Stop Displacement on East 10th avenue!

The 400 and 500 blocks of East 10th avenue are facing destruction. Tenants have been organizing together since the news of the redevelopment application in April 2024 to ensure no one is left behind. In those houses, 20+ year tenants face losing their homes, 35% of tenants here are ineligible for Broadway Plan renter protections and tenants in shared houses are losing the collective spaces they’ve built.

After multiple rounds of door knocking, tenants organized a fabulous Halloween Block Party in fall 2024. As the threat of demoviction is moving closer, they need support more than ever! 

Read their stories below and keep following the VTU to see how you can support them.

From a tenant of 22 years:

“This affordable home allowed me to continue to raise my daughter here after my husband passed away. It provided a safe community of people and a stable comfortable home.

I promised my husband the best possible life for our daughter. This home helped me make that happen. We have been in this home for 22 years. We need to protect current affordable homes so families can continue to flourish in Mount Pleasant.

Save Already Existing Affordable Homes!”

From a tenant who is ineligible for Broadway Plan Tenant Protections:

“I’m a longtime Mount Pleasant resident, but because I have lived at my current place for less than a year when the rezoning application was submitted for a Broadway Plan development, I don’t qualify for the city’s TRPP. I’ll probably be here for 3 years by the time a redevelopment can start, but they can kick me out with no TRPP compensation and no right to return when a new building goes up. And I’m not the only one: 7 out of the 20 people who would be displaced for this project are in the same situation.

I can’t stop worrying about having to leave my home and community in the near future. Most people are not even aware of how many of us are getting displaced from the neighbourhood and from the city with no protections under the Broadway Plan”.

From a tenant in shared house:

“I’ve lived here for 7 years. We are 6 people living in a house. If they relocate us they are only offering a maximum of 3 bedrooms. Are we supposed to sleep in bunk beds?

Being kicked out of our home means leaving Vancouver, and my chosen family. I can’t afford to live anywhere else here”.

From another neighbour:

“I would be devastated if we had to leave. I've been here for 11 years watching this neighborhood grow and change. I work in the area and have made lasting bonds with my neighbors, local businesses, and people within our community along 10th. 

We have nowhere else to go! Where will they put us in the interm? People think that it's just a couple people that live in these houses. Each house has about 10 to 11 individuals living in them! A majority of us are low income, disabled, or of an older demographic. We work within and contribute to this community and we deserve to be here! We have worked hard at making the spaces liveable. Putting an 18 story building on 10th is incredibly out of touch- this street is one of the biggest bike ways in vancouver and has some of the oldest most beautiful trees that are home to countless animals and ecosystems that protect biodiversity within this city. The renters "protections" are also a joke which many do not even qualify for. Over and over again, this city and it's administration continues to show renters that there are no protections for them and that their voices don't matter”.

From a tenant in a shared house:

“This neighborhood isn’t just a collection of buildings - it’s home to families, seniors, and individuals who’ve been here for years, even decades. Rezoning would mean many of us getting pushed out of the homes we love, in a city where rent has already become incredibly unaffordable. For most of us, staying in the community we’ve been part of for so long simply won’t be possible. Some will be forced to leave Vancouver altogether.

I chose to live here because it’s along a bike route with great access to the rest of the city - which is essential for me, since I can’t afford to own a car. Cycling and transit are my only options. If I’m forced to leave, I likely won’t be able to find another place that gives me that kind of access within my budget. Displacement doesn’t just mean losing a home - it means losing connection, community, and independence”.

From another tenant in a shared house:

“I’ve heard the argument that towers are being built to provide muchly needed cheaper rents. The fact is, 6 of us (in our 30s & 40s) live in a share house on E 10th because that’s affordable and apartments in the area cost 2-3 times the monthly rent per individual. Add to that parking, as the proposed 4 towers in a 2 block radius will decimate street parking, plus the separate storage spaces at our home, none of that is accounted for in the “renters protections”. These proposals are tossing out cheap rent options, to build more unaffordable housing which seems to mainly benefit the developers. 

I’m coming up 9 years in the purple house, and moving within the city is unaffordable, even with their proposed assists. And I’m only one of two people in my home of six they intend to cover (2 of us on the lease, but the lease specifies 6 people to live here). Non lease folk have lived there between 20 months & 6 years”.