By: Olivia Sherman
Content warning: brief mention of colonial violence.
On October 26, Canadian magazine The Walrus hosted a series of speakers, ranging from experts to activists, to discuss equitable housing. The seven speakers each had seven minutes to present a different angle on Canada’s housing crisis. The Peak attended the event to hear more about the diverse problems facing Vancouver’s housing markets.
Kishone Roy:
Kishone Roy is an author and the executive director of the Federation of Community Social Services of BC. “Housing, for the first time I can remember, is the number one issue in the nation,” they said. Although Pacific Canada’s housing rates have always been high, Roy noted this issue is not limited to the West Coast anymore and has become a nationwide issue. “Not one province, city, First Nation, or regional district can solve this alone.” They theorize younger generations are being bought out of the towns and cities they grew up in and no longer own their own homes, due to sheer unavailability in the housing market. Young people “look around, and there are no affordable housing options for them [ . . . ] most of what has been built over the past 30 years are mansions and penthouses.” Roy refers to this as “generational gentrification.” Gentrification is the process of rapidly changing an urban area into a wealthier one by attracting people of a higher socioeconomic class with new buildings and businesses, usually leaving the original inhabitants displaced and underrepresented. Generational gentrification then occurs when young people are forced to move out of their home communities when looking for housing as their neighborhoods have increased in value over time.
Djaka Blais:
Djaka Blais is the executive director of the Hogan’s Alley Society, a Vancouver non-profit aiming to revive and support Vancouver’s Black population. “Our mission is to improve the lives of Black people through inclusive housing, cultural programs, and community spaces.” Blais announced the society is launching a community-based, Black-led land trust in Vancouver. Throughout the 1900s, Hogan’s Alley was a cultural hub for Vancouver’s largest Black community and neighbourhood. Through destructive city planning in the 1970s and the building of the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts, Hogan’s Alley and its once vibrant population were displaced, and “the heart of the Black community was lost,” Blais explained. “Our mission is to make sure that Black communities are not only remembered, but also provided with the spaces and housing we need to foster a more inclusive and equitable city.”
Samantha Eby:
Samantha Eby is a Toronto-based architect, researcher, and educator. Eby’s research with ReHousing focuses on how people can convert single-family homes into multi-purpose housings. She concluded that the people who build and plan housing significantly affect the way we live today. She uses professional development services as an example: housing development companies often have “investors in mind, rather than users,” which leads to a “housing stock that increasingly does not reflect the needs of our communities.” Eby’s research suggests users and owners should have more leverage over how their homes are designed. Citizen-designers have a variety of needs they can work toward addressing such as those wanting to age-in-place, multi-generational households, and community land trust. “With the right tools and knowledge, we believe these citizen-developers can take on their own projects and start to diversify both who is building and the type of housing within our cities.”
Lisa Rupert:
Lisa Rupert is the vice-president of housing and violence protection at the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), an organization aiming to support women, mothers, families, Two-Spirit, and gender-diverse people during tumultuous times. Rupert explained the gendered aspect of houselessness, and cited escaping abusive relationships as a common cause of houselessness. She said rates of gender-based violence and homicides have increased alongside rental costs, as more and more women are “economically forced to return to their abuser.” The YWCA advocates for affordable housing, especially for women leaving abusive households. They also campaign for a “national definition of homelessness that reflects the unique causes, conditions, and experiences of homelessness for women and gender-diverse peoples. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t name it and properly understand it.”
Stephanie Allen:
Non-profit real estate developer and corporate strategist, Stephanie Allen, has a different take on the housing crisis. “After decades in this work and having in-depth conversations with people who range from policy-makers and CEOs to disability justice experts and homeless people, and engaging with leading equity theorists, it’s occurred to me that the most important solution we haven’t fully tried yet, is love.” Allen said we must make policies and decisions based around compassion, care, community, and mutuality. She calls on society to believe in the “inherent dignity of all people, and in sharing our global village equitably and sustainably.” She said we must “fully interrogate” the belief that “we can only be safe and secure if we have more than the next person.”
Tim Richter:
Homelessness is “our choice to solve it or not,” said Tim Richter, the CEO and president of the Canadian Alliance Against Homelessness. “Homelessness is a housing problem. It is caused by high rent and low vacancy. It is not, I repeat, it is not, caused by mental illness, addiction, poverty, poor choices, or any other personal fault or failing,” he stated. He compared the housing market to a game of musical chairs: the stronger or faster the child, the more likely they are to gain a chair. It isn’t the fault of the child with a sprained ankle that they were unable to get a chair at the end of the round. “At the end, a fast, big, confident boy sits victorious in the last available seat. Now, the kids who lost: did they lose because of a disability? Because of a lack of physical strength? Did they make poor choices in the game? Or were there not enough chairs?” Richter noted that all 77,000 displaced victims of the 2013 Calgary flooding and the 75,000 evacuated people from Fort McMurray’s wildfires were able to get housing. “But in most cities, when we’re responding to the unnatural disaster that is homelessness [ . . . ] we put little to no focus on housing.”
Sxwixwtn (Wilson Williams):
Sxwixwtn, elected councillor and Spokesperson for the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation) discussed the upcoming units of affordable housing on Sen̓áḵw lands, now known as Kits Point in Kitsilano. Before colonization, the area was a central hub for many residing Indigenous communities for trading, commerce, social relations, and cultural practices. In the early 1900s, the BC government forced them to surrender the village before burning it down, sending an exodus of people from Sen̓áḵw to what is now North Vancouver. In 2003, the Federal government returned a portion of the land back to the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw. “Sen̓áḵw has the potential to partially right historic injustice,” noted Sxwixwtn. The development will be the largest First Nations land development in Canadian history, with 6,000 rental units. They will be able to house up to 9,000 people, with 20% of these units designated for affordable housing. “One of our main goals, at the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw, is to help address the housing crisis.”
