A wooden model shows the proposed development at the heart of Mount Pleasant.

The Residents Association Mount Pleasant (RAMP) called one of the first meetings for Oct. 26^th at south Main Street’s Heritage Hall. The group’s goal is to get council hopefuls to clearly state to what degree, if elected, they will use neighbourhood-level input to guide city planning and land use decisions.

RAMP and Rize

RAMP was formed in response to a July 2010 rezoning application by Rize Alliance Properties. The building proposed by Rize at the corner of Kingsway and East Broadway includes a mix of retail and residential units and would rise to 19 stories at its highest point. Fifteen of the 241 dwellings would be rentals proposed under the city’s Short Term Incentives for Rental program.

The group believes the development threatens the neighbourhood’s current character. On its website and in regular Facebook and Twitter posts, RAMP argues that the project doesn’t fit with the vision that emerged from the 2007-2010 Mount Pleasant community planning program.

“Generations of residents, planners, and politicians have created the current environment in Mount Pleasant,” said Stephen Bohus, RAMP’s director. “Now, an opportunistic developer has come in and they have a different vision: high rises.”

Mount Pleasant residents who attended community consultations held by Rize in March and April 2011 expressed little support for the project. RAMP has gathered nearly 2,000 signatures on a petition opposing it.

The public hearing and council vote on Rize’s rezoning application is unlikely to occur before Nov. 19. Bohus believes the outcry from angry constituents about the project has spooked the election-minded council.

“I don’t think Council will want to look at a public hearing of a few hundred people right before the election” he said. “That’s not a politically expedient thing to do; you don’t want to have a hot potato in your hands.”

Sandeep Johal posts a flyer advertising RAMP's all-candidates meeting.

Citizens call council candidates on the carpet

RAMP proposed the upcoming all-candidates meeting as a way to force council candidates to take a stance on the Rize project and other development projects across the city that are facing local opposition.

“It’s sort of a litmus test,” said RAMP volunteer Sandeep Johal. “Citizens can really decide who is espousing their values and supporting their communities.”

Other citizen groups have adopted a similar strategy, and a series of all-candidate meetings pack the calendar in the weeks leading up the the 2011 municipal election.

Randy Helten, a candidate for mayor with the Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver, tracks the events on his blog CityHallWatch. He says the pre-election forums grow out of a frustration with the current Vision Vancouver majority on city council. Helten estimates neighbourhood groups have dedicated “tens of thousands of hours” organizing letters, emails and calls to council that are critical of projects in the city planning process, to seemingly little effect.

“Vision Vancouver has absolute power on city council, with 8 of eleven votes,” said Helten. “They vote as a block, with almost no exceptions, against the wishes of the community.”

New media, new activism

The large number of pre-election forums reflects the growth of a relatively new network of citizen bloggers and Internet-savvy neighbourhood-based organizations, according to Helten. He says few such candidate debates occurred before the 2008 election.

In the coming weeks, these groups will use social media tools and other means of Internet-based publication to distribute records of the candidate’s meetings.

“We will be filming, Twittering, and live streaming our event,” said RAMP’s Johal. “It will be right there in black and white. People can see exactly what’s said; it can’t be misinterpreted.”

Johal hopes the records of the candidate’s statements will inspire voters and inform their choices on Nov. 19, an exciting prospect for Helten, as well.

“This election will be really interesting to watch, because it puts the information into the hands of the citizens,” he said. “It’s a new stage in our democratic system here in Vancouver.”

Merzetti disgusted the crowd with the cigarette butts from a prior two-hour clean-up.

On a recent sunny Saturday morning, some 35 West End residents in Vancouver donned yellow vests and blue rubber gloves and proceeded to scour their neighbourhood’s streets in search of cigarette butts.

They were there at the behest of John Merzetti, who started getting locals to pick up trash as part of his “West End Cleanup” group back in in 2007. Since then, he said, “cigarette butts have increasingly become the bane of our existence.”

Merzetti had convinced more than just concerned West End residents to search the streets that day; they were joined by a number of politicians running for office in the upcoming municipal elections. He’s appealed to them by way of a digital campaign carrying the tagline “Don’t be a butthead.”

He hopes that after spending a few hours picking up the butts by hand, those who got elected would take action to prevent the discarded cigarettes from being left on the street in the first place.

A simple ask

Before going off to pick up butts, Merzetti stood in front of the crowd on a bench in front of the Community Garden at the corner of Davie and Burrard, holding a container overflowing with the fruits of his group’s labour. “This was only collected over two hours,” he yelled.

