Russil Wvong | OneCity Vancouver Nomination 2026

Meet Russil

I was born in Vancouver, I studied computer science and math at UBC, and I work as a software developer. I’m married, with two children who are now young adults. I spend a lot of time reading and writing about housing. Like a lot of parents, we worry about where our kids are going to live.

Why is housing in Vancouver so scarce and expensive? The short answer is, we’ve made it that way. To paraphrase the recent MacPhail Report, we regulate new housing like it’s a nuclear power plant, and we tax it like it’s a gold mine.

It’s a terrible situation for younger people and renters, but it’s also bad for older homeowners. When younger people can’t afford to live here, hospitals find it very difficult to hire nurses and doctors.

Vancouver is like a bonsai tree: it’s lovely, but it’s much too small. We need to grow, or our workforce will keep shrinking as people retire here.

I'm seeking a city council nomination with OneCity because making Vancouver a city with room enough for everyone - not just the wealthy - is OneCity's mission statement! OneCity is a progressive party that's solidly pro-housing, recognizing that when there's an overall shortage of housing, it's worst for people who are lower- and middle-income. In 2022, OneCity's platform for housing was to make "six floors and corner stores" legal to build.

What do we need?

More family-sized apartments

Vancouver has limited land, because of the ocean and the mountains. To grow, we need to build up. This doesn’t necessarily mean high-rises. We could go a long way by making it legal to build Montreal-style plexes, which are single-lot apartment buildings with one family-sized apartment per floor. They're much faster to plan and to build than high-rises, and construction cost per square foot is lower.

A broader tax base

The standard advice from economists is to have relatively low tax rates on a broad base, instead of very high tax rates on a narrow base. Since the 1980s, the city has taken exactly the opposite approach, with extraordinarily high taxes on new housing: now more than $100,000 per high-rise apartment. We need to increase city revenue by growing our tax base, not by taxing new housing out of existence.

Better community services

As Vancouver grows, we don’t just need housing. We need the amenities that go along with it, like libraries, community centres, and parks. As the city auditor reports, we haven't been spending enough each year to keep these facilities in a state of good repair, much less expand them. We need to make them a higher priority.

Better transportation

Besides keeping our road network in a state of good repair, we need to make sure that public transit is frequent, reliable, and well-funded. With public transit as a reasonably fast alternative to driving, fewer people have to spend time driving to work, taking up more space on the roads, sitting in traffic, and slowing down all other drivers. This doesn't just mean SkyTrain: we can also improve the bus routes that people rely on, with measures like bus lanes and signal priority.