Anti-STIR residents are little more than NIMBYs

Completely overshadowed by the Mayor’s unfortunate comments are the attitudes that are being expressed by the anti-STIR forces in the West End who from what I can tell simply adverse to change or any kind of development in their neighbourhood.

Former City Councillor Gordon Price is a voice of reason and experience within the realm of municipal politics within this city, and so I think that everyone should read his take on the STIR program being introduced into the West End here.  Goodness knows that by no stretch of the imagination is Price on board with everything that Vision Vancouver has taken on, meaning that his perspective as a West End resident who sees the community from the inside is very valuable.

Here are the excerpts that I found most interesting:

“As a West Ender myself (and the first City Councillor to come out of the downtown since the 1940s), I learned that, paradoxically, as the rate of change slows down, people’s anxiety about change increases.  Even the smallest alteration can ignite fear of precedent. Within that square mile only a dozen or so new buildings have been constructed since 1972, the year the highrise boom ended.  But even that proved to be too much, and so in 1989 the NPA Council rezoned the district to discourage demolition.  A rate-of-change bylaw has slowed redevelopment to practically zero.”

“Developers were directed to other parts of downtown, where rezonings encouraged much higher densities where few residents would be disturbed.  Downtown South became the new West End, taking pressure off the existing housing stock.”

“That era is practically over.  Downtown is almost all built out; there are few places left to massively rezone.  The STIR program, whether intending to or not, is directing attention back to the West End, where dozens of wooden low-rise apartment blocks are nearing the end of their physical lives.  Change, it seems, is inevitable.”

“One long-time leader in the community is skeptical of anything so simplistic as a ‘plan.’ As he notes, the West End is a hodge-podge: layers of different styles and forms accumulated over a century.  Trying to define a single vision for the future actually goes against the very nature of the West End.  Better to go block by block, allowing new development when and where it fits in without rezoning the whole neighbourhood, doing so incrementally without massive disruption.

Kind of what the STIR program is attempting to do.”

Couple this with writeups by residents like Godfrey von Nostitz-Tait, who in a piece originally written for the Daily Gumboot,  says stuff like this:

“My opposition to STIR in the West End started with “not in my back yard” and into a full fledged defense of my community, a rewarding and gratifying experience that goes beyond politics,”

as well as these arguments against the STIR program (scroll to the bottom to read their 11 points), and what you have is a community that thinks it can escape change and not be a part of the bigger community of this city.

Here are my quick responses to those 11 points:

• The plan is from 1989.  As Gordon Price points out, it is designed to keep change and development away from the community rather than preserve something that is pristine.
• There is little within the STIR program proposals for the West End that are “radical”
• Subsidizing large-scale development companies is a hollow accusation, as this program is about taking the steps necessary to encourage new rental housing stock to be built.  This kind of development would not happen in the private sector without City Council stepping in.
• What are communities going to say?  That they don’t want rental housing in their backyard just as the West End is doing?  Consultation happens on a case by case basis, as is happening with this proposed development.
• This is not about creating more rental stock simply for the West End.  Believe it or not people, the entire City of Vancouver does not revolve around the prescriptions of those that live in the West End.
• Rental stock needs to be increased in this city, which all economists and developers will assert leads to greater affordability and choice for the market.
• How should change happen?  Well, it does happen regardless of whether those in the West End want to mimic Hot Tub Time Machine and stay in the 1980s.

I have more to say, but I had better stop now before I write something I will regret later.  I hate these kinds of attitudes in Vancouver, and am sick of people not willing to think about the city as a whole rather than their little fiefdoms of comfort.

NIMBYs unite in the West End, and everyone is supposed to bow down?  Give me a break.