The laws the current administration had passed so far, such as the smoking ban in public parks and on beaches, were obviously not working. “The parks are littered,” he said. Nearby Nelson Park “is disgusting.”

Jason Lamarche, City Council candidate from the Non-Partisan Association (NPA), said the clean disposal of cigarette butts wasn’t currently a priority on his agenda. But he promised that if elected, he’d make time to address it.

He also brought along a cameraman to film him picking up the butts, which he later on posted on YouTube and on his website.

“I don’t pretend to have all the answers and am definitely open to suggestions,” said Aaron Jasper, member of Vision Vancouver and chair of the Vancouver Park Board. “Cigarette butts are a huge issue.”

However, Jasper refused to admit to any mistakes in the current legislation. “The bylaw itself,  the rationale and the scope of the bylaw, I stand behind it 100 percent,” he said.

As a public figure, Carr gladly helps raise awareness on green initiatives.

Adriane Carr, candidate for City Council for the Vancouver Green Party, said she’d participated in the West End Cleanups before and promised that if elected, she’d address the issue within three to four months.

“I can’t see how the city would not be willing to move on putting in some more garbage cans and ash trays,” she said. “It’s a simple ask.”

It’s up to them

The West End Cleanup has been fighting for this “simple ask” for years. Driven by a deep appreciation for the neighbourhood, Merzetti has been able to rally volunteers to pick up trash on the second Saturday of every month since the group’s inception; some have even adopted their own block whose cleanliness they oversee.

The candidates’ participation on one of the last Saturday cleanups before votes are cast in the upcoming municipal election left him hopeful but realistic about the prospect that his hard work may finally pay off.

“We got a good turnout from all the different political groups today and I tried to drill it into them that something has to be done,” he said.  The next step will be to contact the councillors after the elections, around the New Year, and remind them of their promises.

“It’s not going to be a piece of cake,” Merzetti said. “But we’ve presented this [issue] to them on a silver platter. And now it’s up to them to do something with it.”

The Ambleside shore inspires Shaver

Shaver is an independent artist who creates rock sculptures. He has been working on Ambleside shore in West Vancouver over the past year.

Public art is a priority in Vancouver, with the city aiming to encourage artists. More than 20 new permanent and temporary public artworks were commissioned for the 2010 Winter Games.

According to Shaver ,an art piece is a way artist tries to communicate with his audience.

“Every human being has something to say and share a thought with people,” he says. “An artist’s way to send that message is art. That is why this sort of work matters.”

Shaver’s balancing act

Shaver has no formal arts training, but he does not see that as a barrier. He likes to work whenever and wherever he wants.

His work is inspired by The Coral Castle created by Edward Leedskalnin in early 1900s in Florida. Leedskalnin made a castle out of stones single-handedly and managed to move it from one place to another.

Shaver started to work on rocks around English Bay in downtown Vancouver five years ago. But waves easily destroyed his art so he decided to move to the other side of the Lions Gate Bridge, the Ambleside shore on West Vancouver.

The local authorities are open to the work of artists like Shaver.

Glenn Madsen, the cultural program coordinator at the district of West Vancouver, said there were no regulations against artistic work in a public place.

“I consider such work as a random act of art, its not public art,” Madsen says. “They somehow spur dialog among people and become a meeting spot for them.”

“If the residents of the community start to complain about it ultimately it can end up with a policy. Other than that I don’t see any problem with it.”

Balancing rocks are dotted around the Ambleside shore

Defining the city

Vancouver has an official public art program that covers a variety of activities. They include public and private sector artist commissions, community art initiatives and citizen donations of artwork.

The city aims to commission art that expresses the spirit, values, visions, and poetry of place that it believes collectively define Vancouver.

Bryan Newson, Vancouver city art program manager, feels that this program contributes to the values of the city.

“It is about creating a place for artists,” he says. “We are interested to bring artists forward and contribute to the values, visions, and the poetry of Vancouver.”

Arts professor Xiong Gu at the University of British Columbia says public art is an attempt to make the environment more pleasant.

“Public art is a broad concept,” he says. “It does give a city identity.”

But others are more guarded. “There is nothing unique about Vancouver,” says John O’Brian, arts history professor at UBC. He points out that the city has less public art than most other cities, like neighbouring Seattle.

Art with a message

The rock sculptures have become part of the landscape in Ambleside.

