Last call to join OneCity for the mayoral nomination
Michael O'Shaughnessy on why he's supporting William Azaroff
If you’d like to vote in the OneCity mayoral nomination race, the deadline to join OneCity is tonight, Monday January 12, at midnight.
Membership signup link - I’m trying to sign up 100 people by the deadline.
The latest episode of the Cambie Report podcast has an interview with each of the two candidates:
E3-281 OneCity’s mayoral candidates. “OneCity Vancouver is in the midst of their mayoral nomination contest, so we spoke to the two candidates: William Azaroff and Amanda Burrows about why they want to lead the city.”
Katie Hyslop at the Tyee interviewed each candidate in December:
Candidate websites:
Michael O’Shaughnessy on why he’s supporting William
A Facebook post by Michael O’Shaughnessy, explaining why he’s supporting William Azaroff for mayor:
Hi, everyone! Big politics nerd post incoming. Enter at your own risk, etc.
There’s a municipal election upcoming in Vancouver. We are extremely poorly governed. The governing party was dealt a serious blow in the April by-election. In October, we’ll be voting to replace the Mayor. And I want to tell you why I support William Azaroff for Mayor in OneCity’s nomination contest.
THE SHORT VERSION:
He brings a deep well of experience getting real things built to change people’s lives for the better. In his present job he builds and operates affordable housing for working families, seniors and people with disabilities. In his past job as a VP at Vancity he marshaled billions of dollars of investment into the kind of green, sustainable businesses we need to have a competitive edge in tomorrow’s economy - but with a values lens that made this investment about more than just the bottom line. In both roles, he’s led a large organization, navigating complex processes mastering tricky stakeholder environments.
He knows what it takes to change the way a behemoth of an org like the City of Vancouver operates, he’s been part of big changes both at the governance and operational level, and he’s running to be the head of a party that will NEED those skills to implement its very ambitious reform agenda.
Progressives have the right values and the right vision - but the moment demands that we stop dreaming and start doing. We need to take our big progressive hearts and our big wonky brains and deliver tangible things that people can see and feel, or the right will fill the void we leave and we’ll all suffer the consequences.
William Azaroff is not just a dreamer. He is a doer - he has the skillset needed to meet the moment and transform how Vancouver operates for the better of all.
THE LONG VERSION:
As many of you may know, I’m a bit of a city nerd. Part of it is because I love trains and buses. But the other part is because, somewhat counterintuitively, the city government is the government that makes the decisions that have the biggest, most direct, and most material impact on your life.
Do you get to work in half an hour, one hour, or in two? City government.
Do you get hit by a car when you cross the street, or do you cross it safely? City government.
Are you stuck paying $800/mo (at least) for a car, or do you have more affordable options like transit, cycling or walking? City government.
Do you pay 30% of your income towards housing, or 50%, or even higher? City government. (Mostly. There are other players!)
It REALLY MATTERS that our cities are governed well. Which is why it’s so troubling that the city I live in, Vancouver, is governed so poorly.
Sim and his party wasted three years of their mandate chasing shiny objects and side projects - and meanwhile, affordable housing is too difficult to build, our transit is slow and our community centres are crumbling. Now, in their fourth, they’re desperately trying to find anything that can save their government - and doing real damage on the way out.
Incompetence at the municipal government has real, material consequences. Which is why it’s so exciting to have a candidate who not only has the right values, but has a track record of turning those values into real things people can see and feel.
William Azaroff is the CEO of a major affordable housing builder and operator. He inherited a 70 year old organization and has been transforming it. One of his first moves was to certify as a living wage employer. He’s led a goal of doubling the org’s affordable housing stock, and 400 of those new non-market homes are presently under construction. In his past role, he was a VP at Vancity, marshalling billions of dollars of investment into the local sustainable economy - bringing capital to the kinds of fossil fuel free businesses BC needs to diversify from resource extraction and compete today and tomorrow. And he led the effort to return banking services to Cormorant Island for the ʼNa̱mǥis First Nation and the Village of Alert Bay after their only bank closed.
