KENNEDY HOPES TO CHART NEW PATH FOR CITY
Mayoral hopeful and former musician visits recording studio to talk housing crisis
We all have favourite places. Those places suggest something about who we are and what we value. With that in mind, columnist Daphne Bramham has asked four of the front-runners in Vancouver’s mayoral race to meet her at their favourite places to talk about what’s special about it, what the place says about Vancouver and how it reflects their vision for the city.
Back in 1991, a local band called State of Mind won CFOX’s “demo-listen derby,” which gave it the chance to record at Vancouver’s Little Mountain Sound Studio.
AC/DC band members were walking out of there along with renowned Canadian producer Bob Rock when the State of Mind guys walked in.
Poison, a glam metal band, was recording there as well, which is how lead guitarist C.C. DeVille ended up playing on State of Mind’s tracks.
“Imagine being from nowhere Nova Scotia and AC/DC is right beside you and so is Poison,” said Kennedy Stewart, who at the time was State of Mind’s 24-yearold bass player.
“It was pretty exciting times. The music, maybe it’s faded, but you never kind of forget ... That’s why this (the studio) is one of my favourite places.”
State of Mind’s single and video were titled Tightrope and were good enough to win three West Coast Music Awards.
Yet even with a taste of success, Stewart decided to go back to school — first at Simon Fraser University for a master’s degree in political science and then a doctoral thesis on global cities at the London School of Economics. (Coincidentally, Mick Jagger also went there briefly, dreaming of being a journalist or a politician before becoming a rock star.)
When Stewart arrived in Vancouver, the music scene was vibrant. There were lots of musicians, lots of recording studios and plenty of live music venues. Back then, it was possible to work a minimum-wage job during the day, play music at night and still live in the city.
“It’s unimaginable that that could happen now,” Stewart said. “Part of the reason I jumped into this race is because I want other people — future generations — to have those kinds of opportunities, to have that kind of stuff that dreams are made of and that’s really what this was.”
It all comes down to a lack of affordable housing. Musicians, artists and actors are being forced to move out along with others whose wages scarcely rise above minimum wage. Even young professionals — nurses, doctors, academics, lawyers — are finding it hard to find housing that doesn’t require them to spend nearly everything they earn. For businesses, the housing prices are driving up labour costs to the point they are also being forced to close or relocate.
The crisis dominates conversations, squeezing out all the things that we might be talking about, like favourite bands and restaurants.
“If we keep going this way, it’s Monaco,” Stewart said. “People park their yachts. People have their nice condos and they complain because there are no servers at their restaurants.”
To him, that’s un-Canadian and not the kind of city people want. But he is grateful that housing dominates the conversation here because it suggests to him that people are ready and willing to fight for the city they want — whether it’s affordable housing or stopping pipelines.
After the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion was proposed, Stewart polled his 40,000 constituents in the federal riding of Burnaby South (Stewart has been elected NDP MP for Burnaby South twice, in 2011 and 2015). Three-quarters of those who responded said they didn’t want more freighters and didn’t need the 50 jobs that came with the pipeline. It’s why he was arrested for protesting it, pleaded guilty to criminal contempt and paid a $500 fine in May.
“There’s no way to close your eyes and hope this (housing crisis) is going to go away,” he said. “If we don’t do something it’s just going to get worse and worse and worse.”
Affordable rental housing will continue to be demolished and renters “reno-victed.”
The workforce will be wiped out along with businesses forced to close because they can’t get anyone to work for them.
Faced with similar crises, cities around the world have used public land to build different types and sizes of rental housing that they then turn over to nonprofits to run. Twenty years from now, Stewart wants between 12 and 20 per cent of Vancouver’s housing to be affordable to households whose income is below the median.
Housing also needs to be integral to the planning of big public institutions and employment centres such as the new St. Paul’s Hospital. Nobody knows where the 10,000 St. Paul’s employees are going to live. But if they can’t afford to live here, what will happen if Vancouver gets that predicted earthquake?
So what kind of city does this politician who used to be known as an artist want? A kind of Seattle North? Hollywood North? None of the above. Stewart talked about Vancouver’s unique fusion of Indigenous and Asian cultures, its crazy history as a gold rush town and as a rebel city, and how by drawing on those strengths and telling those stories it can be an economically and creatively vibrant place on a world scale.
“I want it to be Vancouver,” he said.