Welcome Back Myron Manor Collective Supporters! We've got two parts to this story for you.
June 2 - City Bureaucrats Justify Our Displacement
On Tuesday of last week the City of Vancouver Planning Department submitted a referral report to Council recommending a public hearing on the rezoning application for our home at 75 E 8th Ave in order to build a 21-storey hotel. City Staff are also recommending that City Council approve the rezoning.
The misleading claim of the planning department is that our apartment building must be replaced because it is “non-conforming” to the Mount Pleasant Industrial Area and does not align with the Broadway Plan.
Myron Manor has been legally non-conforming since the creation of the Industrial zone and this has never been an issue until now. Furthermore, the Broadway Plan does not state a need to replace existing rental housing with hotels. The City falsely claims our apartments can no longer exist within the zoning, even though they will need to rezone this site to build a hotel.
There are several City plans and policies cited in this report, including the Hotel Development Policy which details an imaginary hotel crisis, and creates an allowance for developers to replace homes with hotels. At least 29 hotels have already been approved for redevelopment in Vancouver. And even these new hotels are unnecessary: leading up to the hosting of FIFA this summer, the British Columbia Hotel Association’s president and CEO Paul Hawes noted that, “we are ready to welcome the world, and we have the hotel availability to do so”. In fact as FIFA gets underway Vancouver has an abundance of hotel vacancies.
If Vancouver has enough hotels to host one of the largest tourism events in the world, it is unlikely our city needs more. And, even if the “hotel crisis” were real, is the ‘shortage’ of hotel rooms more important than our affordably priced homes?
Also cited is the Metro 2050 Plan which states “Metro-designated industrial lands are intended for industrial uses, as well as complementary job spaces, and do not permit residential uses.” What is not mentioned in this report is that the Metro 2050 Plan would allow the City to redesignate Myron Manor as “General Urban” without any amendments to this policy. The City is claiming that they cannot change this zoning, which is false. If it sounds like the city is lying on behalf of the developer, it’s because they are!
The City was quoted in two news articles about our building saying that some proposals would be fast tracked before the summer break. This was refuted by the City Staff present at the Lobby meeting held in May, who said there was no such thing as fast tracking. As it turns out, Council approved the recommendation for a hearing, which will likely be scheduled in mid-July. This is much earlier than we were initially told we could expect a hearing. Riccardo Peggi of the planning department has informed us that we will receive two weeks notice when the hearing is scheduled.
June 3 - A Motion for Us?
The next day, Councillor Sean Orr of COPE brought a motion to council titled “Protecting Tenants at 75 East 8th Avenue Through the Tenant Relocation and Protection Policy Review.” The motion resolved to direct staff to report recommendations for additional protections, including right of first refusal, the right to move back into the newly finished building, for tenants whose rental apartments are being replaced by hotels.
Councillor Montague correctly noted that you cannot provide right of first refusal to a hotel room. The motion was amended to remove “75 East 8th Ave” from the title, and to change it to a referral to staff from a directive to staff. What eventually passed was a weakened form of a motion that was extremely weak to begin with. The motion has been accurately described by VTU members as a “nothing burger.”
Myron Manor Collective member Michael Cook, recommended several amendments at the Council meeting (He’s the first speaker on the motion, if you want to give it a listen it’s at 4:40). These amendments would actually prevent evictions rather than recommending impossible compensations. Michael’s amendments were supported by most of the subsequent speakers but were not even addressed by any council member in the meeting or otherwise. They were:
- Eliminate Hotel Development Policy subsection 3.2.2.1(d) which allows speculators to demolish tens of thousands of rental apartments to be replaced by hotels.
- Direct council to reject rezoning applications that are designed to increase the value of a property by destroying housing without replacing it with more housing.
- Council should recognize that there is no hotel supply crisis. Hotel vacancies are spiking, and even if they weren’t, tourists looking for hotels is not a crisis. Citizens, permanent residents, immigrants, refugees, First Nations elders, and children looking for affordable housing is a crisis.
What do we make of this? There is a desire by some political parties and elected officials to support our cause. We hope that our voices are taken into consideration along with this support. The Myron Manor Collective welcomes conversations about any actions that will actually save our homes.