Pete Fry

For Vancouver

Author: Pete Fry

  • Video: I’ll fight to protect our communities, homes and jobs

    I’m running to be your city councillor, because when I talk to Vancouverites, they tell me they are frustrated – they feel like the city is failing them. Failing them on housing. Failing them on homelessness. People feel that there’s special treatment for a special group of developers; that too many decisions get made behind closed doors. Public trust is broken.

    I got my start advocating for our communities here in the East End, but I’m running to be a City Councillor for all Vancouver: from the Punjabi Market to the West End, from Dunbar to the Drive, from South Hill to Southlands — as your City Councillor, I’ll put public interest first.

  • One-bedroom apartment listings in Vancouver now firmly stand at $2,000 a month

    One-bedroom apartment listings in Vancouver now firmly stand at $2,000 a month

    “The biggest issue is what, as a city, we can do for renters,” said Pete Fry…

    “When I say, ‘increase supply’, I know it immediately triggers that Vision Vancouver, NPA kind-of rhetoric,” he said. Fry clarified he’s not arguing in favour of a blank cheque for condo developers to build anything they want.

    “What we need to do is actually slow the kind of supply that we don’t need and really incentivising the kind of supply that we do need,” he explained. “That is a power that we have at the city level, through the approval and rejection of discretionary rezonings and that sort of thing.”

    Read full article: https://www.straight.com/news/977871/one-bedroom-apartment-listings-vanc…

  • Video: A New Fair Deal on Housing, and Five Quick Start Actions to Help Us Get There

    I released a new video today, describing our Green Party goal for a new deal on housing, and announcing five bold quick start actions the City could immediately pursue to ease Vancouver’s housing crisis. We need to shift development in Vancouver. As a city, we must ensure that we are building more housing that’s affordable for local people instead of for the luxury market and speculators.


    Ultimately this means using the city’s power over land use decisions to prioritize purpose-built rental on City and public lands that is truly affordable to local incomes; and on private lands increasing the amount of developer cost levies and contributions to support affordable housing or extracting publicly owned housing outright. 

    But while other parties continue to call for solutions that ultimately require the support of senior government to change tenancy laws, property taxation or invest in public housing. We’ll advocate to senior government for those kinds of actions, but we need to get started right here and right now in our city with things we can actually do. These Five quick start actions the city can do immediately will help get us there and address the urgency of our housing crisis: 

    1. Change city by-laws to make affordable mean affordable: fixing housing prices to local incomes, not market rates.

    Adriane Carr put forward a motion to fix the City’s definition of “affordable housing” to local incomes, but to get it seconded it was weakened to only require only a staff report, not the actual change. With another Green on City Council, we can second this motion and introduce it for public debate under its original intent.

    2. Call for a one-year moratorium on demolition of purpose-built rental housing, and strengthen the Tenant Relocation and Protection Guidelines.

    During the moratorium the city will work on a plan to both retain and restore older affordable apartment buildings as well as build and maintain new purpose-built rental through funding that Greens have been pushing for including re-instating federal tax incentives and creating a new Vancouver Carbon Trust. Update the Tenant Relocation and Protection by-law to ensure landlords aren’t using loopholes to renovict and displace tenants and that residential tenancies are protected city-wide. 


    3. Protect and increase secondary and basement suites by making it easy to legalize them.

    Protect neighbourhoods and affordability while giving new life to old buildings. Secondary and basement suites make up some of Vancouver’s most affordable rental housing. Amend the Secondary Suite Program to encourage secondary suites as incentives for retaining character homes, as opposed to multi-conversion dwelling process typically done by developers under the current framework.

    4. Launch a city-wide plan to involve citizens in deciding how to add density, affordability and “missing middle” housing into their neighbourhoods.


    Planning by spot rezoning and density bonusing instead of a city-wide plan has driven speculation and skyrocketing increases in land prices. Why is Vision so opposed to a city-wide plan? Working collaboratively with communities and neighbours to create a city-wide plan is the only process by which residents can come together on decisions that affect growth, housing and affordability city-wide and in their own neighbourhood. 


    5. Create a Renter’s Office at the City, to better protect and resource the over half Vancouverites who rent their homes.

    Immediately create a department that can provide resources and support for the renters of Vancouver: to provide help with provincial tenancy laws, to ensure homes are safe and landlords adhere to our Standards of Maintenance bylaw, to stop bogus renovictions and to ensure renter’s rights are protected in an increasingly tight and exploitive market.

    Postscript: 

    I’m running to be the Green Party’s second City Councillor. I need your vote, to elect me to join Green Party City Councillor Adriane Carr in this October 14th by-election. Another Green would significantly broaden the ability to introduce and debate new policies, whereas today Carr must rely on conditional support of other parties’ councillors to second her motions, which often involves watering down the motion.

  • Thoughts on mayor’s bid to lure Amazon HQ2 to Vancouver

    Thoughts on mayor’s bid to lure Amazon HQ2 to Vancouver

    Let this sink in.

    While so many of Vancouver’s bricks-and-mortar small businesses are struggling to stay afloat, our mayor is trying to woo a multinational corporation whose business model is based on replacing local bricks-and-mortar shops. 

    While that’s sinking in, consider this:

    The proposed second headquarters for the monopoly seeking online retail behemoth would take up about 8 million square feet and employ about 50,000 high paying jobs. 

     Vancouver doesn’t have nearly that number of job seeking white collar tech workers, so those 50,000 tech jobs will represent a significant population influx. Set against the failure to meaningfully address urgent local issues like homelessness, housing un-affordability, low vacancy rates, and struggling retail districts; it’s hard to imagine what (if any) plan the mayor has to counter the impact of Amazon HQ2. 

    The scale of the project, and rumours to locate it on the False Creek Flats, or on land extracted from the Agricultural Land Reserve will be a monumental “game changer” [2] for our city.  

