Authored by Shannon Williams, Senior Planner, Community Development Department, City of Vancouver, Wash.
As Vancouver, Wash. (pop. 190,915) continues to grow and evolve, the question we face is not whether change will happen, but how to ensure everyone shares in its benefits. How can the City support growth and infrastructure improvements without prompting displacement that leads to the loss of homes, local businesses and cultural connections that make neighborhoods feel like home?
That’s why the City of Vancouver, in partnership with community organizations and residents, developed Reside Vancouver: An Anti-Displacement Strategy (PDF) — a roadmap for equitable development rooted in community voices, lived experience and shared prosperity.
Centering People in the Process
At its heart, Reside Vancouver emphasizes that equitable development is not just about housing; it’s also about people. It begins with recognizing that Vancouver’s communities of color, renters and lower-income residents (PDF) are disproportionately vulnerable to rising housing costs and limited access to opportunity.
Through deep community engagement, including focus groups, interviews and storytelling sessions, residents shared what housing stability and belonging mean to them. Their stories revealed that anti-displacement work must address not only affordability, but also the sense of security, dignity and connection that makes a place “home.”
The strategy organizes its recommendations around four key pillars — the Four P’s:
- People: Strengthen renter protections and empower residents to influence development in their neighborhoods.
- Preservation: Preserve and maintain existing affordable housing.
- Production: Create new, context-sensitive affordable housing by engaging community members in meaningful ways, so new developments address their needs.
- Prosperity: Support and expand long-term economic prosperity so residents can thrive and remain in their communities.
Beyond policy, Reside Vancouver calls for a way of working that centers community leadership. Anti-displacement is not something done for communities; it’s something done with them.
Fourth Plain: A Model for Community-Led Development
Nowhere is this approach clearer than in the Fourth Plain corridor, which is one of Vancouver’s most culturally diverse and economically vital areas. For more than a decade, the City has worked alongside residents and small businesses through its place-based Fourth Plain Forward Initiative.
Key projects like the Fourth Plain Community Commons and the Fourth Plain for All Investment Strategy show what community-centered equitable development looks like in action.
Fourth Plain Community Commons
Fourth Plain Community Commons is more than a mixed-use building. A partnership between the City of Vancouver and the Vancouver Housing Authority, it co-locates 106 affordable housing units with community gathering spaces and economic opportunities, including a 2,500-square-foot commissary kitchen to support emerging food-based businesses. Opened in 2023, the Commons fulfills multiple community-identified needs while creating a place where community, culture and economic activity can flourish.
Fourth Plain for All Investment Strategy
On Nov. 15, 2021, City Council took the bold step to endorse an investment framework dedicating 75 percent —or $25 million — of the City’s federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to the Fourth Plain area, home to the highest concentration of Vancouver’s equity-priority census tracts. Grounded in a decade of place-based work, this approach recognizes that targeted investments in a relatively small geographic area in partnership with the community can create a lasting impact. The resulting strategy was co-developed through dozens of engagement activities, small group discussions, a participatory budgeting workshop and an Investment Strategy Committee comprised of area residents and businesses. Affordable housing emerged as the top priority, along with investments in parks, transportation safety, economic development programs and a youth-designed grant program supporting cultural and community events.
Both projects show how the City’s role can evolve from simply regulating development to co-creating opportunity with community partners, ensuring that investment strengthens — rather than replaces — neighborhood cohesion and identity.
The Next Step: Building Vancouver’s Equitable Development Strategy
Vancouver’s equitable development and anti-displacement work is now entering a new phase. Building on the foundation laid by Reside Vancouver and years of place-based partnerships, the City is developing a citywide Equitable Development Strategy.
This next step represents the evolution of Vancouver’s commitment to addressing inequities by holistically connecting housing, economic opportunity and community investment within a single coordinated framework.
The Equitable Development Strategy will bring together three key areas of work:
- Housing and Anti-Displacement: Expanding on Reside Vancouver to continue centering community-focused housing policy, with policies and partnerships that help residents stay in place while creating pathways to affordable homeownership.
- Place-Based Equitable Development: Building on neighborhood initiatives like Fourth Plain Forward and The Heights District Plan to coordinate investments across departments to support equity and long-term community stability.
- A Citywide Roadmap for Equity: Outlining how the City approaches investments, decision-making and partnerships in every neighborhood, embedding equity into policies, programs and budgets to reduce disparities in housing, infrastructure and access to opportunity.
By uniting housing, place-based planning and community-centered development under one vision, the Equitable Development Strategy will align all of the City’s work around a shared goal: ensuring every Vancouver resident has a fair opportunity to live, work and thrive in their community.
This evolution moves Vancouver from responding to displacement after it starts to proactively shaping equitable outcomes through inclusive engagement, intentional planning and coordinated investment.
Looking Ahead: Building an Inclusive Vancouver
As Vancouver grows, the question is not whether change will happen, but how we shape that change.
Through Reside Vancouver, the City’s ongoing place-based equitable development work and the forthcoming Equitable Development Strategy, Vancouver is creating the tools and partnerships to guide equitable growth. These efforts will guide investments that lead to stability, opportunity and belonging rather than displacement and exclusion.
Cities become more resilient when housing, infrastructure and economic development investments are coupled with meaningful and relational community engagement. Vancouver’s evolving approach shows that equitable development isn’t a single project or policy — it’s a long-term commitment to doing growth differently and ensuring everyone has a place in the city’s future.
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