Dear Editor
Mayor Corrigan and the city council have been refusing to address ACORN’s concern’s since we have asked them to protect existing affordable rental housing stock in Burnaby over two years ago. Instead they have engaged on a public relations campaign that is misleading at best and untrue at worst.
When we have asked them not to rezone existing rental housing into highrise private condominiums, they said they don’t have any choice but to rezone as developers ask. This is nonsense, the city does not have to rezone to the needs to the speculators and developers who buy these properties to build highrise private condos. Cities have jurisdiction over local property zoning. The mayor and council have also claimed that if they don’t rezone the properties, the speculators and developers will tear them down and build new rental units to the three-storey limit. When we asked the city planners how many times this has happened in the last five years, they could only name one instance.
In Metrotown, when hundreds of rental units came under threat to be rezoned, ACORN joined the Alliance Against Displacement. The Alliance made a call to ‘Stop the Demovictions’ and to stop the demolitions and evictions of low-rise rental citizens of Burnaby.
The mayor and council then began to argue in the press that they don’t have the right to stop demolitions or refuse to issue demolition permits because owners have the right to tear down their own property.
The problem here is that we never asked the city to stop people being evicted by not issuing demolition permits.
It was clear in our communication to the City of Burnaby that we were asking for the city to refuse to rezone existing rental stock to highrise private condos. The cities of New Westminster and Vancouver have bylaws that prohibit this type of rezoning.
Of course the owner can tear down the units, but if they cannot build above four storeys, they will not realize a profit and will not tear down.
The mayor and council of Burnaby have continually tried to point the finger to other levels of government, and the ACORN members in Burnaby would love be able to focus on the federal and provincial governments to solve this problem.
However, despite Burnaby’s denials, the city is responsible for its zoning changes that are causing this massive displacement of lower income Burnaby residents.
The city will be the focus of both ACORN’s and the Alliance’s campaign until the city decides to take responsibility for its most vulnerable citizens.
Murray Martin, member of Burnaby ACORN chapter, Burnaby
