The Coalition for Progressive Electors (COPE) – Vancouver’s political party for renters and workers – hosted a Rally for Rent Control, on October 2. Incumbent city councillor Jean Swanson (COPE) shared a platform with Seattle’s Socialist Alternative city councillor, Kshama Sawant and other COPE candidates. Jean offered “huge thanks” to “Kshama for the solidarity she’s shown to us in words and actions for the last five years and for the advice she’s given me as a councillor which I have taped to the wall of my office at city hall.”
This Election is about Protecting Tenants
Jean maintained that this election is about protecting tenants. “We need vacancy control where landlords can’t raise rents as much as they like when tenants leave.” This is exactly what landlords are doing: jacking up rents as much as they can get away with between tenancies. Canvassers during the election have heard many stories of how landlords have forced tenants out, and then raised the rent by hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Jean also reminded those at the rally that “last year, because of all your hard work, we won vacancy control for the SRO rooms in the Downtown Eastside. That was huge. It protected 4,000 vulnerable tenants, helping take the eviction targets off their backs. And it created a precedent for municipal rent control.”
Unfortunately, that was not the end of the story. Jean explained, “As you know, landlords sued the city and won the first legal battle. What do you think about those landlords?” Of course, the audience responded with a loud “boo.”
“We need a COPE-led city council to make sure we defeat those landlords in the upcoming court appeals,” said Jean. She also mentioned that COPE will push to expand vacancy control to all purpose-built rental apartments with 3 or more units, about 70,000 units. This would preserve affordability in the almost 7,000 rental units (in purpose-built rentals) each year that become vacant, a less expensive option to building replacement units at a cost of about 3.5 billion. Further, Jean explained that rent control would reduce renovictions and keep REITS (Real Estate Investment Trusts) out of our city. “If the city wins the appeal of the vacancy control court case, we can do it here if we get a majority of votes.” Jean also says we need demoviction protection for all tenants, including tenants in non profit and co-op housing.
That means, if their building is demolished, guaranteeing they can return to a new building at their old rent with bridge funding to support them while the building is under construction.
If Jean and other COPE candidates are elected, a COPE-led council can start to create a framework where tenant unions can form and be recognized, so tenants can have some power and negotiate with their landlords for better conditions and lower rents. Jean asked, “if we can do that in the workplace, why not in our apartment buildings?”
This Election is also about Building Affordable Housing
While tenant protection is key, Jean said this election is also about building affordable housing. But what does affordable mean? When Jean says affordable, she means it is affordable to folks earning under the median renter household income of about $50K all the way down to people who are homeless.
“We need to start there: the homelessness crisis is really upsetting. We don’t even have the votes on city council to do the bare minimum to help people who don’t have a home.”
But Jean is hopeful that with more COPE people on council and park board, the city can take swift action to make things more humane immediately. What does this mean? It means getting a place (or places) where people who are homeless can stay legally and not have to move every day. It means closing off some streets, using a parking lot or some vacant lots. And getting some washroom trailers and a warming tent. It means paying folks to keep it clean and help organize them to decide what rules they want. It means start replacing the tents with tiny homes and all the time lobby like crazy for the federal and provincial funds we need to build dignified housing for all.
“We desperately need that mansion tax that the current council wouldn’t even ask for — they were too concerned about the impact on mansion owners. This year my motion to start designing a progressive property tax ended up with a 5-5 vote, which meant it failed. Mayor Stewart Kennedy didn’t show up. The right wingers were frothing at the mouth.”
Jean maintains if Vancouver had a mansion tax, it would raise hundreds of millions for housing, which could use the city’s housing corporation and city land to actually build non-market housing and co-ops.
This Election is also about Safety
“I’m not talking about the alleged safety that the right wing thinks we need more police for,” Jean said. “I’m talking about safety for the 50 people a month who die in Vancouver because we don’t have a safe supply of drugs. Our neighbours are dying from the failure to provide consumer protection for people who use drugs.”
Jean said that COPE will immediately regulate all drugs in Vancouver and will face any challenge head-on as a Charter matter of “life, liberty, and security of the person.” COPE will establish City of Vancouver business licenses for compassion clubs and other legitimate organizations that provide consumer protection for the safe, clean, and identifiable supply of drugs.
