It was a pleasure to sit down on September 19th for a long chat about housing in New Westminster with our incumbent city councillors running for re-election. You can hear the full conversation on our podcast Multiple Offers – A Real Estate Show with Competing Perspectives.
The following are Matt Brabbins’ thoughts on the experience:
Let’s first start by acknowledging that New West City Councillors often have a full time job in addition to their civic responsibilities. I extend my sincere appreciation to them for coordinating their schedules to attend. We were joined by all four incumbents running for re-election: Chuck Puchmayr, Jaimie McEvoy, Mary Trentadue and Patrick Johnstone.
We discussed their past performance and ideas for the future to improve housing in three core categories: rentals, homeowners and prospective purchasers, and infrastructure challenges related to housing development.
I’ll share with you my key takeaway from each category.
1. Rentals
I learned that the candidates plan to continue investigating a new option to create rental-specific zoning. The intent is to zone a piece of land for rental use only in order to prevent a rental from being torn down to make way for condos. I’m curious to see how they propose implementation. Will all current rental buildings be re-zoned to rental? Or will it be more complex where some do not get re-zoned and how would that decision be made?
Click here to read more about the announcement made in April.
2. Homeowners and prospective purchasers
All of our guests agreed that the City needs to be open to more options for townhouses and rowhouses. The candidates aren’t opposed to a developer getting creative and they will entertain any proposal. MY personal counter-argument is that developers don’t like to invest time and money into a ‘creative proposal’ just to watch it get denied. I recommend council takes the initiative and gets the more ‘creative’ options included as ‘acceptable’ options.
3. Infrastructure challenges
I was shocked to learn that when our city drainage system in Sapperton is overloaded during heavy rains the overflow goes directly into the Fraser River. You may not know that our drainage system is combined storm and sewer….That means we’re pumping raw sewage directly into the Fraser!
Find out which issues are most important to you and who should get your support in the upcoming election by listening to the full interview.
Click here to listen to the full podcast episode. Or subscribe using your favourite podcast platform. Don’t forget the show title: Multiple Offers – A Real Estate Show with Competing Perspectives.