Vancouver councillor calls out ABC decision on Shaughnessy

Daily Hive

Earlier this week, a motion to bring more density and housing to Shaughnessy was struck down by Vancouver City Council, and the councillor who brought it forward has some words.

Daily Hive’s Arash Randjbar spoke with OneCity councillor Christine Boyle about how she felt about the motion being struck down.

She firmly believes the ABC party isn’t taking the housing crisis seriously.

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“They aren’t willing to challenge some of these long-standing and very unfair policies that we need to challenge if we’re taking the crisis seriously and if we’re going to build the housing that we need across Vancouver,” Boyle said.

Boyle’s motion called for the diversification of housing in Shaughnessy, which would’ve included infill and multi-family housing providing secured purpose-built rental housing options and bonus density for non-profit, co-op, co-housing and mixed-income rental housing.

She said she’d heard from many residents who supported the motion, saying why this was an important issue.

If things had gone Boyle’s way, the motion would’ve also brought in new local shops and services to the neighbourhood, which, according to Boyle, has seen a 20% decrease in her lifetime.

Boyle says a decision like ABC’s to kill the Shaughnessy motion puts more pressure on other parts of the city.

“Places like the West End or Mount Pleasant that already have a lot of renters are losing affordable housing that exists there to build new housing rather than building it in a neighbourhood like Shaughnessy, where there are very few renters and a lot more space,” she said.

“It’s frustrating, and I think we’re hearing that in the response from Vancouverites.”

She’s not wrong. These are just a few of the comments from our last story:

“This doesn’t make too much sense from a policy perspective,” read a portion of one comment.

Someone else said, “So even having a ‘study’ is divisive? Protecting the elitists.”

“Gotta protect their cash cow. ABC won’t touch that neighbourhood,” said another comment.

Boyle’s point is that the City should be adding housing in every neighbourhood.

“No neighbourhood should be so precious that working people are excluded from it.”

Boyle believes the decision to kill this motion calls into question the credibility of the ABC party councillors.

There might be hope that provincial legislation could override this ruling, but Boyle, who has supported some BC NDP moves on housing, says, “We’ll have to wait and see.”

With files from Kenneth Chan