“It is really nice to see that someone puts all of this effort to build something for the community,” says Feri Amin, a West Vancouver resident.

“I think every person has something to say about life, maybe a message,” she adds. “I believe that creating a sculpture is the way artists use to send us that message.”

Shaver believes that each set of rocks resembles one person and their personalities.

After a minute or two, people find themselves staring at one set for several minutes and just like clouds, they can shape a figure in their eyes.

“When you associate with that stone, you must realize that one day that stone will fall and so you will too,” says Shaver.  “Life is temporary … so enjoy right now.”

Garages like these will soon be replaced by miniature houses

The next mayor of Vancouver will oversee a pilot project to allow at least 100 homeowners to knock down their garage and replace it with a revenue-generating miniature house.

But some residents of Dunbar, including at least one former city councilor, are fighting the plan.

Both the Vision and NPA parties say that laneway houses, similar to a coach house or granny flat, will increase affordable housing options in the city while reducing pollution and providing revenue for the homeowner.

With the increase in property values, they’re likely to provide money for the city as well.

Jonathan Baker, a member of the Dunbar Residents’ Association, is opposed to the pilot project. Baker was a two-term city councilor in the 1980s, and worked in the city’s Social Planning Department in the 1970s.

He is concerned that laneway houses will cast shadows on backyards and exacerbate parking shortages as people knock down their garages and put their cars on the street, right behind their new tenant’s car.

The city council voted unanimously in October to begin modifying zoning bylaws to allow up to 100 laneway houses to be built.

Related: Quotes from the laneway housing lobby

While both municipal parties have said that certain neighbourhoods might still get their chance to opt-out, it won’t be until after 100 laneway houses are built.

‘Top-down’ planning

The laneway housing issue is reminiscent of the “bad old days of 1968” when “top-down” planning from City Hall was the norm, said Baker, referring to the city council’s attempt to build a freeway through Strathcona. The council had planners set up drawings of potential new freeways in the public libraries and then asked citizens to choose.

“You’d have one with a freeway too big, one with a freeway too small and one with a freeway just right. But there was no option of not having a freeway. You had to have that.”

Instead of asking what kind of laneway housing citizens want, the council should be asking neighbourhoods whether or not they want it at all, said Baker.

The planning department blocked a survey by the Dunbar Community Vision Implementation Committee last month, saying that funds for the committee may not be spent on research. The survey was intended to gauge opposition to the plan.

Parking ‘not an issue’

If these garages are knocked down, where will people park their cars?

With the municipal election on Saturday, both parties are downplaying concerns over parking issues and shadows that the new buildings could cast on neighbouring backyards.

According to NPA mayoral candidate Peter Ladner, “parking really isn’t an issue.” People will naturally ditch their cars as gas prices increase and better transit and cycling infrastructure are built, he said. While he would consider implementing resident-only parking in busy Kitsilano, Ladner said neighbourhoods like Dunbar have “lots of parking”.

“This is a proposal to take existing footprints of buildings and add people instead of putting cars in them,” Ladner told a crowd at the Hellenic Community Centre on October 24th. “They would be in neighbourhoods where the population is declining, so there will not be growth in the number of people in the neighbourhood.” Ladner also pointed out that increasing population density is one of the main goals of laneway housing.

Ladner said that a laneway house would only cost $150,000 to build and that it would provide a steady revenue source for the owner.  Smallworks, a builder that plans to cash in on laneway housing, suggests that $150,000 is needed to build a 600-square-foot laneway house. It is unclear how much rent tenants would be charged.

Councilor Raymond Louie of Vision agrees, saying that neighbourhood groups will still have the opportunity to oppose the plan.

The laneway housing project is a key part of the City’s EcoDensity Charter, which aims to reduce carbon footprints by increasing transit service use and discouraging automobiles. EcoDensity also aims to increase affordable housing in the city as it continues to grow.

Vancouver will welcome about 56,000 new residents by 2021, according to the most recent BC Stats figures.

City planners suggest there are 70,000 single-family homes in the City of Vancouver that could support a laneway house.

They will start springing up in back gardens across the city as early as next fall.

“A lot of churches and other institutions have parking lots,” says Non-Partisan Association council candidate Michael Geller. “Why not build housing on those parking lots?”

NPA's Geller sees housing potential in parking lots

Geller might be on to something. With the looming threat of even harder economic times, developers looking for profit could become less interested, while city council may find itself with fewer resources to throw at the affordable housing crisis.

