The City of Vancouver has an online survey for residents to express their views about the next year’s City budget — namely which services to cut and how to raise revenues or taxes. 

Please take a few minutes to fill out the survey to tell City Council to cut the police budget, create a Mansion Tax to end homelessness, and implement local rent control now.

 

The survey is short but shamefully biased in favour of landlords and the rich, so be sure to provide additional thoughts in the comment boxes. 

For example, the survey question about taxes asks if you want to “Increase residential property taxes (may increase rent for tenants over the long term)”, and adds an additional page asking tenants to agree to landlords passing their tax increases onto tenants.

Please consider writing in the comment box that you support a Mansion Tax (progressive property tax), and emphasize that the City should use its business licence power to implement local rent control — as New Westminster has done, recently upheld by the BC supreme court.

 

With all your support, Jean Swanson’s motion to defund the police passed unanimously this summer, but now we need the City to make it official by cutting the VPD budget this fall.

Your support has also pushed the Province to begin acquiring hotels to house the homeless, but there is much more work to do. With a Mansion Tax we could virtually end homelessness in a year or two. And with rent control we’d eliminate the economic incentive for renovictions.