Good evening, Chair, Mayor, and Council. My name is Neil Roshoy, and it's my pleasure to introduce the Villages Area Plan this evening. The Villages is a plan for change, but not change for change's sake, but with clear intent. At its core, the Villages Plan is about expanding housing choice throughout, through gradual neighborhood-scaled growth in areas that have experienced relatively little change over time. It is about increasing housing affordability and allowing more diverse households to call these neighborhoods home. It will allow aging residents to remain in their communities and housing that better meets their needs. It will provide vibrant retail areas that support the growing population with shops and services within an easy walk or roll of home. And it will expand and enhance our transportation and open space networks to give residents safer streets and improved access to nature. Vancouver is a growing city. A changing city. The Vancouver ODP shows us where we should grow, in what way, and for whose benefit. The very first big idea that undergirds the ODP describes how every neighborhood should grow into a complete, walkable neighborhood where people of different ages, incomes, and needs have the opportunity to live while being able to walk and roll to local shops and services. Villages was identified as an early implementation action, and subsequent council direction has confirmed that.

I WOULD LIKE TO ADDRESS ONE POINT THAT RELATES TO THE COMMERCIAL AREAS. GROWING VILLAGES NEED MORE SPACE FOR RESIDENTS TO SHOP AND MEET THEIR DAILY NEEDS WITHIN AN EASY WALK OR ROLL. C2 IS THE STANDARD ZONE THAT THE CITY HAS SUCCESSFULLY USED FOR DECADES TO PROVIDE MIXED USE BUILDINGS AND THEREFORE IT WAS PROPOSED FOR USE IN VILLAGES. Comments in the last several weeks, as we approach the public hearing date, raise the concern that the retail expansion area will mean the loss of the development opportunity currently allowed under R11. The opportunities include multiplexes, duplexes, laneways, and detached houses. We hear and recognize that concern from the property owners, and as evidenced by the memo to Council on this topic. Should Council wish to respond to this feedback and make amendments to the plan to address those concerns, staff can offer some options that would add flexibility for property owners in the proposed retail expansion areas. We will be happy to expand those details in those options. To conclude, this plan, up for your consideration, will enable more neighborhoods to grow and evolve to become more inclusive, diverse, convenient, and more affordable places with active retail high streets and new and improved streets and public spaces. These are the qualities residents have repeatedly shared that they cherish and want to see more of and that the Villages Plan can help deliver. I will now ask Kirsten Baylor, Senior Planner in Planning and Development and Urban Design, in the lead for the Villages Program, to provide the main presentation.

Good evening, Chair, Mayor, and Council. My name is Kirsten Baylor, and on behalf of the staff team, I'm pleased to bring you the Villagers Plan, the City Initiate Rezoning, and the ODP amendments for your consideration.

The Villagers Plan brings transformative change to 17 areas across the city that will result in complete walkable neighborhoods where residents will be within a short walk or roll for many of their daily needs. To achieve this vision, the plan enables missing middle housing options, including apartment buildings up to six stories, townhouses, and multiplexes. This expansion of housing choice is essential for allowing more families and young people to move to these areas while giving older residents the opportunity to stay in the community.

Equally important as the increased diversity in missing middle housing, local retail streets will be expanded to meet the increased demand from new residents. Building on the mostly small existing commercial notes, the plan enables more space for shops and services along village high streets within a five-minute walk and roll of existing and new housing. Having more people close by makes businesses more viable, and residents enjoy the convenience of being able to walk to places they need every day.

Finally, the plan calls for improvements to walking and cycling networks and more public spaces. These, combined with more housing and shops and services, help the neighbourhoods become more vibrant, diverse, welcoming and connected. The presentation will focus on explaining how we got to the plan that will deliver this transformative change, starting with an explanation of the policy direction and a brief history of the land use policy related to villages. We will explain the planning process and then go over the main components of the plan and the proposed city initiate rezoning to streamline the delivery of housing and shops and services. To realize the land use changes, an amendment to the Vancouver ODP is also required.

Summarizing the report's more detailed recommendations, staff recommend Council approve the Villages Plan as well as the City initiate rezoning for most of the village areas and areas in Rupert and Renfrew. We also recommend Council approve amendments to the Vancouver ODP. As a standard for this type of change, there are a number of other bylaws and policy documents that will also need to be amended to reflect the changes and keep them current. In addition, the yellow memo submitted by staff includes some editorial changes to the plan and two corrections to the zoning and development by-law changes. No other changes from the plan or by-law amendments that were included in the referral report are proposed to the memo.

I will start with a summary of the policy context that guided the scope of work in the planning program. The Vancouver ODP includes the city's long-term vision for how we should grow so that we best achieve our housing, neighborhood climate, and economic goals. Villages, if approved, will make significant progress towards creating equitable housing and complete neighborhoods, the ODP's first big idea, in areas of the city that today have little housing choice and retail options.

It is important to know that villages won't exist in isolation. They will evolve and grow alongside adjacent neighborhoods, as well as other areas that will experience future change. Villages are one of six naval types identified in the ODP, and they received the highest level of public support during Vancouver Plan because they afforded more affordable missing middle housing in areas of the city with limited housing option today. Ongoing and future planning, such as for neighbourhood centres, will focus on established commercial areas to support their continued growth and evolution.

The 25 villages identified in the ODP are centred around mostly small, existing shopping nodes in areas with predominantly low-density housing. The ODP gives direction for the transformation of these areas by increasing housing choice in forms up to six stories and to expand the existing local shopping areas to allow people to reach more of their daily needs. Locating public spaces with shops and services will support businesses and provide opportunities for social connections.

Here's a brief overview of the council direction for villages. Following the approval of Vancouver plan in 2022, council passed the accelerating housing delivery through transformative change motion in 2023, directing staff to accelerate the implementation of 26 villages and report back on opportunities for city initiate rezoning. Planning for Villages was named as part of the city's 2023 Housing Accelerator Fund commitments. Council subsequently approved the scope of work for the Villages Planning Program in 2024, and today we are bringing you the result of the 18-month process.

The Villages Planning Program includes 17 of the 25 villages identified in the ODP. These are located across the city, including neighborhoods on the west side, east side, and south side of Vancouver. The other eight villages have either already been incorporated into other plans, such as the Rupert and Renfrew Station Area Plan, or they will be included in future projects.

Before we get into the planning process that led to the plan, I would like to spend a few minutes explaining how the city has changed over time and what that means as we're looking at the villages today.

Since time immemorial, the lands that encompass present-day Vancouver were covered by rich forests and stewarded by the local nations. With colonial settlements and logging came the urbanization of these lands.

Booming at the beginning of the 20th century after amalgamation, Vancouver continued to expand. Both concentrated mostly within the downtown peninsula and adjacent neighborhoods through denser developments, while other areas grew mostly as suburban low-density residential neighborhoods.

The historical trend of focus and growth within the downtown continued through modern history, and a significant amount of high-density office and residential space has developed here as a result of focused planning policy. Today, one-third of the city's population live in the metro core, which covers only 16% of the city's land base.

Additional housing opportunities outside of the Metro Corps have been enabled through community and area plans, most recently in response to investments into rapid transit. These include areas like Canby Quarter, Granby Woodland, Broadway, and Rupert and Renfrew.

Meanwhile, many of our city's neighborhoods continue to be predominantly low-density residential areas. Little change has occurred here since their initial development over a century ago, and housing options and access to shops and services are limited. This is the reality for many of the village areas that are part of the planning initiative we're sharing with you today.

The absence of focused policy in these areas has resulted in limited transformation over time, leaving some of them looking the same today as they did 50 years ago or more, as can be seen in these photos from Gramblin 41st and Knight and 33rd.

Across all the villages today, 73% of households live in single detached houses or duplexes, some with secondary suites, compared to 34% in the city as a whole. 38% of all households in villages rent, and many of them live in secondary suites or rented homes. While these are an important component of the housing stock, they do not provide the same security of tenure as purpose-built rental housing, which only account for 13% of the housing across the villages. It's noteworthy that over 75% of the purpose-built rental is located in only two villages.

Most villages have few shops and services, and the expansion of these spaces has been limited due to existing zoning. The amount of floor area for shops and services varies across villages, as does the mix of businesses. In some cases, there's only a gas station and a convenience store at a major intersection, while other villages have several blocks of retail or a special commercial development such as Champagne Square. Access to produce and groceries is limited throughout, as only four villages include a full-service grocery store.

In recent years, some citywide policies began to increase housing options in many low-density residential neighborhoods. These include the opportunity to build rental apartments on and adjacent to major roads through the secured rental policy, as well as the more recent introduction of multiplexes. The policies do not deliver other missing middle housing types like townhouses, and apartments can only be located on or immediately off materials and must go through a site-specific rezoning.

To evolve from the site-by-site rezoning approach to adding missing middle housing, the Villages Plan provides a consistent and streamlined pathway to transform 17 areas into more vibrant, complete, and connected neighborhoods. I will now tell you more about the planning process that led to the Villages Plan that you have in front of you today.

The Villages Plan flows from the Vancouver ODP, which specifies the type and scale of change, allowing villages planning to focus on where and how change will take place rather than whether or what type of change should take place. To enable the transformative change from a housing, shops and services, villages included 17 distinct areas at the same time and applied similar principles for growth while responding to the local conditions that make each village unique.

