Vancouver mayor Ken Sim shifted city politics, but one year later solutions to opioid and housing crisis elude

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A year ago, Ken Sim upended more than a decade of left-leaning civic politics to become Vancouver’s mayor, propelled by a surge of fed-up voters who hoped he and his new centre-right party could finally make a difference on the city’s most difficult files: homelessness, housing, crime, public disorder.

To the ire of critics who campaigned against him during last October’s election, Mr. Sim ordered the clear-out of the sidewalk homeless encampment on Hastings Street in the spring and he cancelled the city’s commitment to a living-wage policy and the Stanley Park bike lane.

Council, dominated by Mr. Sim’s new ABC Party, instituted givebacks of empty-homes tax money to developers. It has also entertained proposals to revise the city’s policy of protecting views of the mountains from various vantage points. Both policies were made with an aim of creating more housing.

Adrian Carr, the Green Party representative who is now the city’s longest-serving councillor, said Mr. Sim and his party seem to believe that they don’t need to consult. She added that their agenda appears to be about rolling back climate-change measures and policies previous councils had brought in to try to create some affordability.

“I’m worried that they’re forgetting that it’s not just about making the developers happy,” she said.

Some of Mr. Sim’s vocal supporters – the police union, Chinatown leaders and housing developers – argue that his early moves have been important and encouraging, including his promised hiring of new nurses and police officers.

But other observers say Mr. Sim’s platform of demonstrable change has shown little signs of being fulfilled one year since the vote results were tabulated last Oct. 15.

Last week, when he announced his council’s multipronged new plan to speed up and allow more housing development – an initiative that he called “bold” three times – the mayor was questioned about what was actually new or different from policies already under way.

One of Mr. Sim’s biggest promises was to hire 100 new police officers and 100 new nurses specializing in mental health to work along with them, a promise welcomed by law-and-order advocates on one side and those wanting a compassionate approach to the city’s homeless people on the other. But that promise has been slow to materialize.

“He’s created a sense of direction and purpose that wasn’t there before. But I’m still not sure what he wants to make his mark on. A lot of stuff is fiddling around the edges,” said Geoff Meggs, who has been both a chief of staff and a councillor at Vancouver city hall.

Mr. Meggs is on the other side of the political fence from Mr. Sim, but his observations are echoed privately by many people who supported Mr. Sim and who wonder why his council hasn’t made bolder decisions.

With eight of 11 positions on council belonging to his ABC, Mr. Sim has the kind of supermajority that previous mayors, like Gordon Campbell, Larry Campbell or Gregor Robertson, used to bring in big changes to the city, from Expo 86 to supervised-injection sites to major new climate-change initiatives.

But Mr. Meggs, who recently left his job as chief of staff to former premier John Horgan, is sympathetic to how much more entrenched Vancouver’s problems seem since he first started work at city hall in 2002.

Then, COPE had been swept to power because people wanted to see a changed strategy for the Downtown Eastside. Mr. Meggs helped then-mayor Larry Campbell get the city’s first supervised-injection site opened within a year. The group also instantly legalized basement suites to ensure some affordable housing.

But things on every front – housing, homelessness, drug poisoning – are exponentially worse now, Mr. Meggs notes. “The challenge for Ken Sim is that the problems are more intractable and they’re not solvable at the civic level.”

An example is Mr. Sim’s keystone promise of hiring 100 new nurses and police officers.

So far, only 10 nurses have been hired. And, although 104 new police officers have been hired as of this month, Vancouver Police Union president Ralph Kaisers, acknowledged that police had had 60 positions vacant a year ago and another 60 or so have left the force since then.

All the new hiring still hasn’t brought the force to its authorized strength of 1,388 a year ago, let alone the 1,488 that it’s supposed to be at now.

Chinatown leaders who also favoured Mr. Sim for his promise to devote more attention to their historic neighbourhood – he opened a satellite city office, for example – say the new council has made a difference.

“Comparing today to a year ago, it’s night and day,” said Chinatown’s business-improvement association president, Jordan Eng.

He pointed to the city’s aggressive efforts to tackle graffiti and the message sent by various policing efforts that anti-social behaviour isn’t acceptable.

On the building front, one of the city’s most vocal developers said there have been some key changes that will make construction of all kinds of housing, including subsidized or below-market projects, more feasible.

“There was maybe a little bit of a slow start, but there have been a lot of strong initiatives,” said Jon Stovell, CEO of Reliance Properties. Ltd. He cited decisions such as more openness to building new hotels, a potential move to allow larger floor areas for towers, a review of the city’s shadow policy, and the vote to give developers with unsold condos a break on empty-homes taxes.

“That took some political courage,” he said.

Mr. Stovell said he appreciates council’s recent move to review its mountain view cones, although it took almost a full year for that to come about.

The trick now, he said, will be whether council moves forward on changes like that, despite the controversy they are generating, including from former chief planner Larry Beasley, who remains an influential voice in the city. He has said that eliminating or reducing view cones is just a giveaway to speculators.

Mr. Stovell is hoping the new council will be able to stick to the direction it has started and keep going with new policy changes now in the works.

“Those are all pretty tangible things if they have the courage to bear down on staff.”