Thread by @SethDKlein

A 🧵on TEAM for a Livable Vancouver municipal party and its mayoralty candidate Colleen Hardwick – my take after watching Hardwick’s record on council over the last 4 years. #vanpoli 👇

Full disclosure: as many know, I am the husband of @OneCityVan Councillor @christineeboyle. Given Zoom meetings in our half duplex, this has given me a front-row seat during this last council.

For those progressive voters who are considering voting for Hardwick & TEAM, all I can tell you is – you haven’t been paying attention.

In the face of core crises we confront – the #ClimateEmergency, a housing & homelessness crisis, rising inequality – the main response from Hardwick & TEAM has been: No. Get off of my lawn, Get out of my ‘hood.

TEAM doesn't like being labelled right-wing. Sorry, but if the shoe fits...

Whether the issue is housing, climate, Indigenous reconciliation, harm reduction, municipal budgets, public services & taxes… Hardwick’s voting record makes her consistently the MOST conservative member of this past city council.
[chart courtesy of @j_mcelroy 👇]

Hardwick fundamentally disputes that Vancouver faces a housing supply shortage. At every public hearing and discussion on housing, she badgers staff with the ridiculous claim that the need for housing has not been established.

At the root of TEAM’s politics is a nostalgic appeal to the comfortably housed, promising to restore and maintain neighbourhoods of decades gone by. Such neighbourhoods only every existed for some, but one thing is certain – they are not possible in the future...

Not without freezing younger people, young families, newer immigrants and lower-income people out of the city.

TEAM claims they are not against new housing, they just want the “right” housing and only when approved by neighbourhoods (as currently constituted)...

The claim is deeply disingenuous:
❎ They object to towers, claiming to prefer “Paris style” density, yet Hardwick has voted against pretty much every 4-6 story development that came before council over the last 4 years...

❎ They want encampments cleared, yet vote against new social housing. In fact, Hardwick has abstained from or voted against nearly every social or mixed income housing proposal over 4 years.

❎ They claim to support co-ops and low-income renters, but opposed Boyle’s effort to expedite approvals for co-op and non-profits housing up to 12 stories.

TEAM’s central focus on the “right” of neighbourhoods to veto any changes to their existing ‘hoods & demanding public hearings on every proposal save single family developments is, fundamentally, about privileging the comfortably housed over the precariously housed and unhoused.

Vancouver’s public hearings system is a mess. These marathon, multi-day meetings on single spot-zone developments are not normal, they are often vitriolic and divide communities, and make future new neighbours feel unwelcome. It’s a terrible model.

Many neighbourhoods in Vancouver are actually losing people due to ⬆️ housing costs. That means retail closes, schools close, public transit can’t be sustained, older people can’t downsize & stay in their communities, and younger families can’t stay...

This idea of neighbourhoods is not healthy or sustainable.

In the face of all this, Hardwick has been against pretty much everything and proposed virtually nothing. TEAM has no meaningful solutions. If you are a progressive voter contemplating TEAM, I urge you to look at the record and reconsider.