“And we will continue working to replace police with community-led safety services especially in the areas of homelessness, drug use, sex work and mental health. We got that motion passed. But it turns out the city doesn’t have a lot of power over the police, at least right now. We had to ask the VPD how much they spent in these areas, so we could divert the funding (if we had the votes for that, which we probably didn’t). And guess how much the VPD said they spend on policing the homeless? They said $283. Do you believe that? Anyways, obviously we have to fight to reform policing and for democratic oversight of policing.”
This election is about Stopping Climate Change
“We lost 600 people in BC last year to the heat dome.” Jean added, “A person in my building died.” The city has some decent policies to reduce green house gas emissions, but they aren’t fully funded, which means the city can’t meet GHG reduction targets without more money.
Jean said that COPE will insist that Vancouver does its part to reduce GHG emissions by 50 percent by 2030. “We’ll also work to ensure that there is an equity lens on this so that lower income folks aren’t penalized.”
She emphasized that COPE has been and will continue to work for cheap and free transit. “We got free transit for kids 12 and under. Thanks to everyone who helped with that. Now we’re pushing for free transit for high school students; with Rocco and Suzie (COPE School Board candidates) helping, we can do it. We also announced that COPE will push for a virtually-free transit pass for all low-income people. Low-income people take transit way more than other people — we think they should be rewarded with a BC bus pass (which is now $43/year but should just be free). We’ll also push for other ways to reduce the use of gas vehicles and burning gas for heat and hot water in buildings. And we need to work to ensure that more and more buildings have cooling as well as heating systems.”
This Election is about Decolonization
Jean stated that the city has a committee on implementing UNDRIP (UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) municipally and is working with the three nations, whose traditional lands are in Vancouver, on a plan for doing this. She said, “we need to be ready to start giving land back and bringing in the services like a healing centre for Indigenous women that Indigenous folks are asking for.” Jean said that Breen Ouellette, who is Métis and also running for council, has some ideas about this.
She added that she went to Musqueam for the renaming ceremony of the racist Trutch St (Trutch was BCs first Lieutenant Governor, deeply hostile to Indigenous rights). It’s now called “Musqueamossum,” which means Musqueam view. “On the way there I drove past lots of mansions decorated with TEAM and ABC and NPA signs (three right-wing parties in the election). The rich are very class conscious. We know that ABC is getting oodles of dough from developers and that their median donor gives over $1200 while ours has given $40 to date this year. And our median individual donation is only about 10 bucks. So even though we have lots more donors, we don’t have as much money. The size of the donations we get reflects the people we stick up for — working folks and lower income folks”.
She added, “But it means that the airwaves will be flooded with ads in the next two weeks, ads that we can’t afford. But we have a secret weapon, which is you folks. When we get all our supporters identified and you help to get them to the polls, we can win!”
“I am thrilled with the quality of our candidates. And thrilled that three of them are very awesome Indigenous people, Breen Ouellette, Tanya Webking and Chris Livingstone. I’m sure you will be hearing a lot from them in the future.”
Lessons from Seattle
After Jean spoke, Kshama Sawant reflected on the struggles and victories that she and Socialist Alternative encountered in fighting on similar issues. Kshama said:
“We have seen what’s possible when working people can win our own elected representatives who unambiguously fight alongside wider movements for our interests. Who are willing to stand up to the capitalist class and their political representatives. Who understand that their task is not to get elected and then start making backroom deals with corporate or even so-called progressive politicians, selling out working people and marginalized communities in the name of compromise and good governance. Who understand that the only way working people can win under capitalism is by getting organized, not putting our faith in the political establishment.”
“That is how Jean and Vancouver’s renters’ rights activists were able to win the vacancy control for SROs. This was a big victory and would never have happened without class struggle.”
“In Seattle also, the renters’ rights working people have won has been through class struggle — through building movements. And we have been challenged in the courts again and again. Corporate developers and property management corporations have a lot of money to file lawsuits from all the renters they fleece.”
“However, when ordinary people build movements, and the movements have genuine political leadership that is accountable to movements and that can provide strategy and tactics, we can win.”
COPE’s Candidates in Vancouver’s election are:
City Council:
- Jean Swanson
- Breen Ouellette
- Nancy Trigueros
- Tanya Webking
Park Board:
- Gwen Giesbrecht
- Chris Livingstone
- Maira Hassan
School Board:
- Suzie Mah
- Rocco Trigueros
