---
title: "Pete Fry on housing, safety and city hall spending"
description: "The Vancouver Greens' mayoral candidate told the Vancouver Sun on October 9 that cost of living, good governance and community safety are his top three issues, and that he wants to shift away from concrete tower construction."
canonical_url: "https://voche.me/news/pete-fry-interview-housing-safety-october-9"
last_updated: "2026-10-10T04:01:08.272Z"
---

The Vancouver Sun published an interview with [Pete Fry](/candidates/pete-fry) on October 9, in which the Vancouver Greens' mayoral candidate said his top three priorities are cost of living, good governance and community safety. Fry also said Vancouver's tower construction has largely stalled and that he wants to shift to wood frame buildings.

## Housing: wood frame over concrete

The Vancouver Sun reported that Fry said concrete tower construction has stalled, with many approved projects not yet breaking ground. He said the city should build more wood frame buildings, which current provincial rules allow up to six stories. "We can build it cheaper, faster," Fry told the Sun. He also said families are showing more interest in mid-rise buildings than in towers, and that US tariffs on Canadian goods are an opportunity to use local softwood lumber.

The provincial government has set housing construction targets for Vancouver. Fry told the Sun these targets have not been met. He described the shift to wood frame construction as the more challenging conversation when it comes to changing housing in neighborhoods with mostly detached homes.

## Safety and the Downtown Eastside

Fry told the Vancouver Sun that managing public space in and around the Downtown Eastside is something the city has not done well. He said he would set clearer rules about where certain activities are and are not acceptable, and create more sanctioned spaces. He also said that drug trafficking and consumption are criminal matters under federal jurisdiction, not directly under city control.

On overdose prevention sites, Fry said he would keep them open but set conditions around how they operate, rather than closing them as Mayor Ken Sim has proposed. "I think that Ken Sim has misstepped by trying to ban overdose prevention sites and ban supportive housing," Fry told the Sun, according to the October 9 article.

## City budget

Fry also criticized the detail behind Mayor Ken Sim's zero-percent property tax increase budget. He told the Vancouver Sun the budget arrived as a 24-page document with half the pages blank. He said that when he was first elected to council in 2018, budgets came as a stack of 600 pages, making it possible to evaluate each line. He said the thin document made it impossible to know what changes the zero budget actually contained.

These are Fry's characterizations of the budget. The Vancouver Sun reported them on October 9.

Voters can see all mayoral candidate pages and compare positions at [/candidates](/candidates). Election day is Saturday, October 17, 2026.

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