PDF version link here: CVN Letter to Council – 2025-09-15 Broadway Plan Rezoning Public Hearing
September 15, 2025
City of Vancouver
Dear Mayor Ken Sim and Councillors,
Re: Standardized Apartment Districts and City-Initiated Zoning Changes to Implement Broadway Plan and Cambie Corridor Plan
Agenda: https://council.vancouver.ca/20250916/phea20250916ag.htm
Report: https://council.vancouver.ca/20250722/documents/rr1.pdf
Yellow Memo: https://council.vancouver.ca/20250916/documents/phea1memo.pdf
The Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods (CVN) strongly opposes this rezoning for many reasons.
Please do not approve this rezoning as proposed, and instead refer the report back to staff for more public engagement and a new approach. The Broadway Plan was always flawed in its approach, and this area-wide City initiated rezoning embeds those same flaws and only makes this worse.
The rezoning continues to favour more of the wrong supply that is not needed. The housing crisis is a lack of affordability, not just more supply. Housing supply is already over capacity for the kind of housing this rezoning would produce as proposed. The zoning is designed for small expensive units in large towers . The tower scale densities are economically tested to ensure they will be large enough to incentivize demolition of existing more affordable rental buildings.
The Broadway Plan area has 25% of the existing rental stock in the city, and this rezoning puts this at risk of demolition that will displace thousands of people. It will completely destabilize those affected neighbourhoods and peoples’ lives for no net gain of affordability or the kind o family oriented housing that is so desperately needed. The best tenant protections are to protect the existing rental buildings to avoid creating so many victims. Current tenant protections are untested and unproven.
The area-wide prezoning expedites this flawed model while reducing transparency and accountability. Developers will then go directly to development permit application without requiring rezonings or public hearings for projects meeting these regulations. The intent is also to use these new zones for non-pre-zoned sites, so that developers will no longer be required to submit building plans for future site-specific rezonings and public hearings. Public notification and on-site signage for development applications will not be mandatory, but rather required only at staff’s discretion.
There is a complete lack of neighbourhood-based planning. Proforma-driven Broadway Plan Rezoning Districts are too heavily relying on proforma numbers that are creating plans that are based on assumed financials of a moment in time when area-wide plans should be planning for many decades of growth. Planning should be based on many considerations for built form, not just proforma numbers that will change over time. For example, community needs, infrastructure, the impacts on the climate of removing mature trees, demolition, embodied energy and concrete construction in large towers.
The right supply is livable, secure, and suited to local neighbourhoods and larger units for families, without triggering demovictions. Even Transit Oriented Areas (TOAs) require a mix of housing forms to meet local needs and context, including such forms as infill, townhouses and low to midrise apartments.
The plan still allows spot rezoning for towers in lower density areas, so no stability or livability for these neighbourhoods.
The RT-5 (Fraser area), RT-6 (Main and Cambie areas), RT-7 & RT-8 (Kitsilano and South Granville) zones provide a good source of rental and ownership housing that uses heritage and character house retention options for multifamily conversions and infill that is in high demand for family oriented housing in larger ground oriented units. These zones should be retained with future updates, not replaced with R1-1 zoning (all of the RT zones are proposed to become newly designated as multiplex R1-1 zoning) that does not address the local context.
Cities are built on grids, not arbitrary circles around transit which should only be a guide in principle, not for literal implementation. This does not consider the local context.
We are extremely concerned that the public no longer appears to be considered a stakeholder by the City, and instead prioritizes the development industry as stakeholder partners. There has been no meaningful input by the public in this proposed prezoning.
Please do not approve this as proposed, and instead refer the report back to staff for public engagement and a new approach. Direct staff to use more discretion for form of development near transit to better align with infrastructure, amenities, and community local context. Avoid one-size-fits-all approaches.
Avoid making towers the default solution. Towers have their place, but they are not always the best form. The right supply is livable, secure, and suited to local neighbourhoods and larger units for families, without triggering demovictions. Even TOAs require a mix of housing forms to meet local needs and context, including such forms as infill, townhouses and low to midrise apartments.
This will support the forestry sector through the use of affordable sustainable wood frame construction at a variety of scales, including character/heritage multifamily conversions.
Sincerely,
Co-Chairs Larry Benge & Dorothy Barkley
CVN Steering Committee, Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods
Network Groups of the Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods
Cedar Cottage Area Neighbours
Dunbar Residents Association
Fairview/South Granville Action Committee
Grandview Woodland Area Council
Greater Yaletown Community Association
Kitsilano-Arbutus Residents Association
Kits Point Residents Association
NW Point Grey Home Owners Association
Oakridge Langara Area Residents
Residents Association Mount Pleasant
Riley Park/South Cambie Advisory Group
Shaughnessy Heights Property Owners Assoc.
Strathcona Residents Association
Upper Kitsilano Residents Association
West End Neighbours Society
West Kitsilano Residents Association
West Point Grey Residents Association
West Southland Residents Association
