Dear Editor
Burnaby will welcome 500 Syrian refugees, violently displaced from their homes and communities by war, hunger and desperation. We welcome them here.
At the same time, city council’s rezoning of Maywood rental apartments to make way for condo towers is displacing people out of their homes and communities by giving the green light to demolitions and evictions.
Ironically, many of those being evicted are refugees who found housing and networks of support in these very same affordable three-storey apartment buildings now being targeted for destruction. Council is wantonly violating its own selectively sacrosanct bylaws, which say that the maximum height for these buildings is three storeys, yet council is approving towers over 40 storeys. And these apartments “should be protected” under the existing Metrotown Community Plan.
The legality of council’s actions is dubious. The rezonings appear to violate the Local Government Act, which states changes in density require amendments to community plans. These amendments require broad pubic consultations.
These legally required amendments and consultations were agreed to by council back in December 2010, when it secretly passed the “text amendment” to allow for massive density increases and the supersize towers in Burnaby’s four town centres. The consultations were to begin “immediately” with Metrotown.
But planning staff say they are too busy, and council is OK with that.
Some of the forces responsible for displacing people by the violence of war in Syria are at work here in the economic form of displacing people from the Metrotown neighbourhood by rezonings and apartment demolitions.
Council is guilty of putting hundreds of lower-income residents, including refugees, out of their homes, and hundreds more are slated for displacement in the new year.
So as new refugees arrive in Burnaby, Mayor Derek Corrigan and council need to heed the principle “first do no harm,” follow the law, and stop catering to the interests of wealth and power that result in the displacement of refugees who are already here.
Alliance Against Displacement: Janice Beecroft, Charter Lau, Helen Ward – Burnaby First Coalition 2014 candidates; Rick Erb, ACORN member; Rick McGowan, founder, Metrotown Residents’ Association.
