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Wood said it’s time to address the growing inequity in how and where density is being allowed in the city. “The west side has a really troubling history of exclusionary zoning, although we have decades and decades of demand for affordable housing in the area.”

Access to the University of B.C., and parks like Jericho beach and Spanish Banks, make the area ideal for families and students, and relieve pressure on areas like East Vancouver that have been loosening zoning restrictions and absorbing more and more people, said Wood.

Wood said public support is critical to countering the strong NIMBY lobby that has kept the west side on a virtual lockdown. San Francisco-based density expert Sonia Trauss, a proponent of YIMBY — or Yes in My Backyard — was in Vancouver last week arguing the case for increasing housing stock.

“We shouldn’t allow a few individuals to veto housing for a lot,” she said.

West-side residents, especially homeowners, need to think not just about themselves, but also about where their children are going to live, said Wood. “Their children are not going to be able to afford a three- or four- or 20-million-dollar home.”

Small shifts in zoning to allow townhouses, low-rise apartments and secondary suites, and the six-storey, mixed-use proposal for Broadway and Alma, are necessary steps to creating badly needed rental stock, he said.

“Broadway and Alma is a great example of a neighbourhood with excellent transit, walkability and access to amenities,” said Wood.