Vancouver City Council kills Villages Plan after fierce public backlash | Daily Hive

Villages Plan. (City of Vancouver)

After a marathon public hearing held over several dates this month and involving a list of more than 340 registered public speakers, the overwhelming majority of whom were opposed, Vancouver City Council this afternoon effectively rejected the highly controversial Villages Plan.

City Council opposed the proposed policies outlined by City of Vancouver staff to introduce low- and mid-rise residential density of up to eight storeys in 17 select areas across Vancouver, primarily within existing low-density, single-family neighbourhood areas. About 13,000 lots across the city would have been impacted.

In addition to introducing new multifamily residential density, it would have also created a combined total of about one million sq. ft. of new retail/restaurant space across the commercial core areas across the 17 villages.

The Villages Plan was cancelled in a 10-1 vote, with only OneCity city councillor Lucy Maloney voting in support of the strategy. Mayor Ken Sim and all six ABC city councillors — Sarah Kirby-Yung, Lisa Dominato, Brian Montague, Mike Klassen, Peter Meiszner and Lenny Zhou — voted against it, along with Vote Vancouver councillor Rebecca Bligh, Green councillor Pete Fry, and COPE councillor Sean Orr.

However, a majority of City Council endorsed an amendment to better enable small multifamily residential buildings with a single exit staircase in R3 zoning areas.

You might also like:

The Villages Plan was intended to create more complete, walkable neighbourhoods and bring a wider range of housing choices into areas where single-family detached houses remain the predominant form of housing.

During today’s debate and discussion, Mayor Ken Sim’s ABC Vancouver governing majority asserted that they would not support the Villages Plan in response to public feedback, including concerns from some residents relating to new restrictions over how their property could be changed or redeveloped. They also suggested that there was a need for significantly more public consultation for the plan’s implications.

“This plan did not strike the right balance between housing growth, implementation, infrastructure and community confidence,” said Sim before voting against it.

The mayor said residents generally recognized the need for more housing, but raised legitimate concerns about the scale and pace of change, neighbourhood fit, infrastructure capacity, and how the plan would be implemented.

“I do think that no homeowner should feel that city hall is deciding the future of their property without their voice being heard,” said Sim.

“This is a plan that did not engage effectively with the public or respond to the serious concerns that were raised about these radical changes in their neighbourhoods.”

Today’s vote represents a major reversal for Sim and his ABC majority, which directed City staff in October 2023 to accelerate work on the Villages Plan — one of the components of the City’s July 2022-approved Vancouver Plan and the March 2026-approved overarching citywide Vancouver Official Development Plan (ODP). Then in October 2024, City Council subsequently endorsed the early planning work for the Villages Plan, eventually narrowing the initiative from 26 potential village areas to 17.

Fry, who opposed the plan and was also critical of the process that led to its defeat, noted that City staff had spent nearly two years carrying out the work specifically requested by the mayor and the majority on City Council.

“The lesson here is not about the villages, it’s about governance and it’s about political expediency, because at the end of the day, public trust depends on Council providing clear direction and standing behind the process that initiates and being transparent when it changes course,” said Fry.

“Vancouver’s residents deserve more than two years of planning only to discover that the biggest obligation to the implementation of this plan wasn’t the technical or even the public opposition, it was the politics and the lack of political commitment from the people who initiated this process. Three years later, it seems like such a wasted, wasted amount of time and resources that could have been done so much better.”

Moreover, added Fry, “there’s no full-throated support for this plan from me,” asserting that the Villages Plan is too prescriptive and should have enabled a more organic creation of new villages.

Villages Plan. (City of Vancouver)

Ample future development capacity elsewhere in Vancouver, even without the Villages Plan

Dominato asserted the broader economic and housing environment had changed substantially since the planning work for the Villages Plan was first initiated years ago, with much greater public concern now focused on affordability rather than achieving general housing supply alone.

“I think it’s helpful in terms of the Villages programme is to set this back in the shifting global environment that we’ve been experiencing particularly since since 2020. We went through COVID, we saw immigration restrictions, and now we’re at a place of growing economic instability, which is really driving a conversation around cost of living,” said Dominato.

“Over that time, we’ve also seen a shifting housing narrative, particularly when I was first elected, it was all about supply. Then it was about, are we getting the right housing mix? And I would say today, arguably, and I heard this in a number of the speaker’s comments was, it’s not only about those things, but it’s about affordability. And are we getting the right housing that is affordable for people regardless of the tenure?”

