OneCity mayoral nomination race: William Azaroff

CEO of non-profit developer Brightside, former Vancity manager and executive

TLDR: Based on the recent by-election results, OneCity should be a strong contender in Vancouver’s October 2026 municipal election. I’m supporting William Azaroff in OneCity’s mayoral nomination race - he’s someone who’s actually gotten housing built! I’d encourage anyone who wants more housing to join OneCity, so that you can vote in the mayoral nomination race, and to tell your friends and family. Membership dues are $10.

William Azaroff’s campaign launch video.

How do we make housing less scarce and expensive?

This is a solvable problem. We have lots of people who want to live and work in Vancouver. We have other people who want to build housing for them. The problem is, we don’t let them!

This is a regional challenge, but the city of Vancouver is particularly important because demand here is high. Vancouver is geographically central, with easy access to jobs, so lots of people want to live here. When we don’t build enough housing in the city of Vancouver, people get pushed further out, and they end up having to commute longer distances, spending more time and adding to traffic.

So one of the most important things we can do, as individuals, is vote for a mayor and council in the next Vancouver municipal election that will be effective in reforming city hall to allow more housing.

Municipal politics doesn’t get as much coverage as federal and provincial politics. And voter turnout is lower. In the 2022 election, voter turnout was 36%. If you’re willing to get involved, you can have an outsized impact.

Mapping out the municipal parties in Vancouver:

Websites for each of the parties:

• ABC (Ken Sim)

• Vote Vancouver (Rebecca Bligh)

• OneCity (open nomination race for mayoral candidate, William Azaroff has announced)

• COPE (don’t know if they’ll run a mayoral candidate or not)

• Greens (Pete Fry is a possible mayoral candidate)

• Vancouver Liberals (Kareem Allam)

• TEAM (Colleen Hardwick)

Why I’m supporting OneCity

In the 2026 election, 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”). I think this is a terrible plan: we’re already not spending enough to keep our community centres from falling apart.

What are OneCity’s prospects?

OneCity kept a foothold on council in the 2022 ABC wave, along with the Greens. And then in the April 2025 by-election (after Christine Boyle won a seat in the provincial legislature and Adriane Carr stepped down), a lot of people voted for Sean Orr (COPE) and Lucy Maloney (OneCity), while the ABC candidates (Ralph Kaisers and Jaime Stein) did pretty badly. Not sure what’s happening with the Greens, but their by-election candidate (Annette Reilly) got fewer votes than Colleen Hardwick (TEAM).

Of course the people who vote in a by-election aren’t the same as the people who vote in the general election, but with Sean Orr and Lucy Maloney getting more than 30,000 votes in a 15%-turnout by-election, and the ABC candidates getting less than 10,000 votes, ABC looks to be in trouble. A recent CityNews poll, October 2025:

When Vancouverites were asked if they think the city is headed in the right direction, only 35 per cent of people agreed. Sixty-five per cent felt it was on the ‘wrong track,’ while 73 per cent of people agreed Mayor Ken Sim and council are out of touch with what residents want and need.

Who’s William Azaroff?

OneCity announced recently that they’re holding an open nomination race for their mayoral candidate. Yesterday, William Azaroff launched his campaign. I’m supporting his nomination - in fact I’m in his campaign video.

I met William during the 2022 election. He’s been CEO of Brightside, a non-profit developer, since 2019; so he’s very familiar with the city’s obstacles to building more housing. Besides Brightside, he also worked at Vancity for more than 10 years, as a manager and executive. In short, he’s got a record of building housing and getting things done, and I also like that he has experience in business and finance.

From his campaign website:

Born and raised in Vancouver, William has dedicated the last 20 years to making our city stronger through building affordable housing, partnerships, and organizations.

William is the CEO of Brightside Community Homes, where he leads a team that manages over 1,100 affordable homes for seniors, families, and people with disabilities - with 400 more on the way. Under his leadership, Brightside is on track to double the number of affordable homes in its portfolio, has certified as a Living Wage Employer and is working to eliminate fossil fuel usage completely by 2035.

Prior to Brightside, William worked at Vancity for over a decade, working his way up to an executive position where he managed $4 billion in community investments. This work has had a real impact on our city, through funding local non-profits, supporting climate action, and backing Indigenous-led businesses.

He is also a dedicated board director, having served on the boards of community organizations like the BC Non-Profit Housing Association, Modo, and the Vancouver International Film Festival.

William and his family are long-time residents of the Strathcona neighbourhood.

A story from December 2022, during the debate on Christine Boyle’s motion to allow 12-storey social housing by right:

William Azaroff, CEO of Brightside Community Homes, a major non-profit housing provider in Vancouver, told council on Wednesday about a specific project his group was building in Marpole. The development was six storeys, which would normally be allowed under the zoning in the neighbourhood, and Brightside hoped they would be able to proceed directly to a development permit, without needing a rezoning.

But because the property was on a hill, one side of the building was about 1 1/2 metres too tall to be allowed under existing zoning, which triggered a requirement for a rezoning and a full public hearing. The extra time that public hearing added meant a $4 million increase in the project cost, Azaroff said.

“Had we been able to skip rezoning and save eight, 10, maybe 12 months off that project, we could have locked in much lower interest rates, we could have gotten tenders in before cost escalations,” Azaroff said. “Obviously this is a bit of an unprecedented time, but I think it’s just such a clear indication of how a policy like this can just create certainty and allow not-for-profits like Brightside to be able to move forward more quickly.”

William has a blog, and he wrote a book a few years back. His LinkedIn page.

What happens next?

It’s an open nomination race, and I’ve heard that there’s another person who will announce soon that they’re also seeking the OneCity mayoral nomination. (There may be more people that I haven’t heard about.) They’ll each be signing up as many new OneCity members as possible, and fundraising before the end of the year.

Eventually there’ll be a cutoff for new memberships, and then the campaigns will shift to talking to OneCity members.

The nomination vote will be in early February. It’ll be by email.

There’ll be a separate nomination race for council candidates, school board, and park board, expected to happen in early May.

Another key question: will the Greens and COPE run their own mayoral candidates? My impression is that the Green Party wants Pete Fry to run, but he’s reluctant. He’s said that he’ll make his decision in the New Year. Someone on Reddit who’s been talking to COPE says that they won’t run a mayoral candidate unless Pete runs.

Politics is adversarial, so I expect a lot of attacks on OneCity’s potential mayoral candidates, both from ABC and from TEAM.

If you’d like to meet people from OneCity, there’s a monthly pub night. The next one is tonight:

When: Tuesday November 18, 7 to 9 pm
Where: Brewhall in Olympic Village, 97 E 2nd Ave (at Quebec)
Registration

This coincides with our usual Housing Happy Hour, so we’re just going to join the OneCity pub night.