Childcare Flexibility Zoning Amendment

Statement Watch

All right, thank you. So, yes, I'm Dr. Mark Lesition, and I work for Vancouver Coastal Health as a medical health officer for the City of Vancouver. I'm here in two capacities. The first is under the Public Health Act. It requires medical health officers to advise local governments about public health issues, so I'm here to do that. Under the Community Care and Assisted Living Act, medical health officers also regulate and license child care facilities. Child care is very important for children, for their health, well-being, and development. Helps them learn to socialize with children, interact with other adults, and helps them succeed in school, which helps them across their life course. So it's a very important intervention. It helps families because it helps parents. earn income to support the family, and then, of course, supports the whole community by getting more people into the workforce and generating, you know, economy. As you heard from the presentation, we have a large gap in the amount of childcare that's needed in Vancouver and, you know, what is currently available, and so we support a motion like this that seeks to make it easier for people to offer childcare. in addition to having childcare available, it has to be convenient for families. And so we do support having childcare in residential neighborhoods. And so basically removing the barriers to doing that, we think is helpful for families. If the childcare facility is so far away that you have to go there and then you have to go to work and then you have to, you know, it makes it very difficult. So we think a motion like this helps support families and having childcare nearby. It helps reduce transportation time and costs. and that has positive environmental benefits as well. From the licensing point of view, we don't have concerns about having child care in residential neighborhoods. Of course, every application has to be evaluated on its merits and has to meet all the provincial regulations. But we believe that that, you know, will generally be possible in the kind of circumstances that we heard about today. So, yeah, so thank you for considering this, I guess, motion. And, you know, we hope you vote in favor. Thank you.

Statement Watch

Hi. Yes.

Hi, Adila. Go ahead. You're addressing counsel. You have five minutes.

Sure. Good evening, counsel. My name is Adila Bhatti, and I've been a child care provider in Hastings Sunrise for 17 years. I'm here to support this amendment for a number of reasons. First, the goal for anyone who intends to live in one of our communities is to be able to access resources that will support the family. One basic need is that of child care that is licensed, safe, and, of course, accessible. We, along with many other communities locally and nationally, have struggled with this. We know that right now we are short over 6,700 spaces. My own wait list has 40 families on it who are in need of child care for their infants and early preschool age children. They need to work because of the cost of housing and general living, and having child care close by is essential. I have chatted with countless parents, most of whom are terrified that they'll be forced out of the city because they can't find care. We know that there have been strides made in group childcare, but we still do not see that being reflected in Vancouver where there is an urgent need. Outlying areas have the space to open and build and expand. In Vancouver, we are densifying and it is expensive to expand with very little geographic space to build. The city is quite frankly going the opposite direction. We are densifying which is needed, but the city's plans for housing and childcare are currently moving in two different directions. More densification will bring higher demand, but we can't talk about densification without talking about the infrastructure that supports it. The current rules are outdated. They force providers to choose between staying in their own home or expanding their capacity. It's a bottleneck that we can't afford anymore. By letting us stay in our homes while we grow, you're allowing child care to scale up right alongside the housing density you're already building. I've lived and worked on my block for nearly two decades. I'm a neighbor first, and I care about the character of my street. But a neighborhood with housing and no child care isn't a community. It's just a commuter lot. If we want density to work for young families, we need to make room for the spaces that support them. Please vote yes and help us bridge this gap. Thank you.

Statement Watch

Sean Cassidy, and I am a resident of Vancouver.

Welcome, Sean. You have five minutes.

My intent was not to speak on this at all. I'm just overhearing this. And frankly, it's half-baked. What you're presenting is a business model, and you're presenting a business model on cash flow around housing. So what you're going to do is create an incremental value on a house against affordability supply issue. So if I'm a business person, this is fantastic. I'll just go out and create daycares like what they did in Minneapolis. You've followed what's going on there. This shouldn't go forward. I mean, it's a great notion. Ideologically, it's like, okay, it's idealistic. But I don't think it's really thought out very well. And just... my analysis and hearing it, I think you can do a lot better. There's no economic analysis that has been presented whatsoever on this case study effectively what this is against the use of housing. So the owners move out and move into the backyard and do a laneway housing. Well, I'm just going to gun the freaking house. with kids right thousand dollars a month i don't know what i don't know what child care costs but it doesn't seem very intuitive without the economic analysis against the back end of what's going to happen to this so i think you got to give some serious consideration moving forward on this because it's not really thought out very well thanks thank you for your comments this evening uh clerks is there anyone else any other speakers on the line no