Dominato also made comments that suggested that even without the Villages Plan, Vancouver now has ample additional future development capacity following the approval of various other major policies over the years, including citywide duplex zoning and the Rupert and Renfrew Station Area Plan, as well as the provincially-required strategies of the Broadway Plan, Vancouver ODP, Small Scale Multi-Unit Housing, and Transit-Oriented Areas.

Kirby-Yung made a similar argument, pointing to the substantial amount of housing policies and developments already moving across Vancouver. She said the current makeup of City Council has been “very bullish and very supportive of housing,” enabling new housing choices, approving record numbers of rental homes, introducing multiplex zoning, and working to make development more financially viable.

She added that Vancouver is already experiencing an extraordinary pace of change, with many additional projects in the development pipeline. In her view, the City should allow those measures time to take effect while continuing to refine policies based on what works and what residents experience.

“That’s what the process of governing is. It’s listening and adapting,” said Kirby-Yung.

“We don’t have the social licence for this plan”

Meiszner also said the public consultation process may have relied too heavily on online platforms, suggesting that it may have failed to reach some older homeowners who do not regularly use the internet.

Kirby-Yung, who introduced an amendment that enabled the Villages Plan recommendations to be voted on separately from enabling small single staircase buildings, said the concept behind the plan had merit, but its execution and public consultation were deeply deficient.

“I think the idea of the villages plan was good. I think that the consultation and the execution was unfortunate at best and did not reflect the standards of the city that I believe that the residents should see,” she said.

“This was not ready for prime time. I think the intention was good. The execution was not.”

Kirby-Yung, who was first elected into City Council in 2018, said the opposition was unlike anything she had previously witnessed during a Vancouver land use debate, describing it as a “tsunami” or “landslide.”

She was particularly critical of letters sent by the City to approximately 700 property owners whose sites could have been designated for mixed-use development. Some recipients interpreted the correspondence as meaning they would lose existing options to renovate, add laneway houses, or build multiplexes and would instead be expected to pursue larger apartment or mixed-use projects with ground-level commercial retail/restaurant space.

“I understand why people were genuinely upset. I would be upset,” said Kirby-Yung, describing how she would feel if she were in the position of residents who received the letter.

Kirby-Yung said City Council is not required to approve a policy merely because City staff had devoted substantial time to preparing it.

“That is not our job to rubber stamp things. Our job is to look at, was it a good quality execution?” said Kirby-Yung.

Dominato added, “We don’t have the social licence for this plan.”

Illustrative concept of what a Village area could look like. (City of Vancouver)

Meiszner similarly called the proposal an overly broad, “one size fits all” approach that did not reflect the distinct conditions of individual neighbourhoods. He supported adding density and businesses to existing village areas, but argued the City should begin with one or two locations that would clearly benefit from revitalization, learn from those projects and then consider expanding the approach.

Zhou said he personally visited all 17 proposed village areas and concluded they were too different to be governed by essentially the same framework. He also questioned whether the plan would produce housing affordable to middle-income households and whether community and recreational facilities, transportation infrastructure, and utilities could keep pace with the proposed growth.

Bligh suggested the work completed by City staff could still be used as the foundation for future planning and potentially support a smaller pilot project in one or two select areas, as opposed to 17 locations.

Orr opposed the plan largely because of its affordability and tenant protection provisions. He said he supported the idea of six-storey apartment buildings, local-serving businesses, and mixed-use communities, but was concerned that thousands of renters living in unsecured secondary rental housing (such as within entire single-family detached houses, basement suites, and other secondary units) could eventually be displaced. He was also concerned that pre-zoning thousands of properties could increase land values without guaranteeing that there would be an affordable housing component.

“Ultimately, this plan shouldn’t be judged by how many parcels it rezones,” said Orr. “It should be judged whether 10 or 20 years from now, ordinary working people can still afford to live in these neighbourhoods.”

Maloney made several attempts to salvage portions of the plan. She proposed sending back the plan’s components back to City staff for refinements and additional public consultation, especially with the planning around existing retail districts and reducing the plan to a pilot project of five village locations suggested by City staff. However, all of these alternative strategies were defeated. She said the plan was not perfect, but would have allowed more affordable housing forms in neighbourhoods dominated by expensive single-family detached houses.

