Houses are seen in a neighbourhood on the side of a mountain, in Maple Ridge, B.C., on Aug. 17.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Vancouver’s head of planning has abruptly departed for the fourth time in a row, as the city continues to grapple with crisis-level housing shortages and costs.
The appointment of chief planner Theresa O’Donnell has “concluded,” The City of Vancouver announced Thursday, days after the new council gave her team a unanimous approval for a significant new policy allowing up to six units on most of the municipality’s vast swath of residential properties.
While some pro-housing advocates thought the new policy didn’t go far enough, it was Vancouver’s major initiative to start changing what and where housing is allowed. For decades, about 70 per cent of residential land only permitted single-family homes. Since 2009, there have been three units permitted on most lots, when basement suites and laneway homes were made legal, but the building still had to look like a single-detached house from the street.
Ms. O’Donnell was also getting ready to start making other changes in line with the comprehensive Vancouver Plan that was passed last year, including finding ways to add more housing around smaller neighbourhood commercial centres.
“Theresa has made a remarkable contribution to Vancouver and the trajectory of its ongoing evolution,” wrote city manager Paul Mochrie in an internal e-mail to staff. “In particular, I want to acknowledge her leadership of some of our city’s most important land use planning work, including the Vancouver Plan, the Broadway Plan and the recent zoning updates to enable missing middle housing city-wide.”
The city’s media department did not provide details on whether Ms. O’Donnell had resigned or been asked to leave, saying it doesn’t discuss personnel matters.
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Ms. O’Donnell came to Vancouver in 2019 from Dallas, Tex. as the second-in-command in planning under then-leader Gil Kelley, and was widely seen as a “get things done” kind of bureaucrat.
Mr. Kelley resigned in 2021 after many reports that the development community and council were frustrated by how long it was taking to make improvements in the city’s housing-approvals process and to a range of big planning projects. Ms. O’Donnell was then quickly appointed to fill his place.
Some, such as Green Party Councillor Pete Fry, were dismayed by the loss of Ms. O’Donnell.
“I am tremendously disappointed to lose Theresa. I think she really brought a lot to the table and met the expectations we put on her,” Mr. Fry said. “It’s a tough job, and this was very abrupt.”
He said he thinks Ms. O’Donnell’s departure is likely related to the new ABC Vancouver party-dominated council’s impatience to see dramatic change.
The ABC Vancouver party won every seat in which it ran a candidate at city council, school board, and park board in October, 2022. Since then, the ABC team has been under pressure to prove that it is doing things differently, and there have been some departures, big and small, including park-board general manager Donnie Rosa. But there have still been criticisms that it was not making enough big moves for a party that got such a huge mandate.
The city’s development community, which always has strong opinions on every planning director, had become increasingly critical of Ms. O’Donnell in the last year. One situation in particular that brought in a lot of complaints was her handling of a initiative that was meant to allow developers to bring projects directly to council, even if they didn’t meet current city-planning policies, to see if there was an appetite for approving them.
But Ms. O’Donnell and her team instead turned that into a process of creating a list for deciding where some shorter-term planning changes should happen. The new council killed that initiative earlier this year, since it was achieving nothing and frustrating many.
Another planner in the department will act temporarily as the director of planning to replace Ms. O’Donnell, as there are legal requirements for the role to sign off on certain city activities.