VA N M AG .C O M/C I T Y
H O U S I N G H U R T S / L AT E R A L M OV E M E N T / C R O S SWA L K E X A M I N AT I O N
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City
The Young and the Houseless
Long nights debating developments at city hall are becoming the norm. Age seems like a major factor—but is there more at play here? by
Frances Bula
The second Thursday in July had been a pleasantly sunny day, but that hardly mattered to the inmates of Vancouver city hall. They were slogging through yet another week of the run-until-all-hours meetings that have become typical of the city’s new four-party, no-majority, wecan’t-even-guess-what-they-might-do-next set of civic politicians. It had been a grinding two-night public hearing, whose major drama unfolded when two federal candidates showed up to take opposing sides on the issue. They were joined by a raft of younger people begging for new rentals, and older homeowners begging to not have “too large” a building intrude into their neighbourhood. In the end, council voted 7-3 to allow a six-storey rental apartment on Fraser Street south of Kingsway. It could have been just another standard “conservatives on one side, progressives on the other” kind of vote. But the three opposed appeared to have only one common denominator: they were all born before 1960, the only ones on council in that bracket. Otherwise, they were as far apart on the
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