Mayor Ken Sim and his ABC majority on Vancouver city council have been a disaster for working class tenants. But, as the 2026 Vancouver municipal election draws near, the records of the sitting progressive coalition – Lucy Maloney (OneCity), Sean Orr (COPE), and Pete Fry (Greens) – should also cause some concern for renters at risk of displacement.
Three main parties in Vancouver are positioning themselves as progressive alternatives to Ken Sim and ABC this October. COPE, OneCity, and the Greens are now messaging against splitting the anti-ABC vote with a tenuous ‘unity agreement.’ Each has identified housing affordability as the dominant issue for Vancouver residents.
In light of Sim and ABC’s attacks on the working class, the emergence of a progressive coalition to “[fight] for a Vancouver for everyone” and “evict Ken Sim,” per OneCity and COPE’s respective campaign slogans, seems promising on the surface. Voters might expect a progressive coalition to act on issues faced by the 55% of Vancouverites who rent their homes, and to push back against the displacement and gentrification of working class neighbourhoods currently reshaping Vancouver, especially within the Broadway Plan area.
But OneCity, COPE, and the Greens seem to have fallen in line with a housing agenda that prioritizes developer profits over safe and secure homes for tenants. Instead of challenging the power of real estate capital, these parties’ councillors have continually voted in favour of rezonings that will demovict tenants from their homes.
Tenants demand more from those who claim to speak for us at City Hall. Progressive politicians must recognize that working class interests will never be advanced through alliances and compromises with real estate capital. Until then, tenants across the City of Vancouver will continue to wonder: why should I care if we evict Ken Sim, if whoever replaces him will also vote to evict me?
A Displacement-First Housing Policy
Working class tenants are seldom invited to participate in conversations about the future of the city. Instead, municipal housing policy remains the exclusive realm of neoliberal politicians, real estate lobbyists, and well-funded urbanist pressure groups and think tanks. In the backroom process of shaping and reshaping Vancouver, our homes are emptied of life and meaning, becoming sterilized “units” to be pushed around on a spreadsheet.
At the heart of this neoliberal housing policy is a set of absurd and dangerous assumptions. We are told that the solution to the housing crisis lies in the widespread demolition of existing affordable housing, clearing the way for apartments costing many times more than those they replace. Accordingly, we must believe that displacement is an unfortunate, albeit necessary part of progress, and that communities deserve no say in what our neighbourhoods look like. The resultant policies and plans – including the Broadway Plan, the city-wide Official Development Plan, Rupert Renfrew Plan and the recent “Uplifting” the DTES uplan – are above all designed to minimize friction for real estate developers.
These policies only add fuel to the fire of the eviction crisis in Vancouver. According to a report published by researchers at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver leads the country in eviction rates with 10.5% of renter households reporting having been evicted between 2016 and 2021. The same report shows that 85% of evictions in BC are reported as “no fault” evictions, a term which includes demovictions, renovictions and various other types of profit-motivated removals. More than 40% of respondents in the 2025 Homeless Count reported that they were homeless because of an eviction. And despite the misleading headlines touting record low rents, average rents for one-bedroom apartments in Vancouver actually increased by over 67% in the decade between 2015 and 2025 according to CMHC.
The Broadway Plan, in particular, is only making matters worse. In a Q4 2025 update, City of Vancouver staff estimated that approximately 2,400 rental households will be impacted by redevelopment due to Broadway Plan projects that are currently in the pipeline (even as developers struggle to adapt to the current economic downturn). What will this development bring? The average rent for new replacement units – $2,738 in Metro Vancouver, according to an analysis published by Vancity Community Foundation – is deemed unaffordable for 70% of renter households in the area.
Where are Vancouver’s Progressive Parties?
In the face of continued mass displacement, where are our progressive municipal political parties? Far from mounting a robust defence of tenants and the working class, each of the sitting progressive councillors have voted, time and again, to displace tenants from their homes.
This could be expected from a party like OneCity, whose campaign website boasts a goal of “rebuilding [Vancouver] block by block.” While the party pays lip service to tenants facing displacement, OneCity’s approach all too often treats the housing crisis as a straightforward matter of supply and demand. By this logic, the solution is a simple one: deregulate the housing market, streamline the development process, and raze hundreds of city blocks to replace perfectly good affordable housing with expensive shoebox apartments.
In May 2026, Vancouver City Council voted to retroactively remove below-market housing requirements for several already-approved development projects, with COPE’s Sean Orr casting the sole dissenting vote against. Defending her support for scrapping the quotas, OneCity’s Maloney said that she “voted for more housing to be built, because housing supply puts downward pressure on housing costs.” From a nominally progressive party, this approach, as numerous commentators have noted, is naive at best.
The Greens have expressed more serious concerns about displacement. Still, mayoral hopeful Fry routinely votes in favour of demovicting tenants, with a focus on “enhancing” tenant protections for those who are displaced.
