Catching up on some stuff here, but all still relevant.
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the group of younger people that has coalesced into a kind of pro-density group called Abundant Housing, partly inspired by the YIMBY groups that are springing up in other cities — San Francisco being the first. They are showing up at council meetings to support new projects in the city, especially rentals. (One group of projects they don’t support: Burnaby condo developments built by tearing down the low-cost apartments there.)
In an unplanned coincidence, Kerry Gold wrote (also in the Globe) about the young people who started the group Housing Action for Local Taxpayers, which has focused much more on the demand side of Vancouver’s wacko housing problems.
These two groups represent a new wave of activism — albeit from different perspectives — from young people who feel like the housing system and policies in the region really aren’t working for them.
All of us should be watching to see where these articulate and impatient-for-new-solutions groups and people end up — my guess is they will increasingly have an influence over how the region is shaped in the next 50 years.