Vancouverites may be buying bananas over bratwursts from the city's street vendors if Coun. Heather Deal has her way.

Deal is forwarding a motion next week to have Vancouver's Food Policy Council report on increasing healthy food options made available through the city's street vendor program.

"I love the hotdog carts ... but we live in an incredibly multicultural city with all kinds of different food," Deal said. "I think it would be really great for people to have that variety available."

The Vision councillor said she clued in on the idea to expand food options after learning of a recent New York City council decision to issue 1,000 permits for mobile fruit and vegetable stands in an effort to target obesity in low-income neighbourhoods where affordable produce is hard to find.

Deal wants Vancouver's 65 food vendors to follow suit and offer healthier choices.

Local hotdog vendor Muhammad Naseem said customers who frequent his stand come for convenience.

"Healthier people don't come to street vendors to buy, for example, an apple," Naseem said. "But, we have healthier options too - like veggie dogs or chicken dogs."

Deal also wants to expand the area where vendors can sell food, but such a plan may come at the cost of other city services, according to civil engineer Grant Woff. "It's a pushing and shoving match, so if you feel the priority for food vendors needs to be higher, then maybe some could go in but at the expense of other facilities on the sidewalk like bus shelters."

- Dharm Makwana, 24 hours

Report paints grim picture for renters

Severely cramped households and rents priced out of reach for recent immigrants are just the tip of the affordability iceberg, say the proponents of a new report that examined four apartment buildings in a Vancouver neighbourhood.

The study found 32 out of 77 tenants surveyed lived in overcrowded households, with three or more residents sharing one bedroom.

Researchers found bachelor apartments occupied by families of five or six. Of the overcrowded homes, a vast majority - 88 per cent - were occupied by new immigrant or refugee families.

That the survey found such dire need in north Mount Pleasant, seen as the city's "last breadbasket" of affordable rental housing, should be a wakeup call, says one of the report's proponents, Pivot Legal Society lawyer David Eby.

"This was just a study of one neighbourhood," Eby said. "It's hard to imagine what could be found in other neighbourhoods."

Eby said governments need to make sure affordable housing is made a mandatory part of all future developments.

"The market has failed in Vancouver to provide affordable housing," Eby said. "It just doesn't do it."