Most disturbing is COPE’s recent turn from staunch defenders of working class tenants to ushers of transit oriented displacement. In Jean Swanson’s days on council, the party stood firmly against displacement and gentrification, with Swanson regularly voting against projects that either displaced tenants or did not include below-market housing.
In 2019, COPE and Swanson fought alongside DTES tenants for 100% shelter-rate housing at 58 West Hastings. Vocal opponents included none other than then-BC Housing executive Stephanie Allen. In partnership with the VPD, Allen was later tasked with coordinating the 2020 decampment of Oppenheimer Park, a process she described as “based on compassion.”
In 2022, COPE ran on the promise to “Stop Demovictions,” and in its 2025 by-election platform lamented the loss of 47,000 affordable homes to rent increases and demovictions:
In the Broadway corridor and across the city, affordable housing is being destroyed – while city-owned land sits vacant and exclusionary mansion districts don’t allow any rental or public housing. Demolitions are environmentally wasteful and produce massive amounts of carbon emissions. With a growing population, we need more housing, not less. Destroying dense, livable, housing in a housing crisis makes no sense.
What a difference a year makes. Stephanie Allen is now COPE’s mayoral candidate. And in the twelve months since the 2025 by-election, Sean Orr has voted in favour of nearly every residential rezoning application that has come before him during his time in office. The result could be hundreds – if not thousands – of demovicted tenants.
Some decisions stand out. On September 18, 2025, Orr voted in favour of rezoning an existing apartment building at 45 E 16th. Orr reflected in comments during the hearing that “every time we tear a building down we lose affordability.” Those twenty-three households are now set to lose their homes and be displaced. He went on to abstain (which formally counts as a vote in favour in the Vancouver Charter) on an October 2025 motion to blanket rezone 4,290 properties in the Broadway Plan area. By removing public hearings and further streamlining the development process, that council decision effectively sealed the fate of thousands of tenants as victims of “transit oriented development.”
Orr has been quick to deflect when criticized about his persistent record of voting in favour of demovictions. In an episode of Blueprints of Disruption podcast late last year, Orr puzzled listeners by implying that, due to the “quasi-judicial function” of rezoning hearings, he is compelled to vote in favour of proposals that displace tenants. He went on to say the following in response to criticisms levied by the Vancouver Tenants Union:
We have to focus on holding listening circles for stakeholders, listening to the tenants. We have a tenants union, they’re not happy with me right now because of what I explained in those rezoning votes. They’re like why are you voting for these demovictions? And it’s like, uhh sorry. But we have to listen to them, we have to create the policy and not isolate them. But at the same time, we have to have fun.
Unwilling to actually stop the demovictions, COPE’s scaled back ambitions are limited to tinkering around the edges of the City’s Tenant Relocation and Protection Policy (TRPP). When presented with the impending destruction of an affordable rental building in Mount Pleasant for the development of an extended stay hotel, COPE’s response was to bring a motion to Council to “close a loophole” and give tenants the right to return to the building after redevelopment. But the tenants of this building, organized with the Vancouver Tenants Union as the Myron Manor Collective, demand that the project be scrapped entirely. They are fighting for their homes, not for the right to live in what would otherwise be a hotel for digital nomads.
There is some value in improving tenant protections and imposing additional costs on developers. However, tenants’ demands go far beyond setting a price for their displacement; our struggle is for a broader goal of safe, secure housing for all. A working class party that is serious about achieving that goal must actually listen to organized tenants, and do everything in its power to defend every one who wants to stay. At bare minimum, those who claim to represent the working class at City Hall must vote against rezoning proposals that displace tenants from their homes.
Vancouver’s Tenants Demand Better
Working class tenants have a choice to make in October. There’s no question that voters must get rid of Sim and his ABC cronies. ABC has increased the already ballooning budget of the Vancouver Police Department at the same time as cutting funding for arts, culture, and community services. Sim and ABC have abandoned the city’s commitment to being a living wage employer. All while introducing a zero percent property tax increase and giving millions of dollars in public money back to developers. It is essential that the party not retain its majority on city council this coming October.
The question remains: who should replace ABC and how do we hold them accountable? The status quo offers no clear answers. Residents appear to agree, with only 36.3% of eligible voters turning out in the 2022 municipal election, and a dismal 15% in the 2025 by-election. Candidates have a big challenge on their hands when it comes to winning the trust of those most impacted by our ever-worsening rent crisis.
It is left to working class tenants to build a principled opposition to the landlords and developers that dominate Vancouver. As it stands, the path of least resistance for progressive city councillors is to side with the wealthy and powerful in opposition to working class interests. Our imperative is to organize together and resist, building by building, block by block, until those in power understand that we will no longer be bulldozed from our neighbourhoods.
With four months until the election, progressives at City Hall must pick a side: will they build meaningful solidarity with working class tenants, or will they continue to vote us out of our homes?
