Kennedy Stewart: Vancouver mayor looks back on first year on the job
Credit to Author: Hardip Johal| Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2019 02:00:32 +0000
When I was elected a year ago, my goal was to build a Vancouver that works for everyone. How do you do that? The people of Vancouver told me to focus on three things: housing, overdoses, and SkyTrain to UBC.
Every morning on my way to work, I hear from people under stress because of housing. People are struggling to simply stay in the neighbourhood they love, close to the people they care about, instead of dreaming about going back to school, opening a business, or starting a family.
That is why, immediately after being sworn in, I started negotiating with the federal government, and in August we announced a landmark quarter-billion-dollar housing partnership. This investment will help deliver 1,100 new homes for low- and middle-income people.
But as I’ve said many times, government-funded housing is only one part of the solution. We need to speed up the delivery of market housing — especially rental — so people can move up the housing ladder and reduce demand on older, more affordable housing stock.
That’s why I’m proud of the work our excellent staff have done to fast-track social housing, speed up permitting times, and shift our focus to rentals.
Another promise I was able to move forward with immediately was my pledge to launch an Emergency Overdose Task Force. We brought together health experts, people with lived experience, and first responders to develop rapid response actions that could quickly improve people’s lives.
Thanks to a lot of hard work from many different groups, including the provincial and federal governments, the rate of deaths due to overdose has stabilized — even as the number of people overdosing has increased. But a hard reality remains: one person a day is still dying in Vancouver because of poisoned drugs. One friend, one family member, one neighbour, every single day.
That’s why I’ve been working non-stop with senior levels of government to replace the street drugs poisoned with fentanyl with a safe supply so we can help those addicted lead more productive lives. Because as the tireless community advocate Karen Ward is fond of telling me: “Just not dying isn’t good enough.”
Working with senior government has been a theme of my first year as mayor as we work on Vancouver’s key priorities, such as building SkyTrain all the way to UBC.
I’m grateful for the funding to date that will see construction start in late 2022 on the first phase of the Broadway SkyTrain. But this project won’t be fully complete until we connect UBC with the rest of the region. That is why one of the first things I did was go to the TransLink Mayors’ Council and win the votes needed to accelerate the timeline on getting to UBC.
But I’m not content with the work we’ve done so far. We need to start advocating as a region for the TransLink Mayors’ Council plan to be fully funded so we can connect SFU to the Millenium Line via a gondola, extend SkyTrain to Langley, and connect more of our region with RapidBus services.
I am one year into a four-year mandate, my priorities have been clear from the beginning and they will continue to be clear: Housing. Overdoses. SkyTrain to UBC.
It’s what I ran on and it’s what I believe we can accomplish if we work together and think big.
Imagine a Vancouver where a UBC grad student can take SkyTrain and high-speed rail to Seattle, pitch the CEO of Microsoft the next billion-dollar idea, and arrive back home in time to have dinner with their family. They aren’t worried about housing or their loved ones dying of an overdose. Instead, they are dreaming about what amazing opportunities lie in store for their children in this beautiful city we call home.
That’s what a Vancouver that works for everyone looks like to me, and that’s what I’ll keep working on every day.
Kennedy Stewart was sworn in as mayor on Nov. 5, 2018.