The Family
Question.
A city is a home passed from one generation to the next. What happens when the children who grew up here can no longer afford to inherit it?
This is the missing voice at the heart of Vancouver’s housing crisis. Not only the voice of the homeowner. Not only the voice of the developer. Not only the voice of the planner. Not only the voice of the investor.
The missing voice is the child who grew up here and now wonders whether Vancouver still has room for them.
Mom, Dad —
I love this city.
I grew up on these streets. I rode my bike to the park. I went to local schools. I imagined that one day I might raise my own family in a neighbourhood like ours.
When you bought your home decades ago, it was still possible to believe that a home was mainly a place to live — a place to anchor a family, build a life, know your neighbours, and grow old with dignity.
Today, the system has turned too many neighbourhoods into financial instruments. Your home may now look like a multi-million-dollar asset on paper, but my friends and I — with degrees, jobs, and years of work behind us — are competing for basement suites, delaying families, leaving the city, or giving up on the idea of belonging here.
We did what we were told to do. We studied. We worked. We followed the rules.
But while we were growing up, who was making the decisions at City Hall?
- Who decided what would be built?
- Who decided what would be protected?
- Who decided what would be sold as progress?
- Who measured whether local incomes could survive local housing costs?
- Who asked the generation that would inherit the consequences?
I do not want to leave Vancouver.
But how am I supposed to live here?
The Ultimate Missing Voice
When my father asked, “Whose voices are missing from the record?”, this is one of the generations he was talking about.
For years, Vancouver has treated the housing debate as if it were only a technical problem, an investment problem, or a supply problem. It is also a family problem. It is a belonging problem. It is a democratic problem.
If the children of Vancouver cannot imagine a future in Vancouver, then the city has broken an intergenerational promise.
The Black Box Reality
The Black Box model treats the city as a machine. It feeds in land, taxes, technical reports, density targets, political language, and private capital. Then it produces outputs: rezonings, displacement, unaffordable rents, exhausted residents, and neighbourhoods that feel changed before people understand what happened.
But a city is not only a spreadsheet. It is not only a skyline. It is not only a market. A city is memory, continuity, care, and public trust.
When a city becomes a commodity before it remains a community, the next generation is pushed out of the place it was supposed to inherit.
Not Anti-Housing — Anti-Black-Box Planning
TheOpenGov is not anti-housing. It is not anti-density. It is not about freezing Vancouver in time. The issue is not whether Vancouver changes. The issue is whether change is transparent, accountable, livable, and tied to the people who must live with the consequences.
Density must come with:
- • Real infrastructure.
- • Clear affordability tests.
- • Local income analysis.
- • Public benefit tracking.
- • Neighbourhood consultation before decisions.
- • Language access outside technical English.
- • A public ledger showing what was promised vs. delivered.
Respecting the Neighbourhood
A neighbourhood is not a museum. But it is also not raw material for a closed process. Respecting a neighbourhood means asking what makes it livable before changing the rules that shape its future.
It means recognizing that parks, schools, small businesses, trees, sidewalks, community centres, libraries, seniors’ services, childcare, transit, and local trust are not decorative extras. They are the civic infrastructure that turns density into a real place to live.
Ask Us First
Before the city makes a major adjustment, before a neighbourhood is rezoned, before a public benefit is traded, before a family is priced out, and before the next generation is told to accept the result, City Hall must ask the people.
Not after. Before.
That is the meaning of Ask Us First.
We cannot rewrite the past. But we can demand a more transparent future.
Open the floor.
Open the ledgers.
Open the assumptions.
Open the record.
Return the voice to the people who live here now — and to the generation that still hopes to stay.
Peter Tu [杜宗驥] • TEAM 2026
Restoring Intergenerational Livability
Authorized by the Financial Agent for Peter Tu and TEAM [溫哥華選民行動運動]
