Solidarity and sacrifice

Sharing the pain

My campaign website: russil.ca.

Upcoming events:

• Thursday April 30 - council candidate debate, online. Registration link.

• Sunday May 3, shortly after midnight - ballots sent by email to OneCity members as of April 10, from SimplyVoting. It’s a ranked ballot. Your first choice matters most, but if they don’t make it, your vote gets transferred to your next choice, and so on.

• Sunday May 10 at midnight - deadline to submit your ballot.

• Monday May 11 - results announced.

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Solidarity and shared sacrifice

A multiplex going up across the street from our townhouse complex

In tackling big challenges, I would emphasize the need for solidarity: the feeling that we’re all in this together, and we need to cooperate with each other. That’s how we got through Covid - younger people were willing to make sacrifices to protect older people.

We need to have the same feeling of solidarity as we move forward on tackling the housing shortage. This is in our own interest. As people retire from their jobs, we need to grow, so that younger people can move here to fill those jobs. We all depend on the healthcare system, for example. When younger people can’t afford to live here, the healthcare system will be under increasing strain.

There appears to be a growing consensus on allowing four- to six-storey buildings - people recognize that land is limited, and to fix the housing shortage, we need to build up. At the same time, it’s important to keep in mind that while they’re actually being built, people aren’t necessarily going to like it. When people’s neighbourhoods change, accepting that change is a form of sacrifice. (To quote Sonja Trauss: “Prohibiting new housing is a prized luxury amenity.”)

We have a couple of three-storey multiplex projects going up across the street from our townhouse complex. I think they’re great. (In fact I don’t see why our side of the street is zoned for six storeys, while the other side is zoned for multiplexes only.) But I’ve heard from quite a few of our neighbours who don’t like them, even though our own townhouse complex is also three storeys.

My sense is that after a building is built, people are fine with it. But when it’s new, people don’t like it.

1923 Parker Street, a nine-unit apartment building, built in 1965

Another form of sacrifice is being willing to consider modest property tax increases, as most Metro Vancouver municipalities are doing. “Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.” More tangibly, they’re also the price we pay for keeping our public infrastructure (roads and sidewalks, water and sewer pipes) and our amenities (libraries and community centres) in a state of good repair.

Ken Sim’s “zero means zero” pledge, freezing property taxes this year and next year, isn’t prudent management. After inflation, it translates into cuts in real terms. It’s like knowing that your roof is leaking and you need to replace it, but crossing your fingers and hoping it doesn’t rain.

To politicians and prospective politicians, I would point out that it’s easier to make these sacrifices when we have a sense that these sacrifices are shared. This is why it’s important for politicians to be willing to make cuts to their own pay, at a time when we’re asking people to sacrifice, and why pay increases for politicians are so corrosive. Elected officials cutting their pay isn’t going to close a budget deficit, but it still demonstrates that elected officials are willing to share the pain themselves.