Kennedy Stewart after Year 1: Independent mayor talks challenges and opportunities
Credit to Author: Dan Fumano| Date: Fri, 01 Nov 2019 20:03:48 +0000
It was well past midnight on Oct. 20, 2018, before the results were official and Kennedy Stewart was declared Vancouver’s mayor-elect. Stewart had beaten his closest rival by a margin of less than one per cent.
“It was so close,” Stewart told reporters at 12:59 a.m. during his election-night event at east Vancouver’s Waldorf Hotel, seemingly — and understandably — a little tired after a roller-coaster of a campaign and a nail-biter of an evening.
Stewart said that even though fewer than a third of voters had chosen him, in an unusually crowded mayoral race, and although he would preside as an independent mayor over Vancouver’s most mixed council in several decades, he was confident that both the city and the new council could come together and move forward.
Now, approaching the first anniversary of council’s inauguration last Nov. 5, Stewart says he’s proud of what council has accomplished in its first 12 months. But he acknowledges the year ahead poses serious challenges, particularly on three major issues he’s focused on since last year’s campaign: transportation, overdoses and housing.
Independent candidate Kennedy Stewart and wife Jeanette Ashe celebrate his election as mayor of Vancouver at the Waldorf Hotel on Oct. 21, 2018.
On those last two issues, in particular, no part of Vancouver represents the challenges more acutely than the Downtown Eastside. That neighbourhood, for all its character and history, has had more than its share of serious problems dating back decades before Stewart was sworn in. But by the mayor’s own description, the DTES is now “worse than I’ve ever seen it.”
Last year’s Vancouver election was noteworthy not only for how close the mayor’s race was, but for the new-look council it produced. In terms of political affiliation, the city’s new council was as diverse as anyone could remember, with five Non-Partisan Association councillors, three Greens, and one apiece from COPE and OneCity.
The last time Vancouver chose an independent mayor, the election results ran in The Vancouver Sun alongside a story about an overseas trip by Prime Minister Trudeau — Pierre, not Justin. It was November 1980, and the city was gearing up for Expo 86, then still called Transpo 86, and mayor-elect Mike Harcourt was already publicly tussling with B.C.’s then-minister of municipal affairs, Bill Vander Zalm.
In fact, the council Harcourt presided over in 1980 was similarly mixed like the city’s current one, with five NPA councillors, three from COPE, and two from TEAM.
The NPA had dominated council for decades, but in 1980, the party lost two incumbents and its majority. As the Sun reported in November 1980: “With newly elected Mike Harcourt in the mayor’s chair, there is the possibility of an uneasy centre-left coalition on many issues.”
Harcourt himself sees the historical similarities.
This week, Harcourt said he thinks the new blended council is “working reasonably well.”
Former mayor Mike Harcourt watches as newly elected Vancouver mayor and councillors are sworn in at Creekside Community Centre in Vancouver on Nov. 5, 2018.
“There’s a couple that I’m not sure how well they’re doing, Colleen Hardwick and Jean Swanson,” Harcourt said. “But I think the others seem to be settling in, and they’re addressing the tough issues.”
Asked why he highlighted those two councillors, Harcourt pointed to their approach on two of the top issues: housing and transportation.
Stewart’s campaign last year focused on expanding rapid transit and dramatically increasing rental housing production, and many council candidates ran on similar platforms. But on these issues, COPE Coun. Swanson and NPA Coun. Hardwick — who happen to be the two members Harcourt has known for decades — sometimes find themselves outliers on the new council.
Stewart campaigned on extending the planned Broadway subway all the way to the University of B.C., and when council voted in January to endorse that vision, Swanson and Hardwick were the only two councillors in opposition. Subway to UBC remains a major priority for Stewart, and he said this week that 2020 is the “critical year” to secure funding commitments from the provincial and federal governments.
Swanson and Hardwick have similarly found themselves aligned on many housing issues as the two councillors who most reliably voted against rental residential developments over the last 12 months. One reason they’ve given for opposing those projects has been that the proposed rents were not affordable for low-income people.
But that argument, in Harcourt’s view, “is a false dichotomy.”
The city needs more non-profit social housing, Harcourt said, but also a lot more “rental housing for middle-income-and-up people, who are the lab technicians and dental hygienists and teachers and firefighters and police officers. … It’s not an either-or.”
