Dear Editor
The merciless rezoning of Metrotown’s densest rental neighbourhood (Boundary-Grange/Kingsway- Royal Oak-Imperial) must stop immediately. In order to build a condo skyscraper zone, the city is throwing a large area of affordable rental housing stock before the bulldozers without appropriate public consultation.
The city’s actions are unethical, undemocratic and inhumane.
Replacement before displacement: Affordable rental housing must be replaced (by affordable market rental units, social housing, co-ops) before tenants can be displaced.
Destroying 3,000 rental units in Burnaby’s Metrotown rental zone means disrupting the lives of up to 6,000 people and throwing thousands of people into uncertainty. If the city approves the rezoning plan that the council is going to vote on in November, then the catastrophe will accelerate and we will see demoviction on steroids.
Contrary to Mayor Corrigan’s parrot-like auto-response that “there is nothing we can do,” the power to prevent this huge disaster lies absolutely in the hands of the city. No. 1: stop and revise the Metrotown rezoning plan; No. 2:stop granting development permits.
Erika Schinzel, Burnaby
