Unlike Vancouver and Surrey – both of which underwent significant municipal leadership changes a year ago – Richmond continues to be led by the longest-standing mayor in Metro Vancouver and a steady council, which replaced two retiring incumbent councillors last fall.
But like other cities in the region, Richmond – one of the most expensive cities for homeowners – is grappling with housing and public safety challenges, and both issues were on every council candidate’s priority list when they sought election last year.
While Mayor Malcolm Brodie and some incumbent councillors say they believe they are on track in tackling housing affordability, critics say they are frustrated with a lack of progressive and proactive approaches to the issue.
Richmond adopted a 10-year Affordable Housing Strategy in 2018 and has focused on increasing density by approving condo projects that include affordable and market rental units.
“In the last year, the city council has approved many new developments, some of them with strictly rentals in those premises.… There’s the focus to approve market condo building projects that are for sale, including some rental units,” said Brodie.
Over the past year, a few rental-only building rezoning applications were approved by council and the city worked with the province and federal government to secure housing projects for vulnerable residents. The city also hired two full-time staff to tackle illegal short-term rentals in April.
Developers with more than 60 units need to ensure 15 per cent of the floor area goes to affordable rental developments, and those with fewer than 60 units need to provide cash in lieu of affordable rentals.
“I don’t have specific numbers that I can give you, or specific targets.... Given the fact that we are not on the province’s list of cities that need special [housing] attention, forgetting about whether we think it’s adequate, the province seems to think that we are meeting their expectations,” said Brodie.
The B.C. government selected the first 10 municipalities for housing target assessment in May.
Coun. Carol Day said council has been trying to “squeeze out” every opportunity to have developers put in more rentals and affordable housing over the past year.
“The key is to have as many affordable family friendly units as possible. You gotta squeeze out everyone you can get, you can’t lose any opportunity,” said Day.
Despite progress in increasing density, the housing price and rent in Richmond continues to rise – the city was the second most expensive mid-sized rental market in Canada in July, according to Rentals.ca.
“We can’t determine what the rental rates are, nor can we determine what the market values or properties are. What we can do is try and alleviate the situation with having more affordable rentals, including that in all the rezoning and to have the market rentals as well to get people into places,” said Brodie.
Richmond’s progress on the housing file is difficult to assess, as city council didn’t establish clear housing or construction targets.
“We set the percentage for housing that we want to have from the developers, but we don’t have a fixed number that we want to achieve, say over a number of years,” said Coun. Chak Au.
“We rely on the private sector to provide those numbers, but the thing is, when the market changes, developers may not be building projects as projected. We need to have a different perspective or strategy to resolve the housing crisis,” said Au.
New Coun. Kash Heed, who is a former Vancouver-Fraserview MLA and a retired police officer, said he is frustrated with the “lack of progress on so many important issues” with Richmond council.
“Given my experiences provincially and in policing over the 32 years there, I have never seen such a lackluster display of public policy than my time here in Richmond council,” said Heed.
“We have to go through some of the key issues such as budget and planning to ensure that we have adequate housing for people in Richmond, but what I found is, a lot of it is just in written words, and not necessarily documents that you can turn into actionable items.”
He said, for example, city staff were asked to update the Official Community Plan at the beginning of the term and council still hasn’t received it after one year.
A challenge with working with a long-standing council is the “this is the way we’ve always done it” mindset, Heed said, adding that he believes council needs to be “shaken up.”
“You can’t come up with a document from five years ago and say, ‘it was a 10-year [housing strategy], that’s where we’re going to.’ You have to reassess, reevaluate. Things are changing at such a rapid pace,” he said.
“We local governments are the closest to the people. Richmond council should be driving the changes on what’s required for housing, what’s required for homelessness, getting the other two levels of government, the province and the feds to come on board.”
Richmond council also took some action last year regarding other key issues identified during the 2022 municipal election, including community safety, sustainability and business support – actions on which are still being discussed, according to those who spoke to BIV.
This includes working with Vancouver Coastal Health to look into hiring more mental health officers, building new bike lanes and having the dike raised to prevent flooding.
On public safety and crime, the city’s statistics showed a year-over-year decrease in arson, breaking and entering and theft from automobiles in August, while automobile theft, drug-related offences and shoplifting rose.
“People have a general impression that the public safety is getting worse,” said Au. “But when we look at the statistics, it doesn’t seem to be the case.”
Council endorsed a Community Energy and Emissions Plan 2050 last year, which includes actions to achieve a 50-per-cent reduction in community greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030 and to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
Au said the city is also looking into streamlining the application process for building permits and the application process for development.
“I think it’s fair to say that things are moving forward,” he said.
