Aside from the incompatibility of the anti-change front’s desires with the future that the entire region is heading towards, one of tighter quarters and livelier spaces, there is a contradiction inherent to the vision that they have for West Vancouver’s destiny. Considering the attitude that many members of said coalition hold towards facts that lie outside of their subjective perceptions and lived experiences, this might not be surprising — however, it is in the details of this contradiction that they pose the greatest threat to the well-being of the community that they live in. The basic themes behind their perspectives on public policy appear to be: 1. a desire to protect property values from any sort of serious decline, 2. a general reluctance towards newcomers or outsiders entering their community, 3. a severe discomfort with directing any tax revenue towards projects that might benefit people from outside their community or socioeconomic class, and 4. a firm opposition to density being increased where it might affect their part of town, even if they are theoretically alright with it “somewhere that isn’t here”. Each of these alone leads to troublesome social (if not economic as well) consequences, but all four, taken together, conflict irreparably with one more guiding principle to their municipal policy preferences: 5. a desire to keep local businesses in Ambleside and Dundarave alive, thus retaining the specific atmosphere that the neighbourhood currently has. Unfortunately for West Van, many members of the anti-B-Line/workforce housing brigade seem to believe that the fifth principle logically follows from the first four; as such, it will be that last principle which ends up collapsing in the resolution of these contradictory goals, leading to the last thing anyone on any side of these discourses wants: for the vibrancy and life that remains in Ambleside and Dundarave to be extinguished, rather than reinvigorated by responsible, forward-thinking policy decisions.

Of those four principles, the one that needs the least introduction is the mentality on the part of homeowners that for legislation or policy to be “good”, it must not apply downward pressure on their property values (Badger 2018). Even if the specific “threats” that people take aim at in efforts to protect their equity are generally, in practice, non-issues (Sorrel 2016), the impulse at least makes sense; for example, about a quarter of Canadians expect that home equity will be their primary income source in retirement (CBC News 2014). However, without appropriate measures to keep housing costs from being distorted by land values, policies that aim to bolster property assessments pose a risk of severe unintended consequences. In much the same way that ascending land values often work to displace people (Gold 2019), the continued presence of high land values, especially in the absence of enough housing units to dilute that aspect of the cost of purchasing or renting, serves as a barrier to entry (Mangione 2018) for anyone who might want to live there, often regardless of how strong or weak the economy in general might be (Ruddy 2015). This displacement disproportionately affects certain sectors of the economy more than others, leading to communities where entire sections of the workforce are unable to live in the place where they work. There are factors that can mitigate this, though; aside from building more housing units on a given area of land, many places end up with many workers commuting in, and some actively contribute to efforts to make it easier for those workers to come and go, whether through infrastructure changes or financial contributions. However, West Vancouver might not have the benefit of any of those in the future — with a consequential fraction of its electorate starting to form a more cohesive political line against policies that would allow for such, the attitude of many homeowners their that their property values are sacrosanct will do nothing to help the community survive into the future.

A bus stop in West Vancouver. Photo by me.

The unwelcoming mentality of certain West Vancouverites mostly comes down to a combination of a hypocritical¹⁰, racist xenophobia (Takeuchi 2018), an aggressive disdain for the working class (PressProgress 2019), and the generally insular perspective that a decent portion of the community holds towards the rest of the region (Price 2019). While, in all likelihood, the majority of residents understand that their community’s survival relies upon the many workers who commute in from outside every day, and that its future is at least partially dependent upon new residents moving in from outside (especially if nothing is done to correct the housing unaffordability crisis), a troubling undercurrent in the community’s collective consciousness has surfaced during the B-Line discourse — that, to many, outsiders of any sort deserve to be subjected to difficulty when it comes to entering or existing there. In a town that had demographics conducive to maintaining a self-sustaining economy; a more typical distribution of ages and incomes, for example; once again, this line of thought would merely be problematic. This is not the case in West Van, though; with a lopsided balance of socioeconomic classes, and a median age that is gradually pushing closer and closer to retirement age (Statistics Canada 2016), the proper functioning of the municipal economy will only become increasingly reliant upon bringing in workers from outside. It is possible that a community which fervently defends its high property values and is unwelcoming to immigrants or commuters could manage to survive if they at least made it possible for those unwanted workers to get in and out in an expedient manner, or were willing to take measures to make housing more affordable for their own descendants; however, the political consensus of the “Stop the Road Closures” movement and their allies seems to be at odds with any realistic efforts to resolve either of those difficulties.