“We hope that we haven’t missed an opportunity now that we’re in a recession,” says Vision Vancouver council candidate Geoff Meggs. “You can’t be trying to defy physical gravity when you do projects, you have to make them work financially.”

Vancouver’s real estate has plummeted nearly 9% since May and the slide is expected to continue. While welcomed by some, the softening market has potential to complicate an already difficult situation.

Existing housing is skewed to the wealthy, leaving entry-level housing beyond most families. Renters are also unlikely to benefit from the dip, since high land value and low vacancy keeps rates high. And by all accounts, homelessness is likely to rise.

Related: Two churches who have developed their parking lots

Geller’s suggestion to develop parking lots of religious institutions is no passing fancy. As an architect and former developer, he has experience with similar projects. He has also been touted as the NPA’s housing expert by mayoral candidate Peter Ladner, recently appearing together  arguing for temporary modular homes.

Social housing

Geller sees many benefits to developing parking lots owned by religious institutions, especially the zero land cost. In some instances, development may help a church through a critical juncture. For example, a declining congregation could use development to restructure its finances or move into a smaller facility.

Churches or synagogues could also create what Geller calls “affinity” housing built for congregants or a specific group of people, such as senior citizens.

University Chapel's parking lot is currently under negotiation, but could be developed in the future

Unlike developers, churches are not bound by a “purely market” rationale. Geller suggests churches could adopt a “Robin Hood approach,” using a proportion of full market housing to offset affordable housing.

Vision’s Meggs agrees churches are a logical solution for adding density or creating social housing, and are often motivated to gear their housing toward a needier population.

“A church is not necessarily looking for market rates of return,” he says.

The question of how much of a difference churches could make is admittedly difficult to quantify.  Jonathan Bird, director of Shalom Seekers, estimates that apart from school board property, these parking lots constitute Vancouver’s “largest acreage available for redevelopment.”

Shalom Seekers is a Christian parachurch organization supporting social housing solutions among churches in the Lower Mainland. According to their recent inventory, more than 6,500 affordable housing units in greater Vancouver are already under ownership or management of Christian organizations.

While 54% of existing units are for seniors, Bird sees growing interest among Vancouver’s churches to branch out to other demographic groups.

While broadly supportive of developing non-profit land, neither Meggs nor Geller sees churches or synagogues as a panacea for affordable housing.

“There’s no one solution,” Geller says, “but there are lots of ideas happening around the world that are worth exploring.”

While not offering financial incentives, Geller suggests the city can support churches and non-profits by easing minimal parking requirements. Since underground parking costs approximately $30,000 a stall, existing regulations can easily make projects cost- prohibitive.

As a proponent of densification, Geller feels the city already needs to reduce parking requirements along arterial corridors.

Meggs argues the affordable housing crisis will require strong government leadership. “I think it’s too much to hope,” he says, “that well meaning people will come forward in sufficient numbers to make a dent in the problems we face.”

Recognizing the federal government is unlikely to step in and help, Meggs stresses partnerships with “a whole set of stakeholders” including credit unions, the labour movement, pension funds, and the private sector. With his longstanding connections to the B.C. Federation of Labour, Meggs may well be able to bring these groups to the table.

For investors such as pension funds, the city could market entry-level housing projects as a long-term, stable investment with consistent cash flow.

Housing “might not give you the kind of excitement we got on the stock market over the last couple of years,” Meggs says, “but would give you security down the road.”

The university’s first election for a place on the GVRD boasts five candidates, all pledged to stop UBC from deceasing the size of its 24-hectare farm by two-thirds, which would limit the output of locally grown food.

Students and advocates are fighting UBC’s plans, intended to accommodate development pressures on south campus, to the extent that it has become the main focus of the November 15 election.

From left to right: Pritchard, Menzies, mediator, West, Harris, Naylor

Matthew Naylor, Alma Mater Society representative and Electoral Area A candidate, said UBC needs to preserve the farm as a model of sustainability within a rapidly-growing area. “The choices and the changes we are going to make in the next couple of years in regards to the farm are going to determine the shape and character of this community for the next 100 years,” he said.

Naylor and the four other candidates - UBC Anthropology professor Charles Menzies, Ben West, former Deputy Leader of BC’s Green Party, former UBC Director of Campus and Community Planning, Fred Pritchard, and Maria Harris, Director of the Board at St. Mark’s College - squared off at an all-candidates debate November 6. All that differed however was the degree to which they supported plans to preserve the Farm.

