the case of a digital renderings) in order to accurately replicate human vision (see CityHallWatch articles June 2, 2020 and December 15, 2020);

• Ensure that all development initiatives provide shadow studies at the winter solstice, spring equinox, summer solstice and autumnal equinox, and do so using 3D renderings accurately portraying impacts on surrounding neighbourhood and skyline;

• Provide more  requirements for deconstruction and building material reuse as a more sustainable alternative to demolition of houses to accommodate new development, and enforce associated tree retention/ replacement policies;

4. Challenging Provincial Overreach

Work with other municipalities to change the recent provincial overreach into municipal planning jurisdiction for their one-size-fits-all approach. 

• Reconsidering the City's response to the BC zoning Bills 44, 46, 47(2023),18 (2024), & M216 (2025), among others, 

  • to ensure that planned growth is supported by necessary infrastructure and public amenities, 

  • to reconsider the province's one-size-fits-all approach, and 

  • to support other municipalities who are calling for judicial review and withdrawal of these flawed policies.