She argued that low-rise apartments are among the least expensive and quickest forms of market housing to construct and can be built by smaller developers and non-profit housing entities rather than only major developers.

City staff defended their proposal and approach during today’s final questioning, stating that it would enable housing forms that are relatively more affordable than single-family detached houses and broaden development opportunities beyond large developers. They also said the zoning contained enough flexibility to allow different building forms to emerge depending on local conditions and demand.

City staff acknowledged, however, that more time spent directly engaging with individual neighbourhoods would have been beneficial. They said future public consultation processes should be more conversational and include more face-to-face discussions about how citywide housing goals are implemented locally.

Additionally, City staff maintained that Vancouver’s existing infrastructure could generally accommodate the anticipated gradual growth from new low- and mid-rise densification of select areas, with site-specific utility upgrades required when necessary. They also asserted the risk of land speculation was minimal in the Vancouver Eastside neighbourhoods, and could be addressed through inclusionary housing requirements on sites where land value increases were more likely in the Vancouver Westside.

A bizarre end to City Council’s term

City Council’s hesitation with supporting the Villages Plan’s prescriptions and stipulations and the ultimate decision of rejection comes just under three months before the civic election on Oct. 17, 2026.

The Villages Plan’s public hearing was also caught up in a wider controversy, after Unite Here Local 40 — a major union representing thousands of hotel and hospitality workers across British Columbia — acknowledged helping organize public speakers from outside Vancouver, including California, to call into the public hearing and voice their opposition.

Throughout several public hearings over different matters, a number of speakers associated with the union also requested to have an interpreter at their side, despite being known to speak English fluently. The accommodation, intended for people who are not proficient in English, gave them up to 10 minutes to address Council — twice the standard speaking time of five minutes. This was highly apparent during City Council’s public hearing on the general future direction of redeveloping the former Molson Coors brewery site. During that public hearing, Montague deemed this to be a filibuster tactic.

united here local 40 vancouver city hall protest f

Protest outside Vancouver City Hall, July 2026. (Unite Here Local 40)

Several city councillors accused the highly controversial union — which has been ramping up its efforts to influence municipal politics ahead of the civic election, and is highly opposed to new hotel and market residential building projects and policies that support such developments — of flooding the speakers list to delay decisions on major policies and rezoning applications. One California caller last week even acknowledged that she had never visited Vancouver, although she denied being a union member or speaking at the union’s request.

Mayor Sim described this union-organized participation in the United States as “foreign interference,” referred the matter to police, and asked the provincial government to consider changes to the Vancouver Charter to provide the City with the tools to prevent this behaviour in the future.

The highly unusual proceedings during the recent public hearings also added to growing concerns about very long speaker lists, repeat participants, and organized campaigns. It has also raised questions about how the City can better ensure local residents and people directly affected by proposals are heard.

After the union admitted to organizing the participation of its American counterparts — prompting a fierce backlash from elected officials, the media, and the general public, and the threat of a police investigation and provincial legislative intervention — the subsequent public hearings for other City policies and rezoning applications unusually moved through extremely lengthy stretches of consecutive no-shows and withdrawals from the registered public speakers list.

For example, the Villages Plan’s public hearing spanned three dates this month to hear from over 340 registered public speakers. For the separate public hearing for the rezoning application to enable a major redevelopment of the Hudson’s Bay parkade block in Downtown Vancouver, there were a similar number of registered public speakers — over 320 signed up — but it only took City Council one evening’s sitting to go through the entire list, with roughly over 200 no-shows and withdrawals.

Today’s public meeting to debate and decide on the Villages Plan was the second last scheduled public meeting before the municipal government’s summer break, starting in early August. For this reason, over the past few weeks, City Council was working on a highly time compressed schedule to complete its remaining agenda, business, and registered public speaker lists. Public hearings for at least two rezoning applications were deferred for the next City Council after the election — a proposal for a Telus/Westbank artificial intelligence data centre in Mount Pleasant, and a City-initiated proposal to redevelop the City-owned 2400 Kingsway Motel into a high-density project with market rental housing and commercial uses.

There is one remaining public hearing tonight for some rezoning applications, right before the summer break of both City staff and City Council and the ramp-up of the election campaign cycle. Two business license hearings are also scheduled in early September, which are currently slated as the final public meetings of this current makeup of City Council.

You might also like: