How to vote in OneCity's mayoral nomination race: join by January 12
William Azaroff vs. Amanda Burrows
TLDR: OneCity is the one party in Vancouver municipal politics that’s left of centre and that’s solidly pro-housing: “six floors and corner stores.” I’m supporting William Azaroff, CEO of Brightside Homes, for the OneCity mayoral nomination.
If you want Vancouver to build more housing (both market and non-market), to make housing less crushingly scarce and expensive, I’d encourage you to join OneCity before January 11 before midnight on Monday January 12, so you can vote in the February nomination. It’s pretty quick, and annual membership dues are only $10. You need to live or work in the city of Vancouver (including UBC).
To me, party politics is a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. The point isn’t just to win elections - it’s to make voters’ lives better. Joseph Heath, writing about Olivia Chow’s campaign in the 2014 Toronto mayoral race:
The problem with Chow’s position is that, for the average voter, she is making a pitch that relies for its appeal entirely upon the voter’s moral concern for the welfare of others. She has not announced any major policies that will improve the welfare of the median voter. Her pitch is not “vote for me, and I’ll make your life better,” it’s “vote for me, and I’ll make you feel better, by making some poor person’s life better.” Now I don’t want to dispute the moral sentiment here, I just want to suggest that appealing to people’s altruism does not provide a very strong basis for building an electoral majority.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with a lunch program. It’s just that you don’t win elections by promising to give other people free lunches. For the average person, life in Toronto sucks in innumerable ways. Traffic is a nightmare, public transit is crappy and overpriced, housing is too expensive, air quality is terrible, schools are underfunded and there is practically no busing, programs are oversubscribed, daycares are all full, you have to shovel your own snow, and it’s practically impossible to get out of town on weekends. If you want to become the mayor, you need to be able to say to the average voter, “this is how I’m going to make your life suck a bit less.” And at the end of a four year term, you need to be able to say “this is how I made your life better.” If you can’t, people will get angry, and will elect someone like Rob Ford, who at least promises to cut their taxes.
This is exactly where we are with Ken Sim and ABC: their main promise is “zero means zero.”
For Vancouver, the most important problem seems obvious: housing is crushingly scarce and expensive. This is a bad situation even for older homeowners, because it results in a shrinking workforce as people retire, which puts increasing strain on the healthcare system.
The solution seems equally obvious. People want to live and work here; other people want to build housing for them. Right now that’s really difficult, because of the municipal institutions we set up back in the 1970s, when “small is beautiful” was popular. Our current approval process requires a tremendous amount of micromanagement, which is labour-intensive and expensive. Even if the city wanted to allow a lot more housing, they simply don’t have the manpower to do so. To fix this, we need serious, hands-on institutional reform, so that we can build more housing and make it less scarce and expensive.
Municipal politics doesn’t get much coverage, so it’s not that easy to keep track of the different municipal parties in Vancouver. My attempt to map them out:
Ken Sim and ABC won a sweeping victory in the 2022 municipal election, defeating Kennedy Stewart and electing every candidate that they ran for mayor, city council, park board, and school board. The only remaining non-ABC councillors were Adriane Carr (Green), Christine Boyle (OneCity), and Pete Fry (Green).
In next year’s election, Ken Sim looks vulnerable. In the April 2025 by-election (after Christine Boyle won a seat in the provincial legislature and Adriane Carr stepped down), about 50% of voters chose both Lucy Maloney, with OneCity, and Sean Orr, with COPE. Only 13% voted for the ABC candidates. More recently, last month ABC voted down a staff recommendation which would have made it easier to build co-ops and social housing.
There’s a lot of people lining up to run for mayor against Ken Sim.
Kareem Allam, who was Ken Sim’s campaign manager and then his chief of staff, is in a messy legal battle with Sim. He’s running for mayor and has set up his own party, the Vancouver Liberals. (Like the former BC Liberals, they have no relation to the federal Liberals.)
Rebecca Bligh, formerly an ABC councillor, left ABC to sit as an independent after ABC brought in a ban on net new supportive housing. She’s running for mayor and has set up her own party, Vote Vancouver.
OneCity is holding an open nomination race to determine its mayoral candidate.
COPE is also holding an open nomination race.
Pete Fry may run for mayor with the Green Party.
Kennedy Stewart may run again, as an independent.
Colleen Hardwick is planning to run for mayor with TEAM.
OneCity and COPE have a big head start in terms of supporters, volunteers, and enthusiasm, because of the by-election. (More than 30,000 people voted for both Lucy Maloney and Sean Orr.) OneCity, COPE, and the Greens have been negotiating to limit the number of candidates they each run, to avoid splitting the left-of-centre vote.
I’m supporting OneCity. With Forward Together and Vision getting shut out in 2022, OneCity is the one left-of-centre party that’s solidly pro-housing. I think Ken Sim has taken ABC too far to the right: Vancouver voters chose the BC NDP in October 2024, and the federal Liberals in April 2025. Ken Sim’s election platform is to cut the city budget by $120 million to keep property taxes low (”zero means zero”), when we’re already not spending enough to keep our community centres from falling apart.
The two contestants in OneCity’s mayoral nomination race are:
William Azaroff, CEO of Brightside Homes
Amanda Burrows, executive director at First United
I’m supporting William Azaroff. I met him during the 2022 election. Brightside Homes is a non-profit developer, so he’s very familiar with the city’s obstacles to building more housing, and what we need to do to remove them. Besides Brightside, he also has experience working in a large organization at a high level (at Vancity). To defeat Ken Sim, we need someone who can appeal to both progressive voters and to former ABC voters.
I’d encourage anyone who wants more housing to join OneCity, so that you can vote in the mayoral nomination race. You can join OneCity if you’re a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, at least 14 years old, who lives or works in the city of Vancouver (including UBC). Membership dues are $10. The cutoff to sign up and to be able to vote in the mayoral nomination is January 11. The vote will be in February, and it’ll be by email.
Membership signup link for OneCity. I’m trying to sign up 100 people before January 11.
If you’d like to check out the other parties:
There’s a couple more parties on the right that may enter the race:
NPA. The NPA dominated Vancouver politics for decades, but no longer has a website.
Previously:
Thank you SO much for this analysis!
Given the comments about self-interest rather than altruism, do you think voters would benefit from a housing-focused chart that outlines ABC, COPE, and OneCity’s voting history, policy platforms, and overall success at trying to improve housing affordability, both for renters and homeowners?