Harcourt’s housing vision seems to broadly align with that of Stewart, who campaigned on easing the housing crisis by boosting the construction of rental homes, both non-profit and private sector.
For that, Stewart has drawn criticism, including from those — like Hardwick — who say his approach is too development-friendly.
“I don’t think the electorate got the change they were looking for,” Hardwick said. “We are continuing down the path of promoting growth, as opposed to managing growth.”
Last year, the city approved just over half of its annual goal of 2,000 purpose-built rental homes, and in the first half of this year, had hit less than a quarter of that mark. But Hardwick questions those targets, which she says outstrip what’s required by population growth. She prefers to promote what she calls “gentle density,” pointing to a motion she introduced, approved by council last month, seeking to allow two secondary suites within a single character house.
By contrast, Stewart believes Vancouver needs more drastic measures after several years of a shortage of rental-housing construction while the condo market boomed.
Stewart is pinning a lot of his hopes for success next year on a new program implemented under the previous council and coming before the new council soon.
Property at West Broadway and Birch streets in Vancouver. There is a proposal, under the city’s new Moderate Income Rental Housing Pilot Project, to build a 28-storey rental building on this site of the former Denny’s location.
The Moderate Income Rental Housing Pilot Project would allow developers to build larger buildings in exchange for deeper levels of affordability. The first three moderate-income projects could come to council for decision early next year, and those projects have already generated significant community opposition.
Although Swanson has consistently voted against rental rezoning applications in her first year on council, she says she’s “still thinking” about the moderate-income projects, which would provide a number of permanently affordable units. But she worries about gentrification.
Hardwick seems less open to the moderate-income program, which the city calls MIRHPP, saying: “It’s just dressing it up in a different name and a different acronym.”
Stewart knows the projects will draw backlash, but supports the program’s goals.
“Each project will be evaluated on its merits. But as a policy, it has to succeed. It really does,” Stewart said. “In terms of getting workforce housing, that is our best policy.”
But beyond “workforce housing,” Vancouver still struggles to house its most vulnerable residents. As Stewart’s mayoralty heads into its second year, so, coincidentally, does the tent city in Oppenheimer Park.
Scenes from Oppenheimer Park following the shooting of a woman on the West side of the park on Saturday afternoon, October 27, 2019.
With police brass raising alarms about public safety in and around Oppenheimer, the park board rebuffed Stewart’s public request to temporarily transfer jurisdiction over the Downtown Eastside park to the city. Stewart has refused to say what action he would take if he had control of Oppenheimer, saying he doesn’t want to “deal in hypotheticals.” But he previously said he believes all options, including a court injunction — the approach supported by the police chief and the park board’s general manager — should be “on the table.”
The impasse over Oppenheimer represents an example of how the independent mayor faces a different situation than his predecessor, who was leader of a majority party.
The last time an Oppenheimer tent city grew as large as its current state was in 2014, when then-mayor Gregor Robertson’s Vision Vancouver party enjoyed a majority on both council and the park board. At that time, the park board sought and obtained an injunction, and Oppenheimer was soon cleared. But as an independent, Stewart has no party colleagues on the park board.
Asked what’s next for the park, and whether the encampment might become a permanent fixture, Stewart said: “It’s really up to the park board.”
Stewart wants to find housing for those who need it, although, he added: “There’s no magical housing that’s going to appear.”
One of Stewart’s critics, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the rival he beat so narrowly last October, NPA mayoral candidate and business owner Ken Sim. This week, Sim said that if, over the next year or two, he’s impressed by the mayor and council’s direction, he’ll support their re-election efforts. But at this stage, he said, “We still have the same challenges we had a year ago,” and Sim’s “in the early stages of deciding” whether he’ll run for mayor again in 2022.
Stewart, who has previously been an academic, a beer-truck driver, a rock musician and a member of Parliament, says he’s enjoying his new job, despite the challenges and criticism it brings.
Last month, when council met on Oct. 22, the day after the federal election, Vancouver council’s most senior member, Green Coun. Adriane Carr, commented that Canada’s new minority Liberal government could look to the example of both B.C. and Vancouver, where “non-majority” governments are, she said, “working well.”
Stewart agreed with Carr, commenting just before adjourning the meeting: “It’s a great pleasure working with this council. … And yesterday reminds me how much more I like being here than in Ottawa.”
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