ABC Vancouver Councillors vote to displace 40 long-term residents for Hotel

On July 28, Vancouver‘s City Council voted to displace 40 working-class, long-term tenants for a hotel development, in spite of intense opposition from the majority of 300+ Vancouverites who signed up to speak at the public hearing. held two weeks earlier.

The Myron Manor Collective, currently living in the relatively affordable units on the lot, is under pressure. On one hand, they are opposing attempts by Nicola Wealth and Lotus Capital Corporation to replace their housing with a hotel. On the other hand, the Vancouver City Council—dominated by the “A Better City” (ABC) party—along with city officials, has supported the rezoning as part of a broader initiative to increase the city’s hotel capacity.

All of this is happening amid urgent calls to build more affordable housing in a city that ranks fifth on a list of the world’s “least affordable” cities.

While the hearing had been scheduled to take place 18 to 24 months after the initial request, the developer had asked to move it up to just 9 months. This change had not been communicated to the tenants, who were caught off guard when they found out about it recently. Furthermore, the City Council did not ensure that the developer provided specific dates to the tenants. The tenants only learned of this one month before the public hearing was set to begin, through a referral report published on June 2nd.

Hundreds of speakers showed up to council to voice their opposition to the displacement of Myron Manor’s residents. Only a very small minority of speakers, none of them residents or connected to the residents, spoke in favour of the rezoning.

Destination Vancouver and the “Hotel Crisis”

Per Sydney Ball, an organizer with the Mount Pleasant Chapter of the Vancouver Tenants Union, a prominent ABC councillor, Deputy Mayor Sarah Kirby-Young, “appeared to be visibly annoyed that [the rezoning hearing] was taking so long, annoyed that the councillors were talking about displacement.”

Before becoming a City Councillor, Kirby-Young was an executive with Destination Vancouver. The non-profit describes itself on LinkedIn as the “official destination marketing and management organization” for the city’s tourism industry. It represents 600 member businesses and partners including most of the region’s independent hotels and major chains like Best Western, Fairmont, Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, and others.

Destination Vancouver has been a major proponent of the position that the city is facing a “hotel crisis”. Hospitality sector union Unite Here Local 40 has openly contested this position, stating that it is “A Developer Giveaway, Not an Affordability Solution.”

The union maintains that “Destination Vancouver released the 2025 Hotel Community Impact Assessment conducted by a task force dominated by industry stakeholders and developers. They say that its explicit goal was to promote supportive hotel policies and help ‘de-risk’ investments for developers.”

Ball observed that the ABC councillors’ actions at the hearing show that “they know who their constituents are, and their constituents are not renters. They do not care about their lives whatsoever.” The tenants are planning to file a legal challenge against the city for “breaches of procedural fairness.”

Michael Cook told The North Star following the decision that “[the collective is] feeling determined. We have a lot more work to do to expose what ABC and hotel developers like Nicola Wealth are doing to our city. ABC has shown they prioritize eliminating working-class family homes on behalf of billionaire real estate speculators. They’re working very hard to do as much as possible before the [October municipal elections in B.C.].”