Mount Pleasant tenants fight to keep their homes, but the Broadway Plan beat goes on

On a Monday evening in late spring, 10th Avenue just east of Main Street is quietly buzzing with activity. Everywhere you look, people are walking in ones and twos along the shaded sidewalks, while cyclists and scooter riders zip along the well-used bike route, and crows caw expectantly from the sprawling tree canopy high above.  

When I meet Sara Smith, she’s greeting a crow that’s perched near her side yard. Smith, who works as an education assistant with the Vancouver School Board, has lived in the basement suite of what’s affectionately known as the ‘purple house’ for about a decade. 

It’s one in a row of three detached houses rezoned last night following a public hearing. The rezoning approved a 17-storey rental tower for the site, which includes 138 rental units with 20 per cent of the building’s floor area to be offered at 20 per cent below-market.

The so-called purple house, now painted a drab grey, is a long-standing shared house with eight people living there, Smith said. Madeleine Chaffee is one of six people who live on the main floor of the purple house above Smith.

“This home is not just affordable — it's a sanctuary and a hub of creative and community activity… This is real, functioning housing that supports the city’s social and cultural fabric,” Chaffee, who’s an artist who works from home, wrote in a submission to city council opposing the rezoning. 

“We're a really tight-knit community,” Smith told Vancity Lookout. “We've put so much into this neighbourhood,” and watched it grow and change, becoming more vibrant, but now “we just feel like we're being pushed out,” Smith said.  

It’s nothing out of the ordinary for new developments being brought forward under the Broadway Plan, which allows for buildings up to 18 storeys along that part of 10th Ave. 

In fact, a slightly taller, denser development is being proposed for the four lots on the other side of the purple house. One block east, there are two other similarly-sized rental developments that had their rezonings approved last winter, and one block west there’s a proposal for a 25-storey mixed-use rental building across the street from Kingsgate Mall.   

“I think a lot of what we've learned from the [Broadway Plan so far] is we got a lot more activity and rezoning than perhaps we even anticipated, which is, I think, a good sign,” Josh White, the city’s director of planning, told Vancity Lookout in early June. “There's lots of interest in the plan.” 

Asked why there’s been so much interest, White said he thinks it's a reflection of the underlying demand for housing, particularly rentals, and the attractiveness of the neighbourhoods included in the plan area. 

In the December 2024 update to the plan, which came in response to provincial legislation around transit-oriented development, the city removed all tower limits (in terms of the number of towers per block) in many areas, including on the north side of 10th Ave. from Prince Edward to Carolina St. 

“Our interpretation [was] that within certain proximity to stations, within tier one and tier two, we can't really enforce a tower limitation, and so part of the updates were to align with that legislation there,” White said. 

However, some areas where tower limits were removed, including the 400 and 500 blocks of East 10th, fall outside those tier one and two zones. 

Carrie Dawson worries about the speed of change and reduced affordability in the neighbourhood where she’s lived with her daughter for the past 22 years. Dawson is gardening in the backyard when Smith and I head next door to chat together. 

“I feel like we were part of making the neighbourhood what it is now,” Dawson said. “I’ve always felt very lucky to be here and I don’t want to leave,” Dawson said, saying it’s devastating to potentially have to move.     

Tenants in six out of the nine units are eligible for the extended tenant protections laid out in the Broadway Plan. Those include the right to return to a similar unit in the new building at the tenant’s current rent, and logistical and financial support to find new housing until they can move back. Smith and Dawson are two of those eligible tenants. 

Ahead of the public hearing, Smith and Dawson were clear that they wanted to see the application be denied by city council. But, with it proceeding, they want to get clearer communication about when they would need to move out and certainty that the protections being offered – which are required by the city through Broadway Plan permitting, rather than having the full legal force of the provincial Residential Tenancy Act – will come through and be enforced. 

“Obviously, none of us want to leave this area and uproot our lives. But if that's the case, if we have to do it, then, of course, I want to come back,” Smith said. 

