Speaking notes: 1780 East Broadway

"We need more housing" vs. "No Megatowers at Safeway!"

There’s a Safeway and large parking lot next to the Broadway-Commercial SkyTrain station, the busiest station in the entire system. People have been trying to redevelop it for more than 10 years. It’s finally scheduled for a public hearing tonight.

---

Hi, my name is Russil Wvong. I support this rezoning. I'm a long-time Vancouver resident and homeowner. I don't work in development or real estate.

The reason I’m here is that housing across Metro Vancouver is maddeningly scarce and expensive. People move where the jobs are. We have lots of jobs and not enough housing, so prices and rents have to rise to unbearable levels to force people out.

This is a solvable problem. We have people who want to live and work here. We have other people who want to build housing for them. The thing is, we don’t let them. To paraphrase the MacPhail Report, we regulate new housing like it’s a nuclear power plant, and we tax it like it’s a gold mine. Every time we pile on more costs, for public art or development cost charges or edible landscaping, we’re pushing up the floor on prices and rents, and pushing more projects underwater.

Vancouver has limited land, so it’s especially important to allow more height and density in a central location with easy access to jobs. That’s where lots of people want to live. In this case, we’re basically talking about underused land in the form of a large parking lot, right next to a busy SkyTrain station, that can be used to provide 1000 badly needed rental apartments.

Reading through the opposing comments, there’s lots of people saying that the buildings are too big, and also that the apartments won’t be livable because they’ll be too small. In other words, they want the buildings to be smaller on the outside, and bigger on the inside. That doesn’t make any sense.

There’s also lots of opponents saying that the buildings are too big, and also that the rents will be too high. There’s a similar contradiction here. The more you shrink the size of the building, the more expensive land you need per square foot of floor space, and the higher the rents need to be. For example, there’s plenty of old single-family homes in the area. Because they’re each using close to $2M of land, they require an income of $400,000/year to be affordable.

Finally, one really important advantage of this project is that there’s zero displacement of existing renters. To paraphrase Peter Waldkirch, “Making it so that just about the only legal way to build a rental apartment is to tear down an older apartment is dumb, cruel, terrible policy.” In this case, we have the opportunity to add a lot of new housing without having to displace anybody.

Thank you.

More

• Agenda for tonight’s public hearing. As of 2:30 Wednesday afternoon, there were 335 comments in support and 254 against.

• 1780 East Broadway - city website. Reddit thread, with links to previous threads. Kenneth Chan on the history of the Grandview-Woodlands area plan, June 2022. “No Megatowers at Safeway!”

• After 10 years, East Broadway Safeway redevelopment proposal finally faces Vancouver City Council decision on Thursday. Kenneth Chan, Daily Hive.

• Latest Reddit thread.