Support more housing along bike routes and by parks! Here’s how:

Lucy Maloney, a Vancouver City councilor with OneCity, has a new motion coming up on September 17, 2025, that I encourage everyone to support: “Beyond Arterials: Creating More Housing Options on Low-Traffic Streets”.

You can read a bit more about why this is important below, or CLICK HERE to go right to the instructions on how to help!

Here’s the Problem

Apartments, including rental apartments and below market housing, are banned on about 80% of Vancouver’s residential land. And, generally, the only place we allow new apartments are either:

a) on top of an old rental apartment that was built in the 1950s or 60s, before we made it almost impossible to build new ones, which causes displacement of the renters who live there; or

b) on busy main roads, also known as arterial roads.

Both of these are bad! There’s a name for this: the “Grand Bargain”. The basic idea is that we “protect” low-density side streets from change by banning apartments there, and shoving the ones we do allow to places like arterial roads. Here’s how Alex Hemingway, now with BC Policy Solutions, describes it:

Under this decades-old zoning regime, sometimes referred to as the “grand bargain,” apartments are permitted only in relatively narrow segments of a city. New apartment buildings are largely confined to busy roads and areas with older apartments where working class and poorer folks live, while the wealthiest single-family housing areas are left largely untouched to avoid provoking NIMBY backlash.

Danny Oleksiuk, one of my colleagues at Abundant Housing Vancouver, wrote an important article about this that you can read here. It’s important to note that we now know that there are real health issues related to constantly breathing in so much car pollution on arterial roads. Think about what that means: Vancouver’s planning department uses people living in apartments (who tend to be less wealthy) as actual human shields for people living in detached houses (who tend to be more wealthy). It’s an intolerable status quo.

Lucy Maloney’s motion asks staff to look into legalizing 6-floor apartments close to parks and along bike routes. This is really smart and helps with both our housing and climate goals: it would legalize more housing, particularly rental apartments, in areas that really need more housing options and that support active transportation. Win win!

Oh yeah…and I made a little TikTok about this too:

@pwaldkirch

Here’s why you should support Lucy Maloney’s motion to legalize apartments by parks and bike lanes, and how you can do so. #vancouver #yvr #housingcrisis #housing #bike

♬ original sound – Peter waldkirch

Here’s how you can help

1. Click here to go to the city’s official agenda page for this hearing.
2. Click on “Send comments to council”
   

3. On the next page, click on “Feedback on an upcoming council meeting agenda item”. Under “Agenda item name”, there’s a list of items. Select “Sept 17 Standing Committee: Council Members’ Motion 5. Beyond Arterials”.
4. Position: SUPPORT!

5. Under “Provide Details” you can add anything you want. It’s fine to keep it simple! Something like “I support more housing!” is all you need to say!
6. Fill in the rest of your information, click “Next”, then on the next page don’t forget to “SUBMIT”!

Finally: give yourself a high five for helping support more housing in Vancouver!