The project had three phases that took just over 18 months to complete. Following Council's approval of the scope of work, we launched in November of 2024 with a significant public engagement for Phase 1, where we learned more about the villages today. Building on what we heard in that phase, technical work such as assessment of sewer, water, and transportation conditions, as well as consultancies, informed the emerging directions in Phase 2. In the fall of last year, we took these emerging directions and draft land use plans out to the public for feedback. Over the course of the winter, we refined the policies in the draft plan, which we released in May.

Builders planning also means a new way to engage. It builds on the years of engagement for Vancouver Plan, now our ODP. This new approach means that we begin the conversation using the ODP's policy as a starting point to ensure we continue to grow towards the adopted vision for Vancouver. We then engage with a wider audience, including both people who live in villages today, but also those who might want to live in villages in the future. While ensuring broad engagement across all villages and beyond, we also targeted our engagement toward people we have heard less from in our planning processes, such as young people and equity-deserving communities. Finally, we focused the engagement geographically by combining the villages into five clusters, allowing people to provide input on the village or villages they live or work in or have the closest connection to.

In addition, we engaged with Musqueam, Indian Bands, Squamish Nation, and TTsleil-Waututh Nation through our referral process, and their feedback helped craft some of the policies in the Villages Plan. Our list of stakeholders included many entities that provide important infrastructure and services that are key to complete connected neighborhoods, such as the Vancouver School Board, TransLink, and BC Hydro.

The feedback throughout the planning program was varied, with many people supporting the types of change and others feeling concerned with it.

Sorry, we're getting some feedback.

Okay, I'll try again. I just want to note that in addition to the feedback, of course, that we received throughout the planning program, we have also had some additional feedback since the release of the draft plan in the last couple of weeks and some concerns with the proposed C2 zoning that Neil already spoke to. Throughout the process, we heard some common themes in support of villages, including broad support from a housing choice and from our shops and services that people can access more easily from home. When we asked about the extents of the village areas, some people suggested increasing the size of villages to create more opportunities for housing. We feel that the proposed boundaries of the villages are appropriate since they align with a five-minute walk from the village high street, which will provide the critical mass of residents necessary to support a successful retail street. The proposed improvements to public spaces and walking and cycling networks were also supported by many respondents.

The concerns that we heard include the potential loss of neighborhood character through the use of standard district schedules. While we understand this concern, past experience has shown that boutique zoning districts do not translate into different character areas, but do add to cost and time of development. More importantly, it's the people, businesses, and individual design decisions over time that create unique character. This is consistent with our experience in Vancouver and across the many cities whose neighbourhood we find attractive. Therefore, the district schedules permit a variety of building types and do not prescribe a certain architectural style, and we anticipate a lot of variety in building designs. That, combined with public spaces that residents will make their own, will ensure that the villages will remain unique as they grow.

Some people are also concerned about the building heights up to six stories, with some suggesting to limit six stories to the arterials or close to the arterials. Six stories is needed to make rental housing viable, and rental housing is necessary to provide more affordable housing options in these neighborhoods. including viable rental options of materials was also key public input from Vancouver plans so that households beyond those who can afford detached housing and other forms of ownership housing have the opportunity to live there. It's very important to note that not all buildings will be six stories and there will be a variety of buildings such as three story, the duplexes, multiplexes and townhouses and four and six story apartment buildings.

We heard concerns that new businesses in villages could compete with existing shopping areas. The amount of retail proposed in villages is needed and has been carefully calibrated to avoid reducing sales at existing businesses in established retail areas. In fact, as part of the analysis that informed the amount of retail space needed to meet the future demand in villages, we found that the established shopping areas are likely to benefit from not be hurt by the growth in villages. This is because the new residents are very likely to shop both at the established retail as well as the new retail.

We also heard concerns that there could be too many chain stores in villages. Having a mix of retailers is important to provide a diversity of options in villages that meet the needs of many people, and this can include some chain stores that provide essential services such as drugstores. However, we do know that there's a high share of independent businesses across the city, occupying 80% of storefronts, with the share of independents rising in recent years. Even though the share of chain stores can be a little higher than 20% in brand new spaces, due to the scale and nature of the village areas, we anticipate that small local scale retailers would be more attracted to these areas over time.

Finally, some people raised concerns that the planning process was too short with not enough opportunity for feedback. The ODP establishes both the need for Vancouver to continue to grow and change, as well as direction on how that growth should be accommodated in different parts of the city. Therefore, the villages engagement process provided opportunities for broader feedback into how villages should change, as well as more focused input into individual villages while maintaining alignment with the ODP.

The background on the policy and the planning process, I will now orient you to the Villages Plan. The Villages Plan, if approved, will enable transformative change in 17 distinct areas, allowing them to grow and evolve over time with more housing options for people who in turn can support new and existing businesses. The plan is structured around two main components, the land use policy section, which explains the different development options and provides detailed land use plans, and the policy directions on several important topics.

Each village land use plan identifies a high street and a mixed use area where new shops and services are required. The size and location of these areas are informed by technical analysis, public feedback, and local conditions unique to each village, ensuring that no two high streets will look or function the same. Residential areas within roughly a five-minute walk of the high street allow missing middle housing forms up to six stories, including apartments, townhouses, multiplexes, and duplexes. The boundaries are also shaped by local conditions, such as topography and distinct site features, as well as public input. The land use plan also identifies a series of unique sites. The land use plan enables for the active heart of the village to evolve along the high street. Mixed-use buildings will be developed alongside existing older commercial buildings, over time providing the continuous retail frontage critical for business viability and a vibrant experience. On the floors above, apartments will allow more people to live closer to these spaces. The High Street will also provide places for people to move, meet, and linger. Improvements in the public spaces like wider sidewalks, patios, small seating corners, and plazas will help activate the High Street. These spaces offer opportunities for residents to make them their own. Together with unique businesses, this will strengthen the character of each village. Within a five-minute walk from the village, High Street are the residential areas, which will allow a mix of housing types up to six stories. The new housing options will provide opportunities for more people at all stages of life to live in a village. Missing middle housing enables older residents to downsize while staying in their community, and it gives families and younger people more opportunities to find homes that suit their needs.

As mentioned, the land use plan also shows existing unique sites. Some of these sites provide services or spaces that serve people in the village and beyond, such as childcare or a cultural space. Therefore, the plan includes policies to enable renewal of the existing amenities or achieve new ones. This could include a variety of things such as new non-market housing, childcare, or park space. This may require more heightened density than the low-rise forms enabled in the rest of the village areas, and the plan gives guidance on that. Redevelopment of these unique sites would require a site-specific rezoning.

The plan's policy areas address other aspects that will help villages grow into complete connected neighbourhoods. These include directions for transportation and public space improvements, parks and ecology, and also community infrastructure like childcare, social and cultural spaces, arts and heritage.

And here are a few of the policy highlights. The plan enables more diverse, secured rental and ownership options for young households and families and for older people to age in their community. Critically, the plan enables more housing affordability by reserving highest densities for rental and non-market housing and requiring below-market rental housing and inclusionary social housing where feasible. The plan allows for additional heightened density for the renewal and expansion of social co-op and supportive housing. The plan also enables space for shops and services with a focus on active frontages and a mix of unit sizes to attract a mix of businesses, including grocery stores. It also supports existing businesses by enabling more people to live close by and by limiting the city-initiated rezoning to new mixed-use areas, thereby keeping existing C1 zoning as is. However, recognizing that some older C1 buildings might reach end-of-life, the plan does enable future site-specific rezonings.

Making villages more walkable and creating public spaces for people to rest and meet will be key to help villages grow into complete, connected neighborhoods. Policies include enhancing and expanding our greenways network to connect people and villages to the mixed-use areas and to parks and destinations beyond. The plan builds upon previously identified walking and bike projects to help implement safe and inclusive street designs. Creating a variety of public spaces is an important policy for villages and will be achieved through new spaces, both in the public right-of-way, but also through opportunities on larger sites.

The approach to public benefits in villages differs from previous community plans for two reasons. First, the city is transitioning from area-specific public benefits to a citywide framework for planning and delivering amenities. Second, because the plan enables similar development opportunities across 17 villages, growth is expected to occur gradually and at different rates, allowing amenities and infrastructure investments to be aligned with population growth. Many public benefits will be delivered through development, including new public spaces along village high streets and amenities such as parks and shelter on select sites. Other amenities will be provided through city programs and the capital planning process.

Moving on to the implementation of the plan, which will be predominantly through city-initiated rezoning. To streamline the delivery of housing and commercial space, we are recommending that council approve a city-initiated rezoning of 96% of parcels in the 17 villages. If approved, development can be initiated through a development permit application without the need for site-specific rezoning. This approach provides clarity and predictability for residents, applicants, and staff. For the other 4% of sites and villages, the plan includes rezoning policies to guide privately initiated rezonings, such as for unique sites, or to incentivize the retention of corner stores.

The residential areas are proposed to be rezoned to R31 and R34, which allow many housing types, including houses and duplexes, multiplex and townhouses, and apartment buildings up to six stories, with the maximum height and density for market rental housing. Through economic testing, we found future strata projects on existing large lots on the west side can support an affordable housing contribution, so we will require that on some projects.

Staff is also proposing a change to all the R3 districts in the city to help incentivize space-efficient stair solutions per council direction. We are proposing to increase the floor space ratio on single lots, which would enable small, livable apartment buildings on smaller sites with less need to consolidate sites.

