Broadway SkyTrain developments raise questions for renters

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly suggested some residents were displaced. This story has been corrected.

The new Broadway SkyTrain Plan aims to connect several central Vancouver neighbourhoods with new transit and more housing along the subway line.

“We’re very concerned that we’re actually seeing a transit-oriented displacement. And it’s adding fuel to an already burning fire,” said Mazdak Gharibnavaz the organizer of the Vancouver Tenants Union.

With the final draft of the plan soon to be shown at council, the Vancouver Tenants Union has been speaking with hundreds of renters in those neighbourhoods, some of whom are concerned about their future living situations amid big developments.

“Many people are concerned about their current homes. A city is its people, and renters have made these homes in the Fairview area, Mt Pleasant they’ve contributed to those communities and built those communities,” Gharibnavaz told CityNews.

Vancouver’s Fairview area is one of the locations already slated for major developments, and many are weary of the change.

The construction of a new SkyTrain station and plans for big rental towers are markers of change for this historically affordable rental area.

“We don’t want to see just the wholesale razing of the neighbourhood to putting towers everywhere – I don’t believe that’s the objective delivered in the plan. We’ll see when we get it. But everything I’ve seen so far does not indicate that’s the way things are going,” said Pete Fry, a Vancouver city councillor.

Fry says the Broadway Plan would have the most robust tenant relocation and protection plans in Canada.

“Any displaced buildings, like some of these older buildings, if they were to be renovated, the tenants would have right of first refusal to come back at the same or lower rent, then we would have vacancy control that would come with that, and that there would be a place for them to go while it’s being reconstructed,” Fry told CityNews.

Gharibnavaz says the absence of an enforcement body for such protections is a problem, adding there are exciting opportunities when creating housing along transit area.

“But leaving those in the interests of real estate and the profit motive, means they’re actually weaponized against poor and working-class communities and drives them out we support public transit. We want to be riding the train, and not living under it,” Gharibnavaz  said.

Councillor Fry says the final draft of the Broadway Plan will come to council in a matter of weeks.