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The City We Need: Join the movement for a political revolution at Vancouver City Hall!

“We’ll never get what we need, unless we ask for it.” -- Jean Swanson

 

Vancouver needs a Rent Freeze

  • No rent increases for four years
  • Stop landlords from raising rents between tenancies
  • Ban renovictions
  • Improve rental conditions
  • Moratorium on demolition of all rental buildings
  • Regulate short-term rentals
  • End discrimination against pet-owners

Tax the Mega Rich to Help the Rest of Us

  • “Mansion Tax”: add an extra tax on properties worth over $5 million to generate about $1 billion over four years to end homelessness, fund public housing, and start restoring indigenous land
  • “Big business” tax: lower commercial property tax rates for small and medium business, higher rate for big corporations
  • Dedicate all new municipal and provincial speculation taxes toward building city-owned non-market housing

Build the Homes We Need

  • Rapidly build 2,138 modular homes to end homelessness
  • Protect existing social and cooperative housing, and build 18,000 units to meet current need: priority for singles earning under $50,000/year and families earning under $80,000/year
  • Replace 3,500 SROs with safe, self-contained, beautiful homes
  • Strengthen Vancouver Affordable Housing Agency (VAHA) to own all the city’s public housing
  • Increase Property Endowment Fund land-holdings by leveraging existing assets, use land for City-owned non-market housing

Reconciliation with Substance

  • End the housing crisis for Indigenous people and start restoring Indigenous land: work with host First Nations to create non-market housing land trusts
  • Strongly support Indigenous arts, culture, and language revitalization programs
  • Reintroduce Indigenous place names, immediately remove disrespectful colonial place names
  • Build Indigenous Healing and Wellness Centre in the Downtown Eastside

The Economy We Need

  • Rent Freeze for small neighbourhood stores
  • Establish a Municipal Minimum Wage for all workers in Vancouver, starting at the current Living Wage of $20.62
  • Use union labour for all City-owned housing construction
  • Ensure that all City of Vancouver employees, contractors and subcontractors are paid the Living Wage with full union rights
  • Campaign to raise the provincial rates for welfare and disability to $1,600

Democracy Now

  • Ban corporate donations between elections, disclose all party contributions, and limit 3rd party advertising
  • Implement a “mixed ward system”: some councillors still elected at-large, others elected by neighbourhood wards to ensure local representation
  • Reinstate door-to-door registration of all voters
  • Extend voting rights to permanent residents, and lower voting age to 16
  • Provide free transit on voting days and more voting stations
  • Empower and fund community organizations, including in historic communities such as Chinatown, Powell Street, and Hogan’s Alley

Harm reduction, not criminalization

  • End the war on drugs and make clean and safe drugs accessible
  • Stop criminalizing poverty, transfer cost savings from police to community health and social programs

Inclusive City

  • Make city services accessible to all regardless of immigration status
  • Stop all civic institutions, including the VPD, from sharing information on immigration status with Border Services
  • Apply a gender lens and anti-racism lens to all civic policies

Transit We Need

  • Work toward universal free transit passes for all
  • Start with free passes for school children and residents earning under $50,000/year
  • Advocate for Carbon Tax collected in Metro Vancouver to fund necessary Translink service expansion
  • Support low-income car and bike shares

Protect the Environment

  • Stop the Kinder Morgan pipeline in its tracks
  • Work toward universal transit to reduce carbon emissions
  • End unnecessary building demolitions
  • Ensure all office lights are turned off at night
  • Ban the use of Styrofoam in take-away food outlets and disposable plastic water bottles
  • Reduce development permit fees for solar panels

Childcare We Need

  • Make Vancouver a pilot city for universal $10/day child care
  • Create 7,500 new early child care spaces and 10,000 new after-school care spaces to meet need
  • Prioritize indigenous-centred child care

Services We Need

  • Expand free city-wide Wifi
  • Free community centre pass for residents earning under $50,000/year
  • Expanded meal programs

Arts & Culture

  • Protect arts studio spaces and performance venues
  • Increase arts funding and decouple it from specific development proposals