If reining in property prices or trying to make the town less hostile to outsiders end up being politically untenable due to the aforementioned fraction of the municipality’s voters, there is the option of investing money into better transportation or convenient housing for those workers who West Vancouver, whether some of its residents like it or not, needs to remain functional. In the infinite wisdom of said political faction, though, these sorts of measures, aside from myriad other objections, are viewed as a waste of tax revenue (Elvin-Jensen 2018) (Shepherd 2019). This attitude has arisen repeatedly throughout the course of the recent political debates in the town; assertions of “This won’t benefit West Van residents” are invoked frequently, often as an explicit rebuttal to any suggestion that it might be prudent to implement infrastructure or policy that will benefit workers, visitors, or customers from outside the District’s borders. Aside from worries about the government expenditures needed for these measures, there are also concerns pertaining to the character of the community; for some, buses six metres longer than the existing fleet (New Flyer Industries n.d.), or a few six storey apartment blocks (District of West Vancouver 2019), would just be too jarring of a change to their cute little commercial district, which has seen fewer than a hundred new rental units built since the 1970s (District of West Vancouver 2013). Much like the attitudes discussed previously, this would be more or less manageable in a political context where property values weren’t massive barriers to entry, and where new energy was welcomed into the town; unfortunately, though, this is a political stance held widely by the same people who hope to keep building up new equity indefinitely, and who almost overtly discourage anyone who is too dissimilar from them from moving into or staying in the municipality. In their resistance to the concept of putting even the slightest amount of money or effort into making the prospect of working in the suburb they live in less unappealing to all the care workers, customer service representatives, tradespeople, and lower-wage professionals who keep it from grinding to a halt, they effectively foreclose every hope for their community except for one — making it possible for their own children to stay around when they have to move out, so that they can work at the jobs that many West Vancouverites are “too important” to consider participating in.

A small shelter structure at Dundarave Park, overgrown with plants. Photo by me.

With those options for stemming West Vancouver’s loss of residents and workers off the table, there would really only be one viable route for the municipality to ensure that it will, in the future, have enough citizens, employees, and customers to save its economy and culture from fading into nothingness — making sure its children can stay where they grew up. Considering the unlikelihood of house prices correcting sufficiently, essentially the only option the District would be left with is implementing densification alongside regulations to enforce affordability for a portion of those new homes. While there are cases in which increased density is not particularly desirable, such as when the proposed increase in density would be a catalyst for intensified gentrification and displacement of marginalised communities (Quinn 2017), in comparatively affluent neighbourhoods with severely inflated land values (Antweiler 2016)¹¹, such as Ambleside and Dundarave, introduction of more density can be a useful avenue through which to improve affordability for renters and buyers, provided there are regulations to strongly incentivise or explicitly mandate the development of housing stock that is more affordable than what currently exists there (Shaw 2018). Regardless of what the community would gain from allowing for this density, and thus improvements in housing affordability, it is still an unpopular suggestion amongst many of those who are most fervent in rejecting the recent proposals surrounding transit improvements or workforce housing; some see it as a threat to the aesthetic of the community (McIsaac 2018), and others are concerned that it might just be a windfall for developers, at the expense of the community (Ambleside Dundarave Ratepayers Association 2019). In essence, many of those who benefitted from affordable property prices in the past would rather bar their own descendants from being able to remain in their community, rather than accepting relatively moderate changes so that they could continue to enrich the local culture and economy. Even with all the contempt for outsiders or refusal to invest in infrastructure that might benefit non-residents in the world, more density alone might just be enough to at least allow the municipal economy to sustain itself. Much of the town’s “missing generation” would have stayed had the financial side of doing so been less unviable (C. Chan 2018), but so far, there has been no indication that they’ll ever have an easier time staying in the future, or that even their own parents have any intention of making that possible.