New mixed-use areas would be rezoned to C2E and C2D. As the continuous retail frontage is key to achieving a successful retail high street, these zones require commercial uses on the ground floor, and fully residential developments are not permitted. Different building heights are enabled, with the maximum density and height of six stories reserved for market rental, with the below-market rental component on the west side. As with the R3, certain strata projects on large west-side lots will also be required to make an affordable housing contribution. Staff would like to note that following the notification of the owners of the sites that are proposed for C2D&E rezoning, we received written communication from a small number of property owners, as well as from other groups expressing concerns about the proposed change. Staff acknowledged the concerns raised, and as Neil discussed in his introduction, there are ways to provide greater land use flexibility to aid in the transition to a retail street through potential amendments that staff can provide more information to Council on.

The residential areas, which make up 96% of all parcels proposed for rezoning, would be rezoned to R34 on the west side and R31 on the east side. As for the mixed-use areas, which make up 4% of parcels proposed for city-initiated rezoning, these would be rezoned to C2E on the west side and C2D on the east side.

We're also proposing to rezone 145 parcels in mixed-use areas in the Rupert and Renfrew Station area plan to C2D. These parcels complement low-rise residential areas that were rezoned by the City in January of this year. If council approves the city initiate rezoning for villages, 30 parcels in Grandview Woodland would be the only remaining parcels zoned RM12. We're therefore proposing to rezone these to R31, which enables the same housing types as RM12 with additional apartment options. This would then allow the repeal of the RM12 district schedule from the zoning development bylaw, thereby further simplifying and streamlining regulations. Before concluding the presentation, I will briefly explain the proposed amendments to the Vancouver Official Development Plan. The ODP includes a map that shows what type of development is possible on the site under current policy or regulations. This is called the Generalized Land Use Map. As the Villages Plan proposes some land use changes, the map needs to be updated to align with what is in the Villages Plan. As an example, where the GLU currently shows the multiplex land use designation, it needs to be amended to reflect the low-rise residential or mixed-use designation that the Villagers Plan enables. In addition, two other amendments are proposed and included in the report. One is to add some language that clarifies how to determine consistency with the GLU, and the other included some editorial changes to replace the policy on groundwater that was supposed to be included in the ODP at the time of enactment.

Before we conclude, I would like to bring us back to the vision and to the transformational change that the Villages Plan brings. The plan and the city initiate rezoning will enable much-needed housing choice, allowing more families and young people to move to these neighborhoods and older people to stay in the community they have called home for a long time.

Having more people living close by makes existing and new businesses more viable, and together with more public spaces and improved walking and cycling connections, villages will become more vibrant and connected.

Thank you. That concludes the presentation. We have staff and our consultants here today to answer questions.

Yeah, thank you. The reason why we're proposing a ground floor commercial requirement is because the continuous retail frontage is really quite important for the viability of businesses and of the development of the high street over time. So that's why it's quite important that there is a commercial component in these buildings. As Neil mentioned early on, I think as we're using the C2 zoning, we can certainly look at some additional flexibility that we can explore and can propose some options to council. But we chose this particular avenue to get the continuous retail.

And I'll just add, thank you very much for the question. This is not our first time that we've had to contemplate transition from single family home to a mixed use building. Council is aware of Canby and King Ed where we had a similar intention to provide new ground floor retail to service the growing population. We left that as a choice of use up to the developer to add that if they so desire. Without the requirement, the only time we received any sort of ground floor retail is a tiny corner cafe. We've learned through that process, and the SRP introduced some requirements to require ground floor retail when the adjacent property already has retail, and we have had success with the delivery of ground floor retail to service those growing populations.

So a couple of reasons. One, this is a new approach to planning where the opportunities to provide affordable housing in areas that have had relatively little change was a priority that came out of the ODP. The council's motion in the fall of 2023 did specify all the villages be included in an accelerated program. And so we took that to heart. And when we brought the scope to council, we did make some adjustments to reflect some reasonable exclusions based upon either upcoming area plans or future work.

Hi, Councillor. Dan Garrison, Director of Housing Policy and Regulation. Really, the village's approach to delivering on affordability is creating the opportunity for housing forms that are not currently possible in these areas to come forward. So the guarantee of affordability here is really... RELATIVE TO WHAT EXISTS TODAY, WHICH IS THE CURRENT SINGLE FAMILY HOMES. A BENCHMARK APARTMENT ON THE WEST SIDE OF THE CITY IS 75% LOWER COST THAN A DETACHED HOUSE. SO JUST ENABLING THOSE APARTMENT FORMS IS THE FIRST STEP IN AFFORDABILITY IN THESE AREAS AND A VERY IMPORTANT STEP. WE THEN LAYER ON RENTAL OPPORTUNITIES, WHICH BRINGS THE AFFORDABILITY LEVEL DOWN MORE. And then, of course, we're layering in the ability for nonprofits, for the province to step forward. We regularly need that in all of our affordable housing programs. We're running out of time, so do you mind if I stop you there?

We're hoping additional supply. Well, it's going to be new supply of housing that's much more affordable than what's there today. And also, we're essentially setting the table for non-profits, federal and provincial housing programs, which is the primary municipal role. Okay.

Yes, thank you very much for the question. So just to clarify, there are two memos. One, the yellow memo, which accompanied the report today, which... Kirsten outlined. There was also a memo that staff sent to Council about two weeks ago that signaled the flexibility to be responsive and to make amendments on the floor of Council during the public hearing process to increase the flexibility offered in those retail expansion areas. There are two memos that have been referenced.

Yes, that sounds about right.

Yeah, I can give you an initial response and I don't know if our consultants would also be able to provide additional feedback. But yes, we had conversations with BC Assessment and they assessed land value based upon arm's length properties that are being bought and sold.

So the short answer is like, no, there's no indication that... Yeah.

Absolutely. And so the valuation is not based upon the zoning per se, but it's based upon what properties in that adjacent area that are similar in size and location are selling for. And so depending upon the relative demand of those properties, let's say in this case the C2D and E, property values may go up, they may go down. There's really no crystal ball way to say that.

There are some areas that are going to be... More than others, but I get there's nuance.

So I think the... Okay, yeah. We have...

Yeah, I can be very specific. There are a small number of cases. It's 15% of the properties where there is a particularly large site that enables higher land value. So in a small number of cases, 15%.

Yeah, that's the answer. In the cases, as Blair said, where that may have occurred, the affordable housing requirements are there to help mitigate that.

So you can think of these retail streets as like it's a very regular grid across Vancouver. And the space, a walk shed for a typical retail street is about five minutes. And so these streets are located in between the major retail streets. You can think of like between Main and Canby, for example. And so the distances between these allow people to shop locally. And so they're far enough apart where, You're not going to go for your daily businesses, but if you have a special destination that's a little bit further away, yeah, you'll go to that further destination, but you tend to go to the closer one.

So the plan for the existing businesses, the zoning is being kept C1. And so if you're... a strong, vibrant business that has a big customer base, you'll continue to attract those customers. There will not be any upward development pressure on your property because it's not being rezoned to C2. It's staying C1. And so in terms of a development displacement... We're trying to mitigate pressure on existing businesses by not providing the city-initiated rezoning for those areas. It will be offered through a rezoning policy for those cases when businesses...

So the criteria that went into selecting the villages during the Vancouver plan process really centered on a minimum size of a commercial core. And I think it was, if I remember correctly, it was in the realm of about 40,000 square feet. If you had about 40,000 square feet of existing commercial, you qualified as a new... as a village. Compare that to, say, a very established retail corridor like a Victoria Drive where you have many tens of thousands of retail shopping, and those were qualified more as neighborhood centers. And so the plan does recognize the difference in intensities of existing retail combined with access to transit and... bike network to make sure that these villages can become increasingly connected to their transportation system.

So there is diversity of character and identity across the villages, and the intent is for that character to be strengthened over time. But in terms of the criteria about the transit, I'll let Paul Storer from Transportation speak to that. Okay, thanks.

So there are design guidelines that are coming to Council next week, the citywide design and development guidelines. They are the vastly streamlined and improved and modernized design guidelines that would govern this scale of development, yes.

Yeah, thank you very much for the question. Our analysis shows the opposite, actually. It's when in our past planning experiences where we've limited growth to a very narrow corridor, where we've created sort of this artificial supply, there has been that rush to assemble properties in the hopes of being one of the lucky few to get access to the new development opportunities. It's properties like that that you see sit fallow because, unfortunately, Developers may get in over their heads and pay more for their properties than they can reasonably get out, and they have to sit on that. One of the advantages of doing it over such a large area is that you actually really reduce the pressure on upward pressure on land values. That's one of the benefits is actually it has a stabilizing effect on land values.

You mean in the subsequent like two months? Yeah. We are... Yeah, we can monitor definitely purchase prices and in any sort of level of activity.

And so I think in terms of the flexibility, I think, yeah, Kensington Mark is a great example of where it's basically single-family homes with just a retail... piece that's been built in on the front of it and in many of our corner stores you can you can think of muddy oak you know is an example of something like that and so i think instead of like the formal c2 we could look at opportunities for integration of some sort of ground floor activation um that is combined with actually any form of um residential behind it. And so giving a lot more flexibility in terms of small lots and how they provide that flexibility and the amount of retail that's provided. I think we could also provide some flexibility on maybe some legacy uses having to do with around R11 as well to get people some ongoing flexibility to continue to pursue.

Where we want to avoid is the conversion over to, say, a large residential building. A conversion of a multiplex, duplex, single-family home, something with a laneway, and... commercial being added or removed up front, yeah, there's a lot more flexibility when the forms stay smaller like that. Where it gets difficult and you run into long-term problems is when a parcel redevelops into a large-scale residential building like a four-story apartment.

