Speaking notes: reasons for optimism
Both the federal and provincial governments are pushing for more housing
Thanks to everyone who came to the social at Hero’s Welcome! It was a good crowd, and it’s always great to meet new people.
I brought a small karaoke speaker this time instead of a full-size speaker, so it probably wasn’t loud enough for a pub!
Hi, my name is Russil Wvong. I’m a volunteer housing advocate with the Vancouver Area Neighbours Association, and also a volunteer with the federal Liberals, serving as riding chair for Vancouver Kingsway. Thank you to everyone for coming tonight! I’d especially like to welcome people who are coming to one of these social events for the first time.
I just wanted to say that I’m really grateful to live in Canada. What lets us cooperate on a large scale isn’t just that Canadians are great. People come to Canada from all over the world. What makes Canada work is that we have good institutions that support cooperation.
I’m also grateful that when we have institutions that aren’t working well, like the housing market, we’re willing to fix them.
People don’t move around randomly, they move where the jobs are. Vancouver has a lot of jobs, and not enough housing, with vacancy rates near zero. So prices and rents must rise to unbearable levels to force people to leave, especially younger people. That’s the reason that prices and rents are completely decoupled from local incomes, making us poorer and worse off.
The housing shortage has gotten even worse since Covid, because there was a sudden massive surge of people working remotely and needing more space at home. This is a problem for a lot of countries. (Canada’s also had a lot more population growth since Covid, although the federal government is now pressuring provinces like Ontario to reduce their caps on international students. The Conservative government in Ontario has basically been exploiting international students to pay for the province’s post-secondary education system.)
I’m actually optimistic that we can fix our housing shortage. We have people who want to live and work here. We have other people who want to build housing for them. The problem is basically small-c conservatism. Opponents know that we need more housing, but they’re afraid of the unknown effects if you build it next door. So we regulate new housing like it’s a nuclear power plant.
The federal Liberals and the BC NDP are now pushing municipal governments in the same direction, to make it legal to build a lot more housing, market and non-market. We desperately need to replace the current approval process. It amplifies the voices of housing opponents who attack market housing for being unaffordable, and who attack affordable housing for being undesirable. This is at the expense of younger people and renters who are being crushed and driven out of the city by the high cost of housing.
I ran for city council last year with Kennedy Stewart and Forward Together because I wanted to help fix this. I’m grateful to everyone for your support during the election. But honestly, I’m even more grateful that I’ve been able to continue working with all of you, as part of a community, to keep pushing for more housing.