Opinion: Renters like me carry the burden of the Broadway Plan | Daily Hive

Opinion: Renters like me carry the burden of the Broadway Plan and have no say

A Broadway Plan area rezoning application to redevelop 1245-1265 West 10th Avenue into a 20-storey rental housing tower. (Google Maps)

Written for Daily Hive Urbanized by Sarah Anderson, a resident in the Fairview neighbourhood within the Broadway Plan area and a former Daily Hive staff writer.

In my Fairview apartment building, where I’ve lived with my partner for the last seven years, the mail always comes in the afternoon. When I heard the mailslot on my front door clatter one November morning, I knew the hand-delivered manilla envelope would change the trajectory of our lives.

In the summer, the new building manager inquired about our lease, claiming they didn’t have a copy. I saw contractors, familiar and unfamiliar, inspecting the apartment building. As a lifelong Vancouver resident and renter, these signs put me on edge. I knew that because I lived in a for-profit rental apartment building along the Broadway Corridor, it was just a matter of time before they kicked me out.

Now, thanks to a letter dated November 25, 2024, I know that Sightline Properties submitted a rezoning application to the City of Vancouver back in the summer. Under the Broadway Plan, they want to rezone this three-storey apartment building to make way for a 17-storey mixed-use tower with ground-floor commercial retail space and 128 rental homes.

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I’ll get a four-month eviction notice in about 2.5 to three years. While I’m very grateful for all the protections afforded to renters under the Tenant Relocation and Protection Policy (TRPP), it falls short in my eyes. The temporary rent top-up and right of first refusal are important renter protections that soothe the sting, but only slightly.

I have to be a Broadway Plan expert now, but for those who aren’t, here’s a look at the minimum requirements for eligible renters under the TRPP:

Financial compensation (based on either length of tenancy or a temporary rent top-up)
Payment for moving expenses (I’ll get about $750, I think)
Assistance with identifying alternate accommodations
Right of first refusal to a replacement rental unit
Additional support or assistance for renters facing additional barriers to housing

There’s no compensation for the mental and emotional anguish that comes with losing your home. I was laid off just two days before receiving the life-changing envelope, and I can’t put into words how devastating it was to learn that I’d lose my job and my home in one week. Those who stand to gain financially from my eviction should foot my therapist’s bill.

It feels like our lives are on hold. I’m waiting to be evicted. I’ll have to pack up everything I own and move somewhere “temporarily” while I wait for them to bulldoze this beautiful apartment with parquet floors that looks over the 10th Avenue bike lane. I love to watch neighbourhood dogs play on our lawn and the woodpeckers, blue jays, and sparrows that visit our patio. The new building will likely extend all the way to the street, eliminating greenspace and the beautiful garden my neighbour has tended for more than 20 years.

Will we be able to continue to live in this neighbourhood where we’ve built our lives? What happens if I move into another building temporarily and get another eviction notice?

Everything feels out of my control, and I’ll be waiting for years before I’m offered the chance to “move back in” to a new building. We have no idea what the new apartment will be like, and I’m not optimistic.

While we wait to be evicted, move to a temporary home, and wait again for years for them to tear down this place and build a new tower, our lives are essentially on hold.

My heart breaks for my neighbours. Many are older, single, on a fixed income, and have lived in the building for decades. While we’ve commiserated over the years, as residents living under a regime of flawed property-owning landlords do, I go out of my way to ask them how they’re doing now.

I don’t have to ask because I know they feel the same. We used to be cheerful, but now we are numb. I ran into some of them at the “Pause the Plan” rally, where I picked up an “I <3 Fairview” pin that I wear on my jean jacket now. We didn’t go to the rally because we’re NIMBYs. We went because we are desperate to understand why we’re losing our homes and what, if any, alternatives for compassionate redevelopment exist.

As a Vancouver resident, I’m excited for the Broadway Plan. I look forward to the new city centre that I see growing up around me. But with plans to add 30,000 new residents to the neighbourhood with no plans for any new schools, parks, libraries, or community centres, it feels like we’re all being carved up and sold piecemeal.

For me, the top-down decision-making process is frustrating. Why was a permit filed in July but I was only told in November? After a tone-deaf All-Tenant Meeting per the City of Vancouver held by a contracted tenant assistance firm, the organization hired to help kick all of us out, my frustrations only increased. I can see that the building owners and developers are only interested in doing the bare minimum as required by law.

The other residents and I will continue to experience anxiety until we can exercise our right of first refusal and move into a new, affordable unit.

I’d like to be offered a rent freeze while I’m waiting to be evicted. I’d like better, more up-to-date communication instead of what I perceive as the bare minimum. I want to be offered my choice of any unit in the new building so that they can’t cheap out on the apartments they’re reserving for previous residents. But mostly, I want my community to be preserved.

Vancouver is its renters. The character of its neighbourhoods is defined by the residents who call it home. In my eyes, the human cost of the Broadway Plan is a legacy of fear, confusion, and disillusionment.

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