Okay. So, yes, you could have flexibility on the lower scales, absolutely.

So there's... The FSR really looks at how much building there is on a given building footprint, and so you don't necessarily get smaller building footprints, and so the permeability is not a clear winner-loss. Generally, the FSRs are set to deliver housing. I think this council's mandate has been over the past four years to make sure that we deliver the much-needed housing. We're in a housing crisis, and so the FSRs reflect the desire to deliver that housing, and it's not an abstract number.

So the FSRs really reflect what the market conditions are today that are necessary to deliver the specific forms of housing that they're being applied to. And so if it's a four-story strata or a six-story rental, the FSRs reflect what the market's going to need to deliver that housing. And so it's not a necessarily, this is not about delivering a specific form. It's about delivering housing that the people need and what are the forms necessary to get us there. And still while providing high quality, highly livable buildings for people to live in, we have built these. These are some of our most established, well-known and well-understood buildings in the city. We have lots of experience. We know how they can be designed well. And so the guidance that is contained in this plan and through the city design and development guidelines coming next week will ensure high-quality buildings will land in the neighborhoods and that they deliver housing. At the end of it, it's about making sure we deliver housing.

Thank you for the question. I think it's actually this plan proposes some very important amendments from a housing perspective. We're talking about neighborhoods that are predominantly dominated by detached houses today, which are some of the least affordable housing types in the city. So going forward right now, if you just look and think about housing affordability from a housing type perspective, an affordability and income perspective, So let's take a west side example. A typical detached house, benchmark price of $3.3 million, requires a $650,000 down payment and an income of about $670,000 to afford that. We're talking about affordable to less than 5% of the households in the city. If you talk about an apartment like we're proposing, a two-bedroom apartment on the west side, million-dollar purchase price, $200,000 down payment, $235,000 income required, so that's affordable to about 13% of the households in the city. You now make that rental. We're talking about affordable to $148,000 income or about 25% of the households in the city. below market rental at 2400 a month for rent now you're down to you're affordable to households with You know, income's much lower than that. You're down to $95,000 a year income. 40% of the households in the city can afford that. So the kinds of housing types that we're layering into the village program would vastly enhance housing affordability in neighborhoods across the city, which are currently essentially shut out to households that don't have very high incomes.

That's right. Yeah, I think there's an income and housing affordability angle to this, but there's also a demographic angle to it. There's a lot of options here that work for seniors downsizing. These are areas that would provide now family housing for maybe folks who grew up in some of these neighborhoods and now can't afford to live in them because of the changes in the housing market over the last couple of decades. So providing opportunities to a lot of folks to live in what they consider to be their neighbourhood as their life changes.

Yeah, I mean, we certainly see we will have three-bedroom and two-bedroom housing requirements in all of these projects going forward. And so there will be more apartments of two- and three-bedroom types in these neighborhoods. Three-bedroom apartments, because they're so scarce, they tend to be quite expensive, both on the ownership and the rental side. So that's one of the things we try to balance, the requirement to provide three beds, but...

So certainly the district schedules, the new district schedules, R34, C2D, and C2E, and the city-initiated rezonings that go with that, that is the core of the land use move for villages. And then, if I understand correctly, the other regulatory improvements... if you could maybe explain a little bit more of what you mean by those.

Yes, correctly, and I wanted to add to that.

It is being implemented through villages, and so we are updating R3-1 as part of this plan, and that would apply citywide. And so it's not just the villages that will benefit from the increased FSR for a space-efficient stair. Those buildings are going to be available anywhere in the city that have R3 zoning now. And so it's a major step towards offering actually units that are a little bit larger. The two and three bedrooms are much easier to include in space-efficient stair buildings. And so we see that as a major improvement to the opportunities for a better housing stock, not just in villages, but in the R3 zone all across the city.

You did, and we heard that loud and clear, and we committed to bringing that back to you for this term, and this is the mechanism.

If we could take a moment to come back to council and with a reply to that, I think we can, we've registered that and make sure, let us, give us a minute to give you a thoughtful reply to that.

No, there was not direction included in the Villages Plan.

So I think we have legal online, but I do know that we have the zoning authority granted to the city allows us to make zoning changes for the public benefit. And so, yes, we do have the authority to do that. And so the times where you've done the requirement would be the example I gave from the SRP where an existing residential building... If a project came in and it's adjacent to an existing commercial building, they would have to provide ground floor retail regardless of...

One is... Grant is on the line and is able to speak.

So I think the question is really about how do we maintain unique character across the 17 villages. And I think it's important to understand how that character is actually generated. If you look at a lot of our main retail streets throughout Vancouver, They're very sort of nondescript, one, maybe two-story buildings that are really similar to each other, whether you're going up and down Main or up and down Commercial Drive or increasingly on Fraser. And what really gives the individual neighborhoods the character is that the mix of shops, the people who live around there, the type of retail that it is. And that is overlaid on very similar types of... you know, C1 zoning. And so I think it's appropriate to emphasize where the character generates from, and this idea that it's bespoke design guidelines that are customized to each neighborhood. First, that's something that this council, through its 3-1-1-1, 3-3-3-1 program, moved away from, because it doesn't generate the different character that I think people really ascribe to it.

So we do have our consultants here who can speak to the work that went into the retail study to support. HOW MUCH RETAIL AND THE POLICY DIRECTIONS THAT WENT INTO?

So, that is a design question. And I think as Council realizes that the quality of design makes a big difference in how a building fits in and lands. in a neighborhood context and so again um overlook and privacy is a topic that we address through the city-wide design and development guidelines to ensure that new development does respect the the privacy and overlook to the extent possible a growing city there will be new sizes of buildings that are larger than the previous size buildings by definition as we accommodate more people It is unavoidable, and so there are limitations to the design, but we make every effort to make sure that design and overlook are respected to the greatest extent possible.

And so, you know, per Councillor Bligh's questions, we recognize that the existing businesses are very much valued and cherished by current residents. And so the zoning is remaining C1. And so we have taken the pressure, redevelopment pressure off those existing businesses and really focused the new retail on adjacent properties. And so in some ways, it's going to sort of relieve the pressure on those sites to redevelop. because there will be pre-zoned opportunities right next door for more residential above and ground floor retail.

Correct. And I'll ask Blair to come up and respond to that. Thank you.

Yes, and so we've timed the effective date, the enactment date, the effective date of this to be October 27th, I believe, which does give time for our colleagues in DBL and in the rest of PDS to be trained on this new plan.

There will not be any delay.

Right. Thank you very much. And so we are solving the problem of how we should grow in Vancouver. And the Vancouver ODP lays out the vision for that. As we grow, as we know we will, how do we grow in an orderly way that achieves as many of our goals and aspirations as a city as we possibly can? and so villages is one example of how we achieve that that vision that vision includes affordability and the opportunity for people from diverse backgrounds and incomes to live in all of our neighborhoods and not to have neighborhoods that are really just for one say demographic or economic group and for those neighborhoods to increasingly become walkable vibrant public neighborhoods where people are out on the streets walking for their daily needs. And so that can happen at different scales, and the council has seen that happen at different scales. The transit nodes are the most intense example of that. The one down from that will be our major streets like Kingsway or Victoria Drive, where a very, very important local shopping street, we can build off that, or Dunbar, where we can further strengthen streets like that. That'll be a little bit more intense development. But that still leaves an awful lot of the city that is not walkable and does not have destinations today that do not have options for housing that meet a variety of people's needs. Villages is really about filling that gap and making sure those interstitial spaces do become places where people from the varied backgrounds and opportunities have a chance to find a home to live.

That's exactly correct. Yes, that is correct. We can get it for you. We don't have it at our fingertips right now, but we'll have it before the end of this conversation.

Thank you. Graham, would you take that?

I think we could, we'd obviously follow direction of council if there's a specific preference one way or the other. What we can do is we can add on additional flexibility for other options so people aren't constrained just to C2. So we can offer... Other forms of development, and some of it could be residential, it could be through, as Josh noted, through instead of being city-initiated rezoned, we just do it through a rezoning policy where we have a lot more flexibility to offer different choices and directions. I think there are things we can add on. There are some small site C2 options that I think would be very beneficial to add so that people don't have to wait for an assembly, that they can have the flexibility to develop a single parcel under a very, very viable C2 option. So there's a range of opportunities based upon council's preferences and direction.

So lot coverage is generally higher for the higher forms of development. As you accommodate more people, you need a bigger footprint of building. And so I think one of the things we need to emphasize is that when we did the multiplex work, we... share that whether someone comes in for duplex, multiplex, or a single-family home, they tend to clear most of the site because it is just an easier development site. And so the loss of trees is more associated with change than it is necessarily with the form of development. And so where we are really looking for opportunities to make sure we maximize their opportunity to replant, and I think the historic pictures really illustrate... That whole area of the city, which is green and leafy right now, was clear-cut and was just new homes at one point in time, and they have grown in it over time. And so this is also about how do we provide the housing that people need for a growing city that are affordable, but then also we are absolutely 100% committed to our 30% tree canopy target, and we have strategies to do that. We are introducing things like ecological corridors that will increase denser canopy and tree plant vegetation along key corridors. There are ways that we can meet our target while still accommodating growth and new people coming to the city.

Thanks, Councillor. This is the last commitment that we have to complete our housing accelerator fund commitments that we've made with the federal government. So delivery of the villages program is the last of those. So we're anticipating completing that work imminently. And then we will have until I believe it's the fall of 2027 to spend the housing accelerator fund allocation to the city as a result of the work we've done over the last few years.

