Former BC Housing executive to run as COPE's Vancouver mayoral candidate | Daily Hive

Former BC Housing vice president to run for Vancouver mayor under COPE party

Stephanie Allen. (BC Housing)

The Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) party has announced Stephanie Allen as its Vancouver mayoral candidate, positioning the controversial former BC Housing executive as a figure in the October 2026 civic election.

Allen, a co-founder of the Hogan’s Alley Society and a former vice-president at provincial Crown corporation BC Housing, will lead COPE into the next municipal race on a platform focused on housing affordability and systemic reform.

“This is a moment that calls for political courage. I’m inspired by COPE’s unapologetic fight for our city. I’m joining this fight because people in Vancouver need leadership with the experience and heart to fight for the public good, not just predatory wealth and the super-rich,” said Allen in a statement on Sunday.

Sean Orr, the sitting city councillor under the COPE party, added, “The system is rigged against regular people. Stephanie gets that. She’s someone who will fight to make Vancouver affordable, accountable, and accessible for everyone. I’m excited to work with her.”

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A housing approach that does not lean on the private sector

In an open letter released alongside the announcement, Allen further outlined the positions her campaign will take — one that focuses on the welfare of rental housing tenants — and suggested that her prior leadership experience at BC Housing makes her a suitable mayor.

She was previously with BC Housing for 11 years, including nearly five years as its vice president of strategic business operations and performance — up until December 2023.

“When I worked at BC Housing as vice president, I saw firsthand how governments are starving non-profits of the funding they need to produce and maintain affordable housing for people. When I was there, I worked to centre the voices of those most impacted – to bring tenants to the table, to treat people who are homeless with dignity and get them housed, and to serve the public benefit,” she wrote.

“These systems are good at creating photo ops and press releases, but they’re bad at meeting the needs of our communities. The people running these non-profits either need to numb themselves to the violence of our housing system, or, like me and many others, move on. I want to bring my experience in housing and governance to fight for the Vancouver we love.”

Allen also makes it clear that she does not believe in a market-based approach for realizing housing solutions — one that is driven by the capacity of the private sector to deliver — and would prefer a focus on building non-market rental housing by non-profit entities.

According to BC Housing’s own assessment, roughly 95 per cent of the housing supply in the province is generated by the private sector. The remaining five per cent is by non-profit organizations, and is overwhelmingly dependent on significant government funding.

“The housing market can’t make rents affordable. It’s a systemic issue. Private investors and equity need a return on investment that drives your rents up. When rents go down, the developers lay off their staff and wait. They can afford to wait, but we can’t. We are trapped in a race to the bottom, selling out hard-won affordability requirements, environmental requirements, and community benefits, trying to entice developers to build. Developers have a responsibility to the communities they build in. We need City Hall to fight for community land trusts, co-ops, affordable and non-market housing,” she wrote.

“We have to fight for tenants. Despite being over half of Vancouver’s population, City Hall has time after time left renters behind. We need to strengthen Vancouver’s tenant protections, including against displacement, and make sure that every renter is secure, city-wide. We have to close the loopholes that put profits over people, private equity over community.”

“God bless everyone trying to find a home in these stolen lands as capitalism collapses under the weight of its greed and selfishness”

However, Allen’s entry into the mayoral race is also likely to revive scrutiny over past remarks that drew sharp criticism during her time at BC Housing.

In November 2022, opposition MLAs raised concerns in the B.C. legislature about statements Allen had made while serving as a senior executive at the Crown corporation. Mike Bernier told the legislature that Allen “has a history of radical and controversial claims,” pointing to comments he argued were inappropriate for someone in a leadership role overseeing housing delivery.

Among the remarks cited was a statement from Allen that read: “The original real estate investment was enslaved Africans. God bless everyone trying to find a home in these stolen lands as capitalism collapses under the weight of its greed and selfishness.”

Bernier also referenced another comment attributed to Allen: “I’m not sure how we get out of housing in a climate crisis without limiting capitalism.” He criticized her position by pointing to what he described as a contradiction, noting that she was earning $245,000 a year at the time as a BC Housing executive while making such statements about the economic system.

The following day, Shirley Bond continued the criticism in the legislature, calling the remarks “wild, inflammatory statements about those people you need to partner with to deliver a housing agenda.”

Bond argued that such comments raised concerns about the ability of a senior public official to work with stakeholders required to deliver housing projects, especially for someone who is responsible for providing oversight of the organization’s strategic business operations and performance.

The exchanges placed Allen at the centre of a broader political debate at the time over the role of ideology in housing policy and the expectations placed on senior officials in publicly funded agencies.

When questioned in the legislature, Murray Rankin, a BC NDP MLA and the acting attorney general and minister responsible for housing at the time, denounced Allen’s statements, but also emphasized that this was an appointment made by controversial former BC Housing CEO Shane Ramsay.

“I should start by saying that it is not this government that appoints the individual in question. It is the CEO who made that appointment, the former CEO,” said Rankin.

“If you’re asking if this government accepts the statements that you’re attributing to that person — which of course, I’m unaware of — of course we do not.”

Allen’s departure from BC Housing in late 2023 came during a broader period of immense organizational change and government-mandated reform at the Crown corporation that first began in 2022. BC Housing’s reforms followed an independent review into governance issues — stemming from a conflict of interest scandal — and coincided with a wider turnover in BC Housing’s executive leadership beyond Ramsay and the implementation of a new leadership structure aimed at improving oversight and accountability.

Last month, Vancouver’s three left-leaning parties — Coalition of Progressive Electors, Green Party of Vancouver, and OneCity Vancouver — reached an agreement to limit the number of candidates each will run across the three municipally elected bodies: Vancouver City Council, Vancouver Park Board, and Vancouver School Board. The arrangement is aimed at reducing competition among progressive candidates and improving their overall chances of election. All three parties are expected to confirm their full slates by the first half of May 2026.

As well, under this agreement, each party can field their own mayoral candidate, but the parties will “agree to engage in a good-faith effort to determine which progressive mayor is best suited to compete.”

The Greens have chosen sitting city councillor Pete Fry as their first mayoral candidate in 30 years, while OneCity has nominated William Azaroff.

Other confirmed mayoral candidates include ABC incumbent Ken Sim, Vancouver Liberals’ Kareem Allam, Vote Vancouver sitting city councillor Rebecca Bligh, and TEAM For A Livable Vancouver’s Colleen Hardwick, who is a former city councillor.

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