West said the public consultation results, which started in September, were “utterly uninspiring” because they did not take into account faculty or resident interests.

Student voice

Students agree. On October 27, an AMS organization, Friends of the Farm, sent UBC president Stephen J. Toope an online petition to save the farm with nearly 16,000 signatures. The group also sent freshly baked pumpkin pies from produce grown at the farm in the hopes of convincing the administration to re-evaluate the outcome of the public consultations.

The development plan would impact the farm

For the university, UBC Farm is considered a prime location for development because it is close to services and amenities. It also isn’t the first time that the farm has been displaced because of development pressure. It has moved three times over the past century as research and other agricultural activities have shifted to the south campus.

“From a building perspective, it’s a lovely piece of open land, and a convenient place to build on a campus with limited land,” said UBC Land and Building Project Manager John Percy.

While UBC-UEL is still an undefined area, the candidates predicted that it will become its own city officially due to its expanding population, which is projected at 30,000 residents by 2030.

Naylor said the university’s approach is a short-term strategy arguing that UBC should be more focused on creating an integrated green strategy than building housing, particularly in an economic downturn.

“We don’t need housing designed by the university to create money for the endowment, because housing necessarily isn’t the best investment to be making right now.”

Other candidates argued for more aggressive strategies to save the farm, suggesting that if anything the farm needs to be expanded.

The next stage for the farm will be decided in early 2009.

The UBC Farm serves as a source of food and a model for development

The potential loss of the farm has spurred staff, students and aspiring politicians into action.

The farm represents some of the last undeveloped property on the campus and its future is an indicator of the future development of the campus.

A decision about the future of the 24-hectare property is expected early next year.

The UBC Board of Governors make decisions about the operations and development on the university campus, but they do not decide in isolation.

The Metro Vancouver Board oversees all regional land use on Electoral District A, which includes UBC, and has one position on a board of 36 members for the region.

Related: Candidates’ views on the UBC Farm

Five candidates are vying for Electoral District A’s only director spot on the board, a position which represents the population of the UBC Campus community.

The farm is the one issue they agree on.

Community character

Maria Harris, Matthew Naylor, Charles Menzies, Fred Pritchard and Ben West all hope to advocate for the protection of the farm.

The farm serves as an educational space for students from many departments. It also serves as “a source of food” and as a “model for development,” said West, a former deputy leader of the Green Party of BC.

“The choices and the changes that we’re going to make in the next couple of years in regards to the farm, in regards to development, in regards to governance are going to determine the shape and character of this community in the next 100 years” said Naylor, who is also a UBC student.

To the UBC community, a position on the board is key to their ability to influence the decision-making of the UBC Board of Governors.

According to Naylor, Electoral District A is “a district where engagement is a massive problem and voter turnout has reached historic lows.”

‘Democratic deficit’

The issue of the UBC Farm is encouraging civic participation. Students and residents who attended a debate between Electoral A candidates at the Student Union Building earlier this month showed strong support for the preservation of the farm.

Menzies, a candidate and UBC professor of anthropology, argued that the uncertainty of the farm’s future represents a democratic deficit within policy making for the region.

Residents and students participated in a debate about the future of the farm

Developers are making the case for more housing on the UBC campus, something all five candidates oppose.

“It doesn’t address the real needs of housing on this campus, it addresses the real need for a certain cadre of businessmen to make lots of profits,” Menzies said.

“The primary problem here is that there is a really unusual situation where the developer and the planning authority are one and the same,” said Harris, a candidate and long time resident. “With that kind of structure in place, you cannot get the kind of decisions that you would get in a normal municipal structure.”

The farm is “a place where we do the kind of research that’s necessary to understand our connection to food and place and ourselves,” said West. “I see it as a symbol of what’s going on not just in UBC but throughout our region.”

“We need to take a look at increasing productivity on farms and make sure that land isn’t taken away from agriculture,” said Pritchard, a former director of planning at UBC. “We are talking about something that could be a global centre of excellence.”

Proposed campus plans either reduce or displace the farm. If these plans are carried out there will be a “reduced image for the university,” and a “reduced size and workability of the farm,” argued Lindsay Clark, a student at the School of Community and Regional Planning at UBC.

“What [UBC] is going to lose is a message of hope and the trust of the campus community,” she continued.

(Farm photo courtesy bbqmag)