And for clarification, you said outside of the commercial areas? Yeah, like outside of the commercial areas. So outside of the commercial areas, you'll be in an R3 zone. And so yes, you can sell to anyone who just wants to live in your home, to someone who wants to add.

Thanks. This is one of the Housing Accelerator Fund commitments that the city entered into. So the funding from the Housing Accelerator Fund is contingent on completing those commitments. I believe we've received the first three draws of the $119 million. that are involved in that agreement. The last draw of $30 million is contingent on a number of things, including completing all of the commitments we've made, including the Villages Program, as well as... hitting our housing target numbers that we committed to the federal government on, which we feel we are on track to. So if we weren't to, say, complete the village's work, based on experience in other jurisdictions that have not completed all of their housing accelerator fund commitments, there could be a holdback of some of that last draw of $30 million. And that's ranged from no holdback or no penalty to a 50% reduction in the allocation.

It's being spent on a range of things, primarily on infrastructure programs, so delivering community spaces, delivering a range of community-related infrastructure, community centres, et cetera. So Vancouver has chosen to allocate most of its Housing Accelerator Fund money to supporting the delivery of housing-related infrastructure rather than directly on housing itself.

We do see, we have looked at, there are a number of existing non-profit-owned sites in the villages, and they do, it is in fact the highest density form that can be built, as if you're non-profit social housing, you get a little bit of a density bonus. So the majority of the plan, again, will be six stories and under. That is a fairly cost-effective form for non-profits to build, so they will be able to take advantage of the zoning if it is passed.

No, the success of businesses is based upon the number of people in the catchment area. And generally in local serving retail, most of that cashman area is within an easy walk or roll and easy transit or bike ride with some number of people coming in by car, certainly. But the preponderance of customers in these local shopping areas have been documented over time as being they've walked there.

Absolutely. And we are seeing that in some neighbourhoods in the west side, such as West Point Grey.

So starting with the second, so reducing the number, the risks really are the lost opportunities. And so no one's going to get punished or there's not going to be anything negative, but it does mean that there'll be fewer neighborhoods with fewer opportunities for people to move into. And so it'll just take us longer to then... eventually to do the work to support those changes. But if you look over the arc of, you know, 50 years, a few years delay is certainly manageable. Not doing the work would certainly be of significant cost to the city.

Yeah, so the real risk, if you get down to a very small number, is the concentration of demand on a limited number of parcels. And so we want to have enough so that you don't have all the developers chasing this very attractive, right now it's one of the most viable forms of development we have in the city. And so forcing all those developers to, on a few parcels, We'll risk, you know, higher upward pressures on land, yes.

Yes, and just expanding on the market mechanism that I was just describing to Councillor Maloney, the speculation is when it's really fueled by a lot of people trying to go after a limited supply. And when we constrain opportunities for new development, then you have the highest risk for speculation. Yeah, so this plan is intentionally trying to really reduce that speculative pressure by offering lots of opportunities. And so then the market can go where the market can find the best opportunity this year, which may be different than next year. And it sort of moves around and we let the market do its best work.

Yeah, thank you for the question. And, you know, I think we would really look for opportunities in different geographies, different sort of sub-markets in the city to really learn how this behaves in different parts of the city. And because it's sort of like if you can't see and you come an elephant, you only see one part of it and you sort of risk misdiagnosing what the elephant is. And so we want to make sure that we have enough resources from different parts of the city to really understand how, if we were to use this as a pilot, how do villages behave in different parts of the city?

Hi. My name's Annabelle Kershaw. I live in the 2800 block of West 33rd, so I'm right in the crosshairs of this proposal, and I oppose the plan as it is now. So here's the human perspective. I get letters from realtors, don't be caught, don't be the last one on your street to sell. When your neighbours sell, you'll be left with the undervalued property. I can practically see the drool on the page. If they were trying to strike fear in my heart, they succeeded. But I figured I could fight them off. Until now. So now we get this infamous letter dated May 22nd, a letter which you, the councillors, apparently were not aware of, stating that our street, among others, is now mandated four to six stories with commercial at grade. I now know a new term. Our lot will be sterilized. This is a serious infraction of my rights as a homeowner and a citizen. Planning has said that the mandatory retail designation only affects about 700 lots. Only. Well, I am one of those onlys. And I'm not a lot or a parcel. This is my home. It's not big, it's pretty modest, but it has a lot of historical beauty. And this is a place where I have always felt safe, where unlike being a renter, I would never be turfed out because a landlord wanted to renovate. I no longer feel safe. I don't sleep. I am consumed with worry. I have never felt so vulnerable. You're playing with our lives. But I'm just one person, so who really cares? So let's talk about the other families in the area. On my block, there are only two homes without children. The other homes all have small or teenage kids. Some homes are multi-generational. We are close to our neighbours. We look after each other. These families, like us, they bought on this street because it was more affordable than the quieter streets. Two houses have just been sold to families. Imagine their shock. Welcome to your lovely street that's about to become a shopping mall. And let's not kid ourselves. We will be forced out. We know how this goes. The developer seduces one neighbor, creating division and uncertainty, and we fall like dominoes, or we're the one poor little house left and potentially worth nothing. And if upzoned, our property taxes soar, and while the planner assured us that there's a provision to keep our taxes at the rate before the upzoning, it's not an easy application and only applies if you've lived in your home for 10 years or more. What about the families that have only been there for five, six, or eight years, people who bought in good faith, with no hint that this was going to come crashing down on them? And where do you envision all of us going? Where? into 800 square foot condos that cost more than our house because that is the price point of these places. These places with no area for kids to play, with not so much as a twig on their property. And you know why families are leaving the city? It's not just affordability. It's because people don't want to raise their kids in little cement boxes with nowhere to play. It's barbaric. You want families in the city? Build something with yards and play areas within the developments. That's your dream village. And then the ageism that directed towards seniors who are placed in these nerve-wracking scenarios is egregious and cruel. Blaming people who have lived and worked their whole lives only to be blasted for selfishness is so discriminatory it makes my blood boil. We have a village with shops and services one minute away. In addition, a five-minute bike ride or a 50-minute walk in two directions takes me to two medical clinics, five pharmacies, markets, basically anything we need. This is your walkable city in place now. Our street is small. Four to six storeys is larger than some of the buildings on the Canby Corridor, a four-lane highway. This is way too much for our street. And for all that retail, have you heard of Amazon, Costco? This is the reality for most families. Do I want more vitality in families living in our area? Absolutely. Do I want this done in a respectful, careful, and sensitive way? Yes. Do I think there are some areas that could benefit from a form of this plan? Definitely. I honestly never thought I would see the day when the government that I elect would be gunning for me. It's like I have suddenly been thrown in a totalitarian regime. This is expropriation. It's veiled, but expropriation. All the time I've lived here, I've never seen people so angry and upset right across the board. People feel their city is being destroyed and uglified. And, you know, I tell people when they complain, you need to speak up or write to council. They shrug and say, why bother? They don't listen. It's all lip service. This is the overwhelming sentiment. It's really time to listen.

Good evening. My name is Darren Klink, and I'm here on behalf of our family who live in Kitsilano near Balaclava and West 14th within the area proposed to be incorporated into a village referred to as McDonald and West 16th Avenue. Next slide. I brought today a visual reference. In the attached first slide, a picture of a recently completed multiplex on King Edward between Arbutus and McDonald Street. Next slide, please. The next slide, with the help of AI, is the same multiplex with five stories, not six, as proposed in the villages, and what the future will feel like for families such as ours if this villages plan proceeds. In 2014, when our family returned from living overseas, two daughters ages one and three in tow, my wife and I evaluated where we wanted to live and thought hard about what would be important for us as a family. Both of us have lived in Vancouver previously, but neither of us are from Vancouver. My wife's an immigrant from Latin America, and I'm also an immigrant from the prairies. We both have traveled extensively and lived overseas in a number of places, but we were excited to return to Vancouver and raise our children here. I've traveled extensively for work, and with no immediate family nearby, my forward-thinking wife was pretty diligent in saying, look, I'm not going to put the kids into a stroller and push them up hills. I'm not going to put the kids into a car and drive three kilometers to go and get milk and baby food. We landed in that little pocket between McDonald and Elma and West Broadway and West 16th. She's very forward-thinking, and that was the right place for us. And we dug deeper into our pocket as well with a bigger mortgage that we felt that was the right place for us to live in that area. Our home was not the prettiest. It was a Vancouver special, but it was ours, and we worked hard to fix up the yard so our kids could play in that yard. And every summer, we'd pick the Italian plums off the tree together, and our daughters would share them with the neighbours. we soon realized that in addition to being a short walking distance to virtually everything we needed on West Broadway, we were also in the Halloween capital of Vancouver's West Side because on the 31st of October, good luck finding a parking spot in our neighborhood at 6.30 p.m. because families bring their families and young children to where we live. from Dunbar and Point Grey and Arbutus Ridge. And why is that? Because everyone in our neighborhood, most houses are lit up, decorated with music, scary skeletons and residents dress up next door to greet the families as they come. And every year we get 350 kids or more for Halloween. We know our neighbors in our neighborhood. Every day, the same children walk by our house on the way to Carnarvon School or are running with their parents late for a baseball practice or heading to the playground at Carnarvon Park before bedtime. Our neighbors across the street have lived there since the 1950s. Our neighbor across the back alley has been there since the 1980s, and they both raise their families there. But we help each other. We put out the bins for each other if we're away. We grab the packages off the front door. Or my daughters and I get the snow shovel out and shovel the walks of that heavy, wet snow that comes in January for our neighbors. You see, this is a neighborhood. No newly thought-up village is needed here. As our kids are growing up, and in fact, they're here with me today, learning about the democratic process, they now are accessing all the amenities on West Broadway themselves. Last week, our daughter headed to the library to pick up a book on hold, stopped to get tortillas for the house, and then, like all teenage girls today, it seems, stopped at Starbucks on her way home. She is 13, and this is her neighborhood. We are not opposed to change or adding density, for that matter. We are opposed to the villagers' plan as we do not believe a one-size-fits-all and four- to six-storey apartment blocks in this pocket in the name of creating new commercial areas, which we already have abundance of, is anywhere close to appropriate in our area. It will mean a dramatic change and is too much and goes too far. In our neighbourhood, it seems most of the new development over the last three to four years is taking single-family homes and building duplexes. We are also seeing laneway homes continue to go up, and for these quiet streets where kids play ball hockey or shoot hoops in the back alley, this seems to be working. Our family, like many others, made a long-term decision to find a quiet side street to raise our family, specifically off the main streets and commuter routes. Four years ago, we took on additional debt to renovate our home and followed the many, many rules and guidelines in this city to do that, as set out by the City Council. The prospect of the neighbourhood being overtaken by six-storey apartment blocks right next door to our single-family home is a major point of unwanted stress. If we knew this was coming, I'm sad to say that we would have chosen a different location or perhaps a city altogether. We have spoken with many of our neighbours, and they too are very concerned about this prospect. In closing, I'd like to make a special point of acknowledging that decisions like these are difficult ones. And in fact, you know... This is actually the first time that I've been to City Hall, and politics is often a thankless job. And I thank each of you for your service as elected leaders and examining the issues at stake in a fulsome manner. It is imperative that these policy decisions, once enacted, well, they will not have impacts for months or years, but they will shape Vancouver and our neighborhoods forever. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you.