“I would like to [return], depending on what that looks like. Is it just going to be all towers, no trees? Is there still going to be that feel of a community?” Dawson wondered. 

The trees are a very noticeable part of the streetscape here, and were a major cause of concern at Tuesday’s public hearing. The road, sidewalks, and front yards on the block are shaded by 22 mature horse chestnut trees, which stand between 50 and 70 feet tall and are so dense they create an unbroken tunnel of foliage during the spring and summer. Out front of the houses, someone has strapped a large sign to one of them that reads “save me and my fellow trees.” However, the developer’s rezoning application for the site actually recommends that all those street trees be retained (to be confirmed in the next permitting stage), though there is a large maple tree in good condition on the site that is recommended for removal. 

While Smith and Dawson will have the option to return to their home neighbourhood – albeit in different circumstances – other tenants at the site aren’t eligible for the plan’s renter protections. To qualify, a lease needs to have begun more than a year before the rezoning application is submitted. 

Three out of the nine units, or 33 per cent, aren’t eligible for renter protections, according to city documents. The city uses tenancies to measure and assess renter protections, rather than the people who live there. 

That means that, while some units may be eligible, not all the tenants living there are necessarily qualify. For example, for Chaffee and the five others living on the main floor of the purple house, only two of those tenants are on the lease though they all live there full-time. 

Rusaba Alam, one of the tenants in the house next door, presented information at the public hearing — collected from neighbours in all three houses — that seven out of 20 tenants at the site who aren’t eligible under the Broadway Plan’s tenancy protections. Alam is one of those who don’t qualify.

At the public hearing, Hans Fast, representing the developer, Fastmark Acquisitions, said they would consider extending assistance to help relocate tenants who don’t qualify for tenancy protections, in response to requests from Coun. Lucy Maloney and Sean Orr. ABC councillors voted against an amendment from Coun. Orr to have staff work with the applicant on a voluntary basis to extend those protections. 

“I think it’s unacceptable at the policy level for council to expect people to rely on the kindness of individual developers to patch up gaps that it’s the city’s responsibility to remedy,” Alam said following the hearing.

Staff said they will be starting a review of the Broadway Plan’s tenancy protections in early 2026, to be presented to council sometime in late 2026 or early 2027.

Alam, sitting in her front yard with her cat Bug, described the experience of bouncing between rentals. Alam left their previous place when that lease was cut short after about six months due to redevelopment. 

“It was really like a sense of deja vu. It's like, Oh, I feel like I just weathered this,” Alam said about getting the news in May 2024 that their current unit would be redeveloped after moving in in late 2023. 

Alam said they’re concerned that the cycle of displacement without protection will continue. “What are the options for places that I might be able to go? Well, I might be looking at somewhere really similar to this,” that will soon be redeveloped, noting she’s currently paying a below-market rate. 

What it means 

If completed as proposed, the project would add a significant amount of rental housing to the site, replacing nine rental units across three detached houses with 138 rental units. All told, the four rental towers proposed along this two-block stretch of East 10th would amount to 635 rental apartments replacing detached houses. 

From a high-level policy perspective, it’s a culmination of the supply-based solutions being advanced by the civic and provincial governments in an effort to address the housing crisis that has come to dominate the psychic and material conditions of the city. It’s a situation reflected in the common knowledge that Vancouver’s asking rents are the highest in the country, more people are being pushed into homelessness or out of the city, and home ownership has become a distant fantasy for most young people. 

But in the face of this untenable predicament, it’s easy to get lost in abstract numbers and policy and become disconnected from the real people whose lives are being changed. The city’s complex and uncertain protections for renters in these areas are certainly better than nothing, despite concerns with compliance and communication. Likewise for the developer’s comment that they would consider extending renter protections to other tenants. It’s something, but, as a consideration, it’s slippery, non-binding, and voluntary, and may or may not be followed up on or executed on by the developer, particularly without involvement from city staff and outside the scrutiny of a public hearing.

At the end of the day, people are still being displaced from their communities and ways of life. That deserves our collective attention and acknowledgement, and a concerted effort to support each other as our city continues to change.