Theodore Abbott in the Kitsilano neighbourhood in Vancouver, on Nov. 15. Mr. Abbott says he does not believe the YIMBY movement fairly represents the diverse demographics of a city.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
In the days leading up to a Vancouver council meeting that would consider the controversial decision to add a high-rise to a street of detached houses, filmmaker David Fine noticed an unusual spike in online support for the proposal, which is tabulated and updated on the city’s website.
The surge of support was for an application to redevelop century-old houses on a leafy Kitsilano side street at 2156 and 2172 W. 14th Ave. for an 18-storey rental tower. It wasn’t difficult to trace the source behind the sudden public approval for the project, which is one of several rezonings that fall within the controversial 500-block Broadway Plan. On Reddit, Russil Wvong, a member of a YIMBY group that advocates for more housing construction, Abundant Housing, had posted a call for others to weigh in. He flagged three other projects going to public hearing, and he included a lengthy argument on the need for more high-rises, particularly near transit.
Mr. Wvong, who lives in east Vancouver, runs another pro-supply group called Vancouver Area Neighbours Association, which does not necessarily include Vancouver residents. He regularly rallies members to show their support at public hearings for controversial projects throughout Vancouver, he says, usually by commenting in online public feedback surveys that are a key part of the city’s engagement process. He will also attend hearings to speak in support, as he did for the W. 14th proposal.
The city uses the feedback to help decide on redevelopment proposals, and Mr. Fine took issue with the onslaught of supportive comments by people who aren’t directly impacted by the project. He wrote to council on the day of the hearing, and called it an “abuse of public consultation.”
“Up until a few hours ago, numbers in opposition far exceeded approvals, but that quickly changed as activists flood the website with the same comments over and over,” he wrote in an e-mail that he shared with The Globe and Mail. “They have no considered views; they just act in numbers to overwhelm opposition numbers. It is a clear and underhanded attempt to mitigate the views of people who live in the areas and are directly impacted by these decisions.”
Mr. Wvong’s Reddit post was followed by a flurry of comments that blamed the housing crisis on residents who do not want their neighbourhoods to change. The group favours higher densities, of all housing types and prices.
Mr. Wvong, who works in tech, does not believe that his group’s tactics are unfair to those residents directly impacted by a development, and who have likely studied the plan, and might have a reasonable argument against it, which is the point of public consultation.
“It’s totally understandable that people want their neighbourhood to change as little as possible,” said Mr. Wvong. “But when they succeed in blocking new housing, it imposes tremendous costs on everyone else.” Mr. Wvong ran for city council in 2022, and was a supporter of former mayor Kennedy Stewart’s Forward Together party. He continues to fundraise for the party.
“I feel like there’s this kind of sampling problem where we have self-selection of the people who are most opposed to housing are the ones who are motivated to, you know, take time, show up at city hall and so on. So, we’re trying to kind of counterbalance that,” says Mr. Wvong.
In an e-mail, the city said the only requirement to engage is that the person “considers themselves affected by a proposed bylaw that is the subject of a public hearing.”
That leaves the door open to abuses, such as online robot responses, or people who are paid to show support, says former city councillor Colleen Hardwick. It also opens the door to people who have an ideological argument to make, rather than addressing the pros and cons of the actual project.
Ms. Hardwick attempted to address the issue in 2022, when she put forward a motion that called for more stringent rules, such as certifying the residency of people who submit e-forms.
“We need to know they are real people, and they are Vancouver residents. It doesn’t mean you can’t hear from non-residents, but you contextualize them,” says Ms. Hardwick.
“I do believe that we have stopped listening to the public. We have taken away every reasonable way to have an authentic discussion with our residents.”
The two-year-old Broadway Plan has been a focus of debate because the study area contains one-quarter of the city’s rental housing stock. Some believe increased density without a government mandate to deliver truly affordable housing only fuels real estate prices. Others see more supply of all types of housing as the solution to the crisis.
As redevelopment signs pop up in front of older apartment blocks throughout Kitsilano and Mount Pleasant, people are starting to “wake up and smell the coffee,” says 27-year-old housing advocate Theodore Abbott, who will speak at the Pause the Plan rally at 1 p.m. Nov. 23, in front of city hall.
“I don’t think people realized the scope of this project,” he says of the Broadway Plan. “We want to see the plan reoriented to include a consultation process whereby the voices of residents and community groups are actually listened to and used as a guide. We are not opposed to new housing; we just think we need to be building the right type. This isn’t the only way. There are other ways of doing things.”
He believes Vancouver needs to verify that those who weigh in at public hearings are city residents.
“We are completely changing the way that urban development happens in this city,” says Mr. Abbott, who has a podcast on urban issues and works for the municipal political party Team for a Livable Vancouver.
“We’ve moved to a one-size-fits-all top-down approach in contrast to what we had, which was a community-led consultation process, participatory planning, where community voices were held as guides, rather than seen as stymieing the process.”
Mr. Abbott does not believe the YIMBY movement, active in cities like Vancouver and San Francisco, fairly represents the diverse demographics of a city.
“It’s yuppie millennials who are pushing this ‘build housing everywhere, destroy neighbourhoods, displace tenants.’ You will never find a single mother working two serving jobs living in one of these three-storey walk-ups who’s a YIMBY. You will never find an elderly person, long-time retired on a fixed income, who’s a YIMBY. It’s completely uniform, and a lot of them work in tech and software development.”
In the summer, the city sought feedback on its plans to review the Broadway Plan, which they will use to determine new density and heights.
A report showed that most feedback was obtained online and through surveys. According to the city, 52 per cent of the people who submitted comments lived in Vancouver. The majority were homeowners, between 30 and 49 years of age, male, and of European descent.