I live in Fairview Slopes, just on the 1300 block of Laney's Mill Road. I'm calling in first-time, long-time listener, first-time caller, as a technology executive and a parent, raising one child in one of those cement boxes that was mentioned earlier, because that is what my husband and I have been able to afford as two entrepreneurs in Vancouver who... He's built an indie video game company over the last decade, and I've been in software growing a company that got as large as 30 employees. We've consistently reinvested in our companies versus in property that has been out of our reach. So as someone who's wanted to stay in the city, housing has been out of our reach. And so I want to say what I should have said from the beginning is I support the goals of the village plan and I support this plan. I want more housing. And I believe that enabling four to six story housing without a slow site by site rezoning site is the right direction. I don't have a lot more to say than that, other than as many other families have done, most of my friends have left the city because they couldn't afford to live here with two children anymore. Out of our prenatal class with 10 families, only two of us are still hanging on. Everyone else has left to the island. uh or to alberta over the last seven years um so you know i miss my friends i miss my employees have all left and moved to other places where they can no longer afford to live even on high technology salaries um and so just ask for your help accelerating um broad rezoning that brings more supply as quickly as you can thank you so much thanks for calling in

My name's Taylor Curran. I'm calling in to support this plan. I think this is an incremental and long overdue step forward for the city. We've been talking for years about how we need more missing middle housing options through the city, more ownership options other than $3 million single family homes and $2 million duplexes. this plan allows for more affordable ground oriented option like townhouses row houses and apartments we've been talking about how we need more rental options than just basement suite this is going to allow for more secured purpose-built rental housing in all of these neighborhoods we've been talking about wanting complete walkable communities and this is going to allow more everyday shops and services nearby It's going to provide options for seniors to be able to downsize while staying in their communities. It's going to provide options for young middle-class families who don't have generational wealth to be able to buy or rent a two- or three-bedroom home along a quiet, leafy street. It will provide options for students and young people to move out of their parents and into a studio or a one-basement home nearby. I think one of the criticisms you're going to hear a lot is that there hasn't been enough consultation on this plan. I just couldn't disagree more with that. There's been 18 months of community engagement consultation on the Villages Plan, specifically as staff laid out. There's been years of extensive public consultation on the Vancouver Plan. And those public consultations and public polling have repeatedly shown that allowing more low-rise, missing middle housing in existing neighbourhoods is hugely popular with the public. Unfortunately, the speakers you're going to hear from tonight, myself included, are not representative of the general public. Half of Vancouver's residents are renters, but more than half of tonight's speakers will go home to a home that they own. Only 17% of Vancouverites are seniors, but a much larger proportion of the speakers tonight will be eligible for old age security and discounted community centre passes. The young families trying to balance work and childcare and struggling to make ends meet will not be here tonight. You won't hear from students crowded into share houses with half a dozen roommates. You won't hear from young people with full-time jobs who are still stuck living at home with their parents. Another criticism that you'll hear is that this is too much. We shouldn't rezone so many properties and so many villages at once. Let's pilot this. Maybe one village here, maybe one village there. But it's actually precisely the scale of this rezoning that is necessary to achieve its outcomes. If you only do a pilot, if you only rezone a small number of places, you will increase land lift, increase speculation, and lead to more property value increases. Broad upzonings are going to reduce that land lift, are going to allow existing property owners to stay in their homes. and are going to slow and spread the pace of development across the city instead of concentrating it in a small number of neighborhoods. I just want to conclude by saying This is a great plan. I think it's a great step forward, but it's a plan for the next 30 years. And if this is passed, it is going to become one of the biggest legacies from this council. It is a step towards creating more walkable, livable, affordable communities filled with local businesses and a mix of missing middle housing options. The exact kind of housing and density that speakers come to these public hearings over and over and say that they want more of. Council has an opportunity to make that easier tonight.

Good evening, Mayor and Councillors. My name is Charles Kelly.

I didn't bring people with me. I'm only going to speak for the five minutes.

Okay. Good evening. My name is Charles Kelly. I've been a Vancouver resident for over 40 years, and I'm a businessman. Before I comment on the village's plan, I'd like to explain why I believe I have something useful to contribute here. Over the course of my career, I have worked at the intersection of urban planning, government, real estate, finance, and public policy. I served as the executive assistant for federal ministers in finance, urban affairs, and housing. I was closely involved in the development and planning for the UN Conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver and the Habitat Forum. I founded and led a national management consulting company, and later I built a successful real estate investment company and owned the Blarney Stone in Gastown for 14 years. I served as the Commissioner General for the World Urban Forum on Sustainable Cities, held in Vancouver, and I led Concrete BC, a tube that represented $2 billion a year in economic activity in British Columbia. Currently, I'm a partner in a mortgage investment company focused on bridge financing for developers. I say this for one reason. My concerns here are based on experience and not an ideology. I oppose the Villages Plan as it's currently presented. I also believe Vancouver must grow. Growth is inevitable. Poor planning is not. I know many of you have read Larry Beasley's well-reasoned submission opposing the Villages Plan. I support both his analysis and recommendations. Rather than repeat them, I'd like to focus on two issues that go to the heart of good governance, transparency, and consultation. First, transparency. Who asked for the vast upstanding of the 17 neighborhoods? Who advocated for it? What independent economic analysis supports proposed retail and commercial expansion? If these studies exist, why have they not been presented publicly? Throughout my career, I've reviewed countless cabinet-level submissions. A proposal on this scale would never have advanced without rigorous evidence. implementation alternatives, risk analysis, and meaningful consultation. This one should not either. What I see is not a comprehensive plan, but a framework that opens vast areas of the city to land speculation. The likely result will be higher land values and housing that is less affordable. Vancouver needs a lobbyist registry, like those offered and used by the senior levels of government. Good planning depends on good public confidence, and public confidence depends on transparency. The second is consultation. Residents were presented with an extraordinarily complex 300-page planning document only weeks before this hearing. Affected residents were sent a postcard informing them of their report in a public hearing. This is not meaningful engagement. Even more troubling is that it's intended to be a one-time process, with no further public hearings on this future development. That's it. One and done. This represents political and bureaucratic overreach and weakens public accountability. This moves decision-making further away from the communities that will live with the consequences. Through my work with the United Nations, I met people in some of the poorest communities in the world. I learned one enduring lesson. When governments extend trust to citizens, citizens respond with trust. This council does not trust residents. This council eliminated community-based planning in the ODP, and now with this plan, further undermines resident input in the planning of their communities. These issues are among the reasons I've decided to run for city council with team. If elected, team will end top-down planning, rescind this plan if it's adopted, and review the ODP. We will work to restore community-based... Sarah, I have a point of order.

