Council last week was made longer by two issues for which we received delegations, both resulting in long conversations. I’m going to try to do my best to unpack these two conversations here, but before I do, I’ll offer another of my hopefully-redundant-by-now caveats. As both of these issues have various political angles to them, and as Council was clearly not aligned on some of the core political issues at hand, it is hard to talk this out without approaching politics. So where I try to keep my Council reports as close to “just the facts”, this one will probably have a bit more opinion thrown in. As always, it is important to remember this is a my blog, not official City or Council communications, so opinions expressed here are not that of the City or of Council, and some of them might not even be mine!

Also, there were delegations from the public on both of these topics, and Council deliberated on them right after, so you can watch the video (it is available here, and these topics start at 1:20:00) and hear the conversation yourself, I’m sure you will hear ideas you agree with and those you disagree with, and such is democracy. So fairly warned:

K de K Court Boulevard Trees
Residents in a strata on the Quayside have expressed concern to the City that the trees in front of their complex are too large and blocking their view of the river. Specifically, the trees are larger than the City suggested they would be when they were planted on the City land adjacent to their condo units back in 2007. This issue came to Council in 2017 with the residents asking the trees to be removed, and the City instead undertook an enhanced pruning schedule for these trees to hopefully train them back to what was originally suggested. After a few years, it is apparent this strategy will not work, as the trees continue to expand to a size that continues to impact peoples’ enjoyment of their suites.

Since this first bubbled up, the City has adopted a bunch of new policies around trees, including the Urban Forest Management Strategy and the Seven Bold Steps Climate Action Plan, both of which set ambitious plans for increasing the tree canopy cover in the City. This means new guidelines and restrictions around removing trees on private property, and an aggressive tree planting strategy for public lands in the City. To be really clear, removing trees from public land to improve or protect peoples’ views does not align with any of these policies or strategies. I didn’t hear anyone on Council advocate for the removal of these trees.

However, there was a recognition that this is a long-standing issue, and the City’s responses over the last 15+ years has not brought the results either the homeowners or the City had hoped for. There have been agreements created between the residents and the City, and notwithstanding our new policies, there is a responsibility to acknowledge, and as best we can be true to, the nature of those agreements. The final decision of Council was to continue the work being done under the 2017 agreement with enhanced pruning and tree care while working with the Strata to find a resolution to their issues.

As an aside, there was some talk during the deliberation about the City agreeing on tree removal elsewhere in the City, I think it is worthwhile clarifying what our policy and practice is. We do not remove trees from city land to improve people’s views, nor do we typically prune or shape city trees to improve views, though we do prune to support the health and safety of the tree as it grows. We sometimes remove city-owned trees if they are unhealthy or dangerous, but this is an arborist-driven decision based on detailed analysis of the tree health.

On private lands, we will permit the removal of a tree that is diseased or dangerous, but it must be replaced on a one-for-one or two-for-one basis. We will also sometimes permit the removal of healthy trees if there is a zoning entitlement that cannot be fulfilled with the tree in place, or through redevelopment. We then require replacement on a (typically) two-for-one basis. We generally require that the tree be replaced on the same property, but if you are building higher density housing, often there isn’t room on the property for all of the replacement trees to flourish. In this case the City may take cash-in-lieu of replacement, so the City can use that money to pay for planting those replacement trees elsewhere in the City, typically on City property like boulevards or parks. The goal is no net loss of trees, with 2-for-one replacement as a way of mitigating the fact a large mature tree provides more canopy cover than a necessarily-smaller replacement.

Cooling Equipment in Rental Units
Councillor Henderson and Councillor Nakagawa

BE IT RESOLVED that City Council direct staff to explore the tools available for the City to adopt a bylaw that requires rental units to have cooling equipment, or passive means, that prevents at least one room of the unit from exceeding the standard recommendation of 26 C (79 F);
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the City write a letter to the Minister of Housing to request clarification and confirmation that these upgrades would not trigger legal renovictions or the Above Guideline Rent Increase permissible by the Province.

Since the Heat Dome of 2021, the City and the Province have taken a number of measures to prevent the deaths that shocked the region and this City. In New Westminster we had 28 people die, for the most part vulnerable people living alone in homes that where the temperature was too high to support life. We have had several reports to Council over the last two years outlining extended measures we have been taking, partnerships we have created, and resources we have re-allocated to help vulnerable people get through the net time an extreme heat event like that occurs.

One part of this work is assuring people have access to cooling. In some buildings and for some people, that means assuring that the building has “one cool room” – a common room where people have access to a cool refuge without needing to leave their building, reducing anxiety about medication, pets, and the general comfort and security of home. We have also worked with Senior Series Society and Fraser Health to identify higher-risk folks for whom this may not work, and are targeting a program to provide air conditioners as a local augment to the program the BC Government is managing through BC Hydro.

Since these programs began rolling out, we have heard that many rental building owners were not permitting air conditioning in rental units. Some even sent vaguely threatening letters to all tenants informing them that the installation of even portable air conditioners could result in eviction. As egregious and callous as this is in the face of a disaster that killed dozens of people in our community – it is not strictly illegal. Provincial laws regulate rental housing, and they require that all housing must have fire protection, must have safe electrical systems, and must (most notably) adequate heating. When the Heat Dome became a mass-death event bigger than any fire or any winter blizzard, we have to ask whether regulating cooling is as important as the above.

The request in this motion is to look at local or provincial solutions to regulate maximum sustained temperatures in rental units, in a similar way that minimum sustained temperatures are already regulated. We have in the past been innovative in New West on protecting renters, including the use of Business Licensing to regulate what the Residential Tenancy Act fails to regulate. Up to now, much of our work to protect vulnerable people from future heat emergencies has relied on us providing incentives and direct public health interventions, and we are taking those as far as we can. At some point providers of housing – those whose business is providing housing to people – need to take responsibility for assuring the housing from which they are extracting rent is safe for occupation.

Importantly, this is not requesting specific prescriptive solutions. Just as the current regulations don’t require a specific type of heating for buildings, as long as heating is available and adequate to sustain life, we can introduce similar requirements and expect the market and engineering professionals find the specific solutions that work for any single building and living unit.

There were a few amendments added to the motion that saw little support. A few were to point this issue at the provincial government and to assess cost impacts and concerns about electrical load impacts. Both of these are, in my mind, follow-ups to after the initial work comes from staff as requested in the initial motion – if we have no tools or need to rely on Provincial tools, than that extra work is redundant. The motion is not asking to immediately implement these regulations, but for an assessment of the best tools the City can use to bring them in so at that time we can assess secondary impacts as we always do through new bylaw development. As it is a non-prescriptive motion, the emphasis on in-room air conditions is premature, and frankly the emphasis on electrical demand is a bit of a red herring as modern portable air conditions have power demands similar to an electric kettle or hair dryer – two appliances that are not regulated in most residential tenancy agreements. There was also a request to consult with tenants rights organizations, which seems unnecessarily delaying to initial work here when we have representatives of several renters rights organizations delegating at this very meeting asking for exactly what the motion is requesting.

In the end, Council supported this motion as originally written, and this is work that will be coming back to Council for future discussion, which will hopefully prompt deeper conversations not just in New Westminster, but across the province, about measures that may be required to help vulnerable people in our communities adapt to climate disruption.