MAYORAL PRIORITIES
Tackling housing, overdoses
Kennedy Stewart says one thing has surprised him about his first month as Mayor of Vancouver: how much he’s enjoying it.
“The election was pretty gruelling, so that’s kind of in your mind, but I’m really enjoying this,” the former NDP member of Parliament and new mayor said in an interview Monday with Postmedia News, in his office at city hall. “I think: ‘Why was I a federal politician? I should have been doing this all the way along.’”
Stewart knows his first full year in the mayor’s chair won’t be all fun, and he expects most of his time will be devoted to tackling a pair of crises facing the city: housing and overdoses.
“The No. 1 thing we were all elected on was housing. And I think people need to see results,” said Stewart, who campaigned on a plan to build 85,000 new homes over the next decade, most of which would be non-profit or purpose-built rental units.
Stewart supports expanding temporary modular housing, a program launched last year by Vancouver’s previous civic government in partnership with the B.C. NDP to build relatively inexpensive homes quickly for those at risk of homelessness. This week, Stewart and his politically mixed council will consider a motion seeking to add another 600 modular housing units, doubling the city’s current total.
But in addition to supportive housing for those in the most dire need, Stewart said, the city must accelerate approval and construction of rental homes, especially units targeted for families earning between $30,000 and $80,000.
“That is one of the key tests, and that is what people really want,” he said, “to get this rental housing built.”
Second, Stewart wants to see the rate of overdose deaths decrease. Last month, in his first full council meeting, Stewart introduced a motion to create an “opioid emergency task force.” Stewart expected to receive the first draft of the task force’s report on Monday, and for council to vote before Christmas on recommendations.
“It’s such a huge problem, that sometimes you get a bit numb to it,” Stewart said. “There is fatigue, there is a numbness, but still the overdoses are occurring more or less at the same level.”
During one of their first meetings last month, council received a grim update from city staff on the ongoing crisis, showing the City of Vancouver recorded more than 6,200 overdose calls last year and expects a similar number this year. Last year, more than 367 people died of overdoses in Vancouver — an average of more than one a day — and through the first 10 months of this year, the city had already seen an estimated 304 deaths.
Of housing and overdoses, Stewart said, “those two things, alone, will occupy most of my time.”
Stewart’s third priority, while less acute than housing or overdose deaths, is a subject of great interest to the former professor of political science: exploring democratic reform at the municipal level.
After B.C. sorts out the proportional representation referendum at the provincial level, Stewart wants to “move forward with trying to reform the electoral system here in the city.” As an MP, Stewart was responsible for a private member’s bill that eventually allowed electronic petitions to be introduced into parliament. He said Monday he’d like to explore electronic petitions at the municipal level, as a way of “giving the public more input into decision-making.”
“If there’s one thing I’ve found in this city, it’s that people want in,” Stewart said. “They want in on everything that’s going on in the city, and I do think we are operating on somewhat older institutional rules, and I think there’s new things we can do.”