I'll do that. We can build more housing while respecting the people who already call Vancouver home. These goals are not in conflict. They are the foundation of good city building. Thank you.

excuse me hello councillor and other councillors sorry first time doing this and I wouldn't say no to a sedative right now so I my name is Rory Filer and I live on West 33rd Avenue four doors west of McKenzie so it puts us squarely at the crosshairs of the high street and the village. I got a letter. We all got the letter about a year and a half ago, I guess, informing us of the village's project. After I got the letter, I didn't do much. But flash forward to about two months ago, I started to do something, and this is the result of my... research and i'm going to be sharing with you today my observations over the past five weeks and it's mainly focused on the engagement process so during the the year that i didn't do much i was hearing people in the neighborhood talk about the villages project and i was wondering where they had got their information from because i hadn't seen anything more from the city and so i went online found stumbled onto the shape your shape your city Vancouver website and I didn't understand the full significance of that site when I got there but I found the two engagement summaries and there's a link to the video the nine-minute video that the city published and I went through all that material and some other stuff And with that newfound knowledge, I went and knocked on the doors. I didn't really knock on doors, but in our neighborhood, it's already quite a village environment, and you'll often see people on the street, and you can approach them and talk to them. So I did that, and I found that I was asking their opinion on the Villages Project, and I found that they were not all starting from the same level of understanding of the project. They were at various levels of understanding, and their opinions were based on what they understood. We weren't all on the same field, and I even found myself repeating multiple times what I had learned to people who were not yet up to that level of understanding. I got curious about whether that was just my little nucleus of people in my area, or did it apply more broadly to the rest? the village boundaries and I created a survey and went stopping people randomly on the street knocking on doors and asked them as though the villages program was a person asked them what their relationship to it was and I I was mainly trying to find out if the levels of, as I just said, the level of understanding was different. And as of yesterday, I can confirm that it is. Yesterday, I saw a man on his front lawn on West 32nd who had never heard of the Villages Plan. two weeks ago I was speaking to somebody and explaining the boundaries of our the the published boundaries of our village and she exclaimed with some surprise that she thought that the 33rd and Mackenzie intersection was the village so And I also learned the full significance of the Shape Your City Vancouver website. And I suppose everybody in this building here today knows the full significance of it. That being that it is the, as I understand it, the main mechanism that the city uses for engaging the populace. And if that's the case, then an awareness of that website is definitely, it has to be relevant to the effectiveness of the engagement process in my survey 10 of 64 people are aware of that website now I'm not a professional surveyor or anything but I think that's a very interesting statistic and I'd be curious to know what measures the village planning team has used to determine that this engagement has been successful before before I finish I have one question for council

Before you vote, I'd like you to consider, each of you, what level of confidence you have that the engagement process has achieved levels of awareness and participation by the general populace that council would consider appropriate. Thank you.

Mayor and Councillors, my name is Brian Palmquist. I'm a 50-year resident of Vancouver speaking against the Villages Plan, not because I'm old, but because it's just wrong. I've written about the Villages Plan five times since it was first sprung on Vancouver citizens more than a year ago without any meaningful advanced consultation with Vancouver's existing 22 neighbourhoods. In each of these five iterations of the plan, I wrote, what is this? Where did it come from? This is not our city. This is not who we are. This is not how we do things. This is not democracy. A few consultations and presentations by planning staff occurred in mid-afternoon or at dinnertime or in the heat of summer when thousands of Vancouverites were away, perhaps worse. No staff took any notes or provided any feedback other than fill in the questionnaire on Shape Your City. If I had adopted this approach in serving as the Falls Creek North ODP Managing Architect, I'd have been fired. I know for a fact that you, members of council, have received thousands of emails and letters objecting to this plan, which will upend thousands of homeowners' and renters' lives, who your planning department calls incumbents, and literally frees the future of hundreds of homes, forbidding their residents from refining their homes to add space for renters or families, whether building a laneway for their own retirement, or even adding on an extra... main floor room as their family expands. Sorry, but allowing, as was suggested in the form of a yellow memo, potential for negotiated modifications between individual homeowners and city staff just doesn't cut it. I also know you've received not thousands, but hundreds of emails from folks, some living in Vancouver, some not, who are cheering on planning's efforts, in some cases funded by the likes of the Sightline Institute, a powerful American lobby group with hundreds of millions of dollars of funding from tech billionaires who think that one size fits all. And they apparently know that villages are that size. Vancouver's population is 700,000. We really need the additional 1.4 million residents that the built-out villages plan would accommodate together with. the Broadway plan, the Jericho plan, and the other development plans of Vancouver's already approved official development plan. I hope this is not what you, the council, meant to do, but must assume it is what your planning department wants you to do, to impose from the top down yet another massive density increase, whether we citizens want it or not, to ignore most of our existing neighborhood shopping streets and their needs while inventing or further densifying 17 new villages. to further up zone one in seven lots between Blanca and Boundary, to four, six, or even eight stories, all the while placing in limbo hundreds of homeowners whose only crime was buying or renting a home near an arterial street, and in many cases because the reduced cost of ownership or rent on a busier street was what they could afford. For the good of a village, These folks' homes are frozen in a village they and their neighbors didn't ask for, a village invented mysteriously. I note in passing a four-story development near my home that was completed a year ago, including residential above continuous ground-level retail, just like the village's planned mandates. A full year after completion, none of the retail has been sold or rented. How are we then to absorb the five miles of retail commercial that the villages require as a precondition of developing the 700 or so homes that can do nothing else? As to what the village's plan presumes to replace, the Vancouver ODP document adopted by this council has zero mentions by name of any of Vancouver's 22 neighborhoods. Is this village's plan the end game, the final erasure of the city's neighborhoods, which have grown organically since even before the city was formed? For that is certainly what the village's plan will do, supplanting our existing high streets, replacing them with so-called villages built around intersections and mysteriously selected streets that might already host a few businesses, if at all. Does this council want to be remembered as the council that destroyed our neighborhoods? That's what's at stake. In conclusion, and to be clear, in the upcoming civic election in October, I will not vote for any candidate or party that does not clearly oppose the village's plan. Don't send it back to Planning for Review. They'll just dust it off and bring it back if you're re-elected. Don't waste staff time and public energy and angst refining a bad, simplistic, undemocratic plan foisted from above. Just bin it. Thank you.

Yes, I do.

Two over there and one on the phone.

My name is Marissa Thomas, and thank you very much for your time today. It's been a marathon day. And who knew it would be so hard to get a straight answer to your questions? I think it's because you probably won't like the answers. As you can probably tell, I'm strongly opposed to the Villages Plan. I'm part of a very active and involved community group called Smart Density Vancouver that has, as of five minutes ago, 5,500 signatures from residents across Vancouver, from Hastings Sunrise, Fraser Hood, Commercial, Marpole, Carisdale, to Kits. We are massively concerned that our leaders are outsourcing the design and livability of this city to developers and ignoring the concerns of residents. I want you to imagine for a moment that you're the leader of a company with a long and storied history, incorporated 140 years ago with 700,000 customers. The company was around long before you were born and will still be around long after you're gone. You have a deep sense of stewardship. One day your team comes to you with a plan to shape the next hundred years. Great, you say. Tell me about the design. Design details are coming soon, they say. Trust us. Skeptical, you ask. What about affordability? That's really important to our customers. We're leaving pricing up to our vendors, they say. They've never delivered affordability before without being required to, but hey, there's a first time for everything. So, fingers crossed. What about sustainability, you say? Green is our brand. Sustainability is so last year. But don't worry, we're greenwashing by using language like when possible. But the truth is, anything goes. less work for us let me get this straight you say you want me to approve a plan with no design guidelines no affordability requirements and no green protections exactly they say sounds absurd doesn't it But that, Mayor and Council, is the plan before you today. It is lazy, it's misleading, and it outsources the design of our beautiful city to developers. So what did they plan for?

Six-storey buildings everywhere. Now, the name Villages sounds quaint and charming. But here's the reality of those four dots in blue. You look on the right, those bubbles translate to over 30 contiguous blocks just in the four villages spanning Kitts to Carisdale.

If you want to see what six-story density looks like with no design guidelines, no tree protections or parks, this picture tells the story very clearly. Developers will maximize highest and best use. They will go wide. They will go high. They will cut down trees. Who cares about anybody else? And what about the amenities and infrastructure upgrades required for a plan like this? They're kicking the can down the road, suggesting these things will just happen like magic. Now, maybe you're saying, let's give it a shot because any housing is better than nothing. And if that's your mindset, let me take you back in time to the multiplex policy review in May. That policy, like this one, can best be described as move fast and break things. Next slide.

After three years, the consequences of that free-for-all policy were clear. Out-of-proportion buildings or three-story stairmasters nobody wants, according to a local realtor. No setbacks, no sunlight for neighbours, no trees, no green space, no parking, strained infrastructure. Next slide. An absolute clear cut of Vancouver's tree canopy and green space. There are no tree protections in the village's plan. And this is a huge cost to taxpayers to replace trees cut down by developers. I'll remind you it costs $20,000 to plant a single tree in downtown Vancouver and $2,500 to plant a single tree in a residential area. So what did we get for it? Next slide. Unaffordable housing. $1,300 to $1,500 a square foot and the loss of affordable rentals. This is what happens when you don't have clear guardrails that protect neighborhoods. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. We've seen this movie before and no one wants a sequel. The Villages Plan is the unintended consequences of the multiplex policy on steroids. Next slide. So how did we get here? By not listening to residents. During the final engagement process for the Villages Plan, staff held seven open houses with a grand total of 383 participants, or 0.05% of Vancouverites. That's about 100 fewer people than sit in Section 101 at Rogers Arena during a Canucks game. If city staffers had visited my neighborhood of McKenzie, they would find that in less than 15 minutes, we can already walk to four shopping areas, Carisdale, Dunbar, Arbutus Village, or McKenzie. If I need a prescription, I have seven pharmacies within walking distance, over 10 coffee shops, four liquor stores, four insurance agents, eight grocery and vegetable markets, and seven bakeries. You get the picture. Dunbar is suffering from one of the highest vacancy rates in the city, and the Carisdale Business Association is warning this plan will hollow out their high street. Guess how many businesses the city heard from during the final consultation phase? 35 in all villages. 35 in 17 villages. That's barely two per village. And retail does not make a village. This plan does not include daycares, playgrounds, schools, libraries, parks, trees, gathering spots. They're absent from this plan. This is not the future of Vancouver. Let's bury this plan in the graveyard of bad ideas and start investing in the high streets we already have. You have time to slow down. We currently have 4,300 condos sitting unsold and empty and a shadow supply developers have not yet listed. year you have an opportunity to be a steward of this city every one of you voted for the multiplex policy that ushered in three years of unintended consequences so you're at your eight minutes now you know better and when you know better you must do better vote no thanks very much

The village's plan is transformational for the city and deserves a commensurate level of meaningful public engagement and scrutiny. Citizen engagement, especially among those who are directly affected, should be prioritized by our representatives. This 326-page document would immediately upzone about 13,000 parcels of land, or approximately 14% of the city. And once this is folded into the ODP, provincial law will then prohibit public hearings on future rezoning deemed consistent with it. Tonight may be one of the last chances any of us get to speak to this topic. The plan is concerning for a number of reasons, in part because it contains errors and assumptions and exaggerations about some of the benefits that don't seem to align with the underlying Coriolis report on the financial implications. In particular, there's some notable errors in relation to the village nearest my home in Mackenzie Heights. While some areas may well support the plan, the Mackenzie and 33rd Village faces overwhelming opposition among the residents. In fact, it ranked 17th out of 17 for support with more than two-thirds of the residents who replied to the surveys opposed or strongly opposed. The plan assumes that there's a bus line on West 33rd, for example, which does not and cannot exist on this narrow street where residents park on the boulevards to avoid being sideswiped today. The High Street is oriented on the wrong axis on the plan, naming 33rd as the High Street rather than McKenzie where it currently sits. These aren't small errors. I raise serious concerns about the accuracy of this report and read as though the writers didn't visit or understand the areas that they were upzoning. And by the way, we already do have a village of our own as evidenced by a number of the people who've already spoken tonight and many more who will, who are yet to speak. We are here to enforce, to voice our concerns. The lack of understanding displayed in our village is also potentially repeated in other parts of this plan. And it seems as though this is a bit of a template, as a recent publication noted, of plans that have been workshopped in other cities in North America and part of a Silicon Valley-funded abundance network that's pushing this playbook in other cities where public hearings are being stripped away and mass upzoning is happening. So that is another concern to note. Any villages to be developed, if this plan does go forward, should be done in a staged and piloted way and should focus on the areas that don't currently have easy access to amenities as priorities. These Mackenzie-McDonald villages are in areas that are surrounded by multiple existing organic walkable villages. Perhaps effort should be concentrated in the areas where there's the greatest need and the greatest want, and this area has neither. perpetuates an inequity as well that the west side residents will get more such assets while east side residents don't have enough and the villages that are developed should include parks and community amenities and schools not just profit centers for developers who will get automatic up zoning with no matching community benefits required of them Further to that, the existing tree canopy that is crucial during heat domes like the current one in Europe is at risk and needs vigilance to preserve, as other speakers have noted. Rather than reducing the west side canopy, the city should be investing in growing the east side canopy. If our city is to be unlivable because of this concrete overdevelopment and is too polluted, who will choose to live here? the existing mature mature tree canopy does more to scrub co2 in particulates while providing shade than alternative solutions that are available lost in all of this is the affordability plus livability issue and the last speaker just spoke to the livability uh kudos that we get building more small units in multiplexes and apartment buildings is not necessarily increasing affordability as we've seen to date. The numbers do not bear that out. As the Vancouver Tenants Union notes, trickle-down doesn't work for housing. We can't build them at any price and then expect that they'll become magically affordable. The prices are not low, and the land costs combined with the increased building costs will drive them higher. And imagine if you had all 17 villages being built at the same time. That itself is an inflationary policy. The city is known for its natural beauty and for urban design that respected that. Previous planners understood it, and their wisdom shouldn't be discounted. By allowing overbuilding with its corresponding canopy destruction and resulting disconnection from nature, we're letting developers determine what the outcomes will be. This will destroy what makes our city unique and attractive. Population levels are no longer rising. Vacancy rates are going up. Rents and sale prices are dropping significantly. In fact, in business in Vancouver just today, economists noted the BC population actually declined for the fourth straight quarter, down 0.7% year over year, the first annual decline in modern history. A cumulative loss of about 50,000 people over the past year, with net interprovincial migration slowing to a trickle and outflows of other residents.

Great, thank you. Yes, thank you for the opportunity. My name is Penny Noble, and I live exactly in one of the affected areas at 15th and McDonald. I must say I wish that I had learned anew as much as I've learned tonight before. Whoever it was that said earlier, and I am opposed to the village concept as it is currently presented. When I first heard about it, I was quite excited. I thought this seemed like a great idea, but the more I learned, the more disenchanted I became. One of the problems, I think, is there's so much that's not understood about this, and there are so many unanswered questions. when the first information session took place uh online probably close to a year ago now i asked the question whether there would be any rentals and i was told no it will only be market condominiums i'm since hearing that perhaps indeed there will be rentals so it's very it's it's really confusing to know what exactly is going to go on with this with this project And I'm not going to repeat what many people before me have said, the tree canopies and various other things that have been brought up. I think I'd like to just maybe tell you my personal story. So I was lucky enough, my husband and I were lucky enough to buy a very small house, certainly not worth $3 million, maybe the smallest house in Fitzalando, 969 square feet, just over 20 years ago. all of our energies into renovating and restoring it to what it once was. It's well over 100 years old. It's far more than a house. It's a home. It's not a commodity. It's where we live.

We won't be able to build laneways. We won't be able to build secondary suites. We won't be able to even do multiplexes. This, to me, is the biggest flaw in this whole plan, is this removal of choice from people who have put years and years into their homes, as we have, and then to find out that

And our only option is to sell to a developer. And even are there developers out there that can afford to develop these days? So then who can you sell to? No one. And I really, from my perspective, there are many other things that are flawed about this plan, but I think that is one of the... one of the biggest sticking points for me. Also in terms of retail, what kind of small local businesses will be able to afford to pay the rents on new construction? It will only be the shop is drug mart of the world. So I don't see how it's going to create that village feel with local small businesses, which we already have to a large extent in the area that I live in. and we're only a few blocks to Broadway. With the businesses that are left there, Simpatico just closed down because of the triple net rent and all the other things that make it very difficult for businesses to survive. Anyway, just to wrap up, I do want to thank you for the work that you've put into this, but I ask you please to reconsider, listen to what people have said, and please come at this from a different angle, because the way it is now is...

When you compress that level of change into one decision, you're not just reshaping land use, you're removing meaningful opportunities for neighborhoods to participate in future decisions that will affect their lives, health, and livelihoods.

Thank you for hearing me. I'm a Vancouver resident who strongly opposes the Villages Plan. Many of my reasons are the same as you've already heard, so I'm going to take a different direction. Since I don't live in a village area, I will focus on an aspect that directly affects me, and that's the impact of the Villages Plan on nearby retail. Since the 1970s, I have lived within a five-minute walk of Dunbar Street. It used to be a thriving street full of small businesses catering to a wide variety of residents' needs. Besides a grocery store, a drugstore, and many bank branches, there were smaller businesses selling everything from kids' toys to sewing goods to secondhand books to bicycles and booze. You could get your shoes, vacuums, and even cars repaired on Dunbar. There were many family-run restaurants and coffee shops. Now Dunbar Street is a parade of empty storefronts. Officially, it has a vacancy rate of about 15%, two to three times the level considered unhealthy. But to the casual observer, passing one papered-over window after another, it looks like a vacancy rate must be far higher. The old Dunbar produce store is kind of a symbol of everything that's gone wrong with our street. It was once the neighborhood magnet, popular because of its congenial owners and reasonable prices. It closed in 2018 because of some landlord-tenant dispute and has been empty and deteriorating ever since. It's sad to have a dilapidated, long-vacant store at the very heart of your main shopping district. Now the village's plan is proposing to add about 250,000 square feet of retail to four new villages close to Dunbar. That's a quarter of the 1 million square feet planned for the 17 villages in total. Surely a disproportionate amount for an area where retail is suffering badly. Because Dunbar isn't the only street with a lot of vacancies. Have you seen Point Grey Village lately? I urge council to consider what adding all this new retail will do to streets established long ago as the backbones of our communities, with libraries, community centres and other facilities. Surely it would be better to find effective ways to help them survive than to threaten them with additional competition. I know the city's solution will be to build more density in places like Dunbar, and we know that's coming. but the apartments that have gone up there so far haven't noticeably improved the situation for businesses. Even the big guys are fleeing. We've lost at least three bank branches in the last few years. I suggest the city should be taking a serious look at what retail looks like these days, rather than simply adding more square footage. With online shopping so popular, what kinds of shops and businesses are needed? How can the city make it easier for them to survive? How about a tax structure that doesn't force small businesses to pay for the empty air above them? How about a vacancy tax for empty commercial properties, just as there is for homes? In the past year, I've pestered the city about Dunbar's deterioration. Staff have acknowledged the problem and said it's a high priority. But nothing changes, and the businesses keep closing. I admit that Dunbar did get an anti-graffiti grant, and the city closed 27th at Dunbar for a new plaza with picnic tables. But that's not seriously addressing the underlying issues causing streets like Dunbar to decline. To me, it looks more like putting lipstick on a pig. Adding 250,000 square feet of retail to the Dunbar area is the last thing that's needed. If it's any indication of the thinking that's gone into the rest of the village's plan, it's a very good argument for halting it in its tracks. Thank you for listening.