Meet the non-profit leaders vying for mayor

Vancouver’s next election is more than ten months away, but the race for mayor is already heating up. Amanda Burrows and William Azaroff, two local non-profit leaders without political experience, are the most recent hopefuls to throw their hats into the proverbial ring. 

Burrows and Azaroff are competing to be the mayoral candidate for OneCity Vancouver, a left-of-centre municipal party founded in 2014 by COPE’s former leadership.

“I am running to bring the heart back to Vancouver,” Burrows said at a launch event earlier this week at a jam-packed restaurant on Fraser Street in Sunset. A city with heart looks like lower rents and costs, investment in shared spaces for arts and culture and recreation, and public safety rooted in care rather than criminalization, Burrows said, outlining her top three priorities. 

A “lay preacher,” expert fundraiser, and the executive director of First United Church, Burrows comes across as confident, energetic, and playful. In the middle of answering questions from reporters, Burrows stopped to ask her mom, who was in the audience, if she also had a question. 

“What do you want for Christmas?” her mom volleyed back, to laughs from the crowd. 

Burrows is stewarding the nearly-completed redevelopment of First United’s property on the corner of Gore and Hastings streets, which will host a variety of social service programs for the public as well as 103 units of deeply affordable housing for Indigenous people. That project, contemplated since the 1980s, was kick-started in 2018 by a $10 million philanthropic donation. 

“I think there are real opportunities to bring together people that have access to resources and use those tools to create this change,” Burrows told Vancity Lookout, adding that she doesn’t think the city is maximizing that type of public-private partnership.

“There's a lot of philanthropists out there that I bet would love to invest in something like [First United’s project] … where the governments don't really make the investment because the risk is too high,” she added. 

Azaroff’s priorities have some overlap with Burrows. For him, there’s a focus on maintaining and building city facilities like libraries and community centres, creating more opportunities for small and medium-scale apartment buildings to be built in every neighbourhood, and providing more funding for artists and arts organizations. 

Azaroff said he initially declined when OneCity asked if he’d put his name forward as a candidate for the party’s mayoral nomination in August. However, after mulling it over and getting positive feedback from friends and family about an election run, Azaroff reconsidered. 

“I had not thought about elected office … but once that door was open, I found I couldn't stop thinking about it,” Azaroff told Vancity Lookout. 

With a wealth of experience in local organizations, including over a decade in executive positions at Vancity Credit Union, Azaroff has spent the past six years as the CEO of Brightside Homes, a non-profit housing developer.  

“When you're on the board or the CEO or an executive at community-owned organizations, your goal is to provide your service to as many people as needed as possible,” Azaroff said, making a distinction between roles he’s held compared to those in the private sector, where the primary goal is to make a profit.  

“I think [with] all that experience, to me it makes more sense to go for mayor,” Azaroff said, rather than a less prominent position like city councillor.    

According to Azaroff, one potential way to improve affordable housing delivery could be to shift city policy away from the growing practice of inclusionary zoning in market rental housing. This is where individual projects or entire areas are required to rent a certain percentage of a new building’s units, usually 20 per cent, at below-market rates. 

“The city has to administer those and check up on them. There's a lot of bureaucracy that's needed to make sure the right thing is happening … there’s a chance it's actually asking the private sector to do something that the non-profit sector does better,” Azaroff said. 

An alternative option would be for developers to make a cash contribution to the city, which would be pooled and used to fund a below-market project operated by a non-profit, Azaroff said. He added that there’s not yet enough data on how well the current inclusive zoning approach is working, and getting that information over the next couple years would inform his position. 

Burrows has strong connections to the Downtown Eastside and Chinatown, where she lives and works, and she highlighted how her frontline work there allows her to see and hear the issues people are facing directly.  

Norm Leech, who holds leadership positions in numerous community groups, including Aboriginal Front Door Society, the Downtown Eastside Community Trust, and Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House, attended the launch event in support of Burrows. 

“Amanda's down there every day, and she knows firsthand what it's really like,” Leech told Vancity Lookout. 

“We see her big development going up. It's an amazing success story. She's working well with Indigenous housing societies to make that happen. She has good relations and she's very good at building good relationships with different organizations in the community,” Leech said of Burrows’ work in the Downtown Eastside with First United. 

Both Burrows and Azaroff emphasized their desire to connect with and represent the city as a whole. As a faith leader, Burrows said she goes to different United Churches around the city on Sundays to preach and listen to people’s visions for the city. 

For Azaroff, he mentioned his long-time connections to Strathcona, Cambie Village, and Mount Pleasant, but also pointed to how his professional experience has led him to interact with neighbourhoods all over Vancouver. His work with MODO car share, the Vancouver International Film Festival, as well as Vancity and Brightside, has him in touch with many different parts of the city.

With more than 1,000 members currently, OneCity is hoping to recruit more people into the party before they vote between the two candidates, Matthew Wigmore, OneCity’s nominations committee co-chair, told Vancity Lookout.

“We’ve never run a mayoral candidate before,” Wigmore said. Over its 11-year history, the party has been represented at City Hall by two councillors: Christine Boyle, now the NDP’s Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs in Victoria, and Lucy Maloney, who won a seat in the by-election this April.  

Wigmore said he thinks people are signing up for the party because of what the party has to offer, rather than new members joining to support one candidate over the other.

OneCity party members will get the opportunity to vote for either Burrows or Azaroff in February.