    But like any game changer, there are winners and losers: given the state of Vancouver, it’s not hard to imagine who the losers will be. 

    “Amazon’s rise has not been without local critics, who say the influx of mostly well-heeled tech workers has caused housing prices to skyrocket, clogged the streets with traffic and changed the city for the worse…” [1] 

    While it is laudable for our city and the Vancouver Economic Commission to attempt to lure new business and investment to the region (project has a $5b pricetag and promises significant indirect economic activity), it’s worth taking a closer look at what Amazon represents. 

    In a 2015 paper, Civic Economics: “Amazon and Empty Storefronts” [3] studied the impacts of Amazon’s online retail on the U.S. market: in that year, Amazon sold $55.6 billion of retail goods nationwide, resulting in a net loss of 222,000 retail jobs, depriving an equivalent of $528 million in otherwise bricks-and-mortar storefront property taxes, and avoiding $704 million in sales tax. Amazon has even patented autonomous drone technology with plans to deliver products directly from its warehouse to your home. 

    In Seattle, Amazon’s premiere HQ is described as the harbinger of that city’s record growth: “Amazon has been blamed or praised — depending on your perspective — for Seattle’s historic real estate boom.” 

    Contrast the Amazon model and its impacts with current situation for local bricks and mortar stores: struggling under skyrocketing land values and taxes, unable to retain employees increasingly priced out of living in the city, financially squeezed customers and shrinking disposable income. 

    Vancouver: we need to get our own house in order before we start inviting new guests. 

    [1] http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/toronto-among-the-cities-vying-to-become-second-amazon-home-in-north-america 

    [2] https://www.biv.com/article/2017/9/could-vancouver-become-amazons-second-home/ 

    [3] http://www.civiceconomics.com/empty-storefronts.html 

    [4] http://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/could-amazons-hq-bombshell-let-the-air-out-of-seattles-housing-and-development-boom/

    Postscript: 

    Since I posted this on Facebook, there was considerable interest and some comment suggesting I was against well paying jobs. Let me be perfectly clear, I support the creation and attraction of good well paying jobs. The mayor’s office has also since done a 180˚ suggesting the bid for Amazon would now be a regional one, not the City of Vancouver going it alone. While the greater metro region is a far more reasonable consideration to support a 100 acre site and 50,000 high paid employees, there is still a great deal of scrutiny and long range planning to consider in a project of this scale, including what kind of deals and concessions we may be offering to lure the Amazon HQ2.

    An interesting article on that last consideration can be found here https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2017/09/08/amazons-red-herring/ and here https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/technology/amazon-headquarters-north-america.html?mcubz=1&_r=0.

    Given the mayor’s track record so far on dealing with housing, homelessness and protecting small local businesses, and history of backroom deals and developer campaign donations — I remain cynical about how this particular project would be handled.

  • Will voters elect Green Party’s Pete Fry to Vancouver City Council?

    Will voters elect Green Party’s Pete Fry to Vancouver City Council?

    The by-election race for Vancouver’s vacant City Council seat is the Greens’ to lose. And lose they may to the Non-Partisan Association or Vision Vancouver, despite both being well back in the poll.

    NPA support is composed largely of older voters who are more likely to cast a ballot. Vision is well known for its organized get-out-the-vote volunteers, a consistent advantage for the governing party over several election cycles. Either party, currently vying for second place, could upset a race that today favours the Greens’ Pete Fry.

    Currently 38% of decided voters tell us they would support the Green Party, up from 30% in July when the party had yet to name candidate Pete Fry. NPA, whose support has softened over the past month, and Vision now compete for second place (21% and 19%). Support for OneCity, who announced their candidate Judy Graves prior to our July poll, has fallen dramatically (to 5%).

    Currently, over half of Vancouverites (52%) are undecided or will not vote in the upcoming by-election. Even so, our poll’s 48% undoubtedly overstates expected voter turnout. Just 43% who were eligible voted in Vancouver’s 2014 municipal election. Fewer still turned out in 2011 (35%). Turnout to municipal by-elections, such as the October 14th’s council and school board vote, is even lower.

    The by-election race for Vancouver’s vacant City Council seat is the Greens’ to lose. And lose they may to the Non-Partisan Association or Vision Vancouver, despite both being well back in the poll.

    NPA support is composed largely of older voters who are more likely to cast a ballot. Vision is well known for its organized get-out-the-vote volunteers, a consistent advantage for the governing party over several election cycles. Either party, currently vying for second place, could upset a race that today favours the Greens’ Pete Fry.

    Currently 38% of decided voters tell us they would support the Green Party, up from 30% in July when the party had yet to name candidate Pete Fry. NPA, whose support has softened over the past month, and Vision now compete for second place (21% and 19%). Support for OneCity, who announced their candidate Judy Graves prior to our July poll, has fallen dramatically (to 5%).

    Currently, over half of Vancouverites (52%) are undecided or will not vote in the upcoming by-election. Even so, our poll’s 48% undoubtedly overstates expected voter turnout. Just 43% who were eligible voted in Vancouver’s 2014 municipal election. Fewer still turned out in 2011 (35%). Turnout to municipal by-elections, such as the October 14th’s council and school board vote, is even lower.
    The largest group in our poll tell us they don’t know how their neighbours will vote (64%). But among those with an opinion, we glean some insight about how socially entrenched party support may be.

    Half (50%) of NPA supporters believe their neighbours will also support the NPA.
    Just one-third (34%) of Green supporters believe their neighbours will also vote Green.
    Just over one-third (37%) of Vision supporters believe their neighbours will also vote Vision.

    Data table; http://www.justasonmi.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/COV-BYELETION-AUG-2…

    http://www.justasonmi.com/?p=5391