More to the point: he understands how to navigate behemoth-like organizations, work their internal politics, and change the way they operate. The dirty secret of municipal politics is that politicians don’t actually -do- anything - they need to work city staff to achieve their agenda. William is a longtime board chair - he was Board Chair at Modo during a time of real growth and change for the org - and understands how to work with organizational leaders like a city manager to ensure that there is alignment on mission and agenda, and that the agenda is executed.
We progressives have big hearts - and OneCity members are wonks with big brains. But that’s not enough. The moment we’re in is one where people’s trust in government is falling away quickly. Having failed to deliver, people are turning to right-wingers who want to burn everything down.
We need to take our big progressive hearts and our big wonky brains and put them to work - not writing whitepapers or having policy arguments on social media, but building real things. Affordable homes. Rapid public transit. Beautiful community centres and libraries and parks available to all. Change that people can see, feel, and trust to make their lives better.
William Azaroff is not just a dreamer. He’s a doer. He’s already executed on a progressive agenda: building hundreds of affordable homes at Brightside, preserving the community-owned nature of car co-ops like Modo and marshalling billions of dollars in investment behind local sustainable businesses.
He did all that outside the halls of power. Imagine what he could do inside them.
On housing
What do William Azaroff and Amanda Burrows think about making housing less scarce and expensive? Abundant Housing Vancouver posted excerpts from the Cambie Report interviews.
William Azaroff on being asked: “What mix do you think it takes to get real affordability? ... How do you get affordable housing?”
WA: So, so again, two or three things come to mind. One is we need to be in a position that any government money that could possibly flow to Vancouver does so. And that means… one of the great things is we have a very sophisticated non-profit sector, co-ops included, who know how to build, who have learned how to build, have seen a record amount of funding provincially, and federal over the last seven years, and we’re in a good position, so let’s do what we can to build that non-market housing, because that is the kind of deeply affordable housing that will really make a difference.
Okay, so that’s one. But we know there isn’t enough money flowing to solve the crisis, so it can’t just be about non-market housing. We’d need 10 times the amount of investment we’ve had to get to even a number that would do that. So that’s why I talk about, like, different built forms in different neighborhoods. You know, right now, people often have the choice between single family homes—and no one can, like, who can afford those—and towers. And towers are good where there’s density-rich environments, and that’s good. But there are small scale developers and builders in this city who could build small scale apartment buildings on single family home lots, who can build more than just a duplex or a triplex. Like in some areas, that’s good. That is increasing density.
But you know, we need to build low and medium density in every neighborhood. So my hope is that over time, you would see housing prices come down, both in terms of ownership and rental. Right now, we just kind of build two types of housing for the most part, and we need more different types of housing.
Amanda Burrows on being asked: “How do you navigate solving these complex issues, especially in this, you know, heightened polarized situation between some mayors, the province, and you know, market, non-market. How do you balance it all? How do you fix it?”
AB: How are we going to fix it? Well, you know, people don’t fully care about the fights between our governments, right? People care about whether they can afford a place to live, and so that’s where I’m going to start first. And when it comes to the conversations that’s happening, what’s so interesting, it’s basically around density, right? So I’m pro-housing, like, bottom line, I’m pro-housing, and Vancouver needs to build a lot more of it, and a lot faster, especially affordable and non market housing.
But we can’t just dismiss, right, people’s fears about change. We can’t just say that, you know, we have to acknowledge that growth, growth really does affect people’s sense of home, and that deserves respect. So the real question around these dense, you know, this density, and it’s like the multi-unit family and tower, is it’s not really like a tower or no tower. It’s about what’s being built for whom, and how do we take communities along in the conversation? And so density works best when people understand why it’s needed and it needs to come with real assurance. So stronger renter protections, our local services, our green space, design that can enhance our neighbourhood character. You know that’s so often like where people are afraid of their character being erased.
So I support growth that builds housing people can actually afford and strengthen its communities. So I will always push back on development if it displaces residents or ignores the people who already live there. But let’s come back together and I am pro-housing. We need to build the housing and we can’t fight amongst our governments to do it. People don’t care about that. People care about affordability, and that’s what I’m here to do as mayor.
Previously: