A South Fraser perspective on Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson's retirement from local politics
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson announced Wednesday that he won't run for mayor this fall, after 10 years on the job.
His leadership of the city has been notable, with no shortage of controversies. He vowed when elected to make Vancouver "the greenest city in the world," and it has made some significant steps in that direction.
Here's how his announcement looks from a South Fraser viewpoint.
His stewardship of Vancouver has been mixed. Vancouver is the largest city in the Metro Vancouver region, gets most of the media attention, and in many ways sets many of the directions for the region. Some of those directions have been very harmful to people in Surrey, Delta, White Rock and Langley.
He vowed to get rid of street homelessness by 2015. The problem is no better, and in fact is much worse in communities like Surrey and Maple Ridge. Hundreds of millions has been spent on social housing in Vancouver, particularly in the downtown eastside, and there has been some progress there. There are still hundreds of people on the streets each night, though.
Robertson vowed to improve transit service dramatically. The biggest single improvement has been the opening of the Canada Line in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics. It was mostly built by the time he was first elected mayor in 2008. It has certainly boosted transit options for people in Vancouver and Richmond, and makes a transit trip to the airport possible. It has done little to help improve transit service south of the Fraser.
Robertson was chair of the Mayors' Council on TransLink until he was defeated in a vote last month by Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan. Other than backing Surrey Mayor Linda Hepner's endless lobbying for a two-pronged LRT line in Surrey, he has done little to recognize the significant transit inequities between the South Fraser region and most of the rest of Metro Vancouver. Not has he been an advocate to replace the Pattullo Bridge, which is at the very end of its lifespan.
From a transportation perspective, it is safe to say he does not understand the needs of the South Fraser area, which are growing significantly as the population keeps increasing.
Robertson certainly has been instrumental in bringing an extensive system of bike lanes to Vancouver and that may be what he will be best remembered for. As a cyclist who has used many bike routes in Vancouver, I believe this is a significant improvement. I'm particularly impressed with the Arbutus Greenway, which was quickly paved over after the city finally made a deal in 2016 with Canadian Pacific Railway to buy an unused rail line between Marple and Kitsilano. It is very well-used and is a wonderful alternative to driving.
On housing, Robertson and his Vision Vancouver civic slate have been bad news for most residents of the region. Vision Vancouver has taken huge contributions from developers throughout Robertson's three terms as mayor. Developers rule the roost in Vancouver, and in other large cities like Surrey, Richmond and Coquitlam. Civic politicians have fed on the mother's milk of campaign funds from developers and other people in the real estate community. Only in the past two years have mayors and councillors started to understand of the fact that ordinary working people are being rapidly priced out of the region, largely due to the unbridled purchasing of properties in the region by wealthy people, from Canada and other parts of the world.
Huge jumps in the 2018 assessments for townhouses and apartments in North and Central Surrey (of up to 50 per cent) show that the affordability problem has spread from the west side of Vancouver, Richmond and West Vancouver to almost all parts of the region, as well as to the Fraser Valley and the Victoria area.
Much of this lack of affordability has been fuelled by foreign money coming into the real estate market. An additional factor has been a lack of new social housing, and lengthy delays in getting projects through the bureaucracy at city halls across the region, Vancouver has one of the worst reputations for slowing down development - and adding costs.
A recent lawsuit gave a glimpse of how money from China moves into the real estate market.
Andy Yan, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, has just analyzed Statistics Canada data on housing in the Metro Vancouver area, and says there is a minimum of $45 billion worth of real estate in Greater Vancouver owned by foreign residents. This could be just "the tip of the iceberg," he says, as the data he looked at does not include condominium pre-sales.
Perhaps his most troubling finding is that, in Vancouver and Richmond, about 20 per cent of condominiums are owned by foreign residents. The fact that so much of the housing stock is basically set apart from the housing market accessed by local residents puts tremendous upward pressure on sale prices, rents and availability of housing.
The City of Vancouver's vacancy tax (a Robertson initiative) may help bring a few of the non-residents' properties onto the rental market - but the jury is still out on that. There is no such tax in any other part of the region, and no plans to bring one in. South of the Fraser, foreign ownership rates are lower than in Vancouver and Richmond, but an increasing number of sales in South Surrey and White Rock in the past three years have been to buyers who get at least some of their money from outside the country.
Robertson's most troubling legacy may have been to help accelerate housing prices across the region, and make it more difficult for working people to live here. That is nothing to be proud of.
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