An Intersectional Politics of Housing and Settlement Services for Refugees

Toronto’s Housing Crisis: An Intersectional Politics of Housing and Settlement Services for Refugees

Mary-Kay Bachour

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Human Geography Department of Geography and Planning University of Toronto

Mary-Kay Bachour

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Geography and Planning University of Toronto

2020

Abstract In this dissertation, I unpack the intersectional politics of the housing crisis in Toronto through the perspectives of frontline staff working in non-profit organisations. Two critical questions frame this study. Firstly, how have service providers addressed the housing and settlement needs of refugees in the context of Canada’s housing crisis? Secondly, how are race, class, language and citizenship status tied into the politics of housing and settlement service provision in

Toronto? Utilising semi-structured interviews with frontline staff employed in various non-profit across Toronto, this research identifies and analyses systemic barriers to housing access among newly arrived refugees in Canada as they cut across race, class, language and citizenship status.

This study interrogates the disjuncture between immigration and housing policies, programs and procedures and access to rental housing among refugees in Toronto. I draw on antiracist feminist frameworks, particularly intersectionality and theories of home-making, to enrich current conceptualisations of housing access and inequality in Canada. I unpack barriers refugees face when accessing the private rental market in Toronto, to reveal the multilayered ways in which marginalized communities experience housing inequality in Canada. In doing so, this dissertation reveals the limitations of the reliance on private housing stock for housing refugees as they face barriers, including lack of Canadian references and credit scores, lack of employment, language

ii barriers and housing discrimination. Additionally, this study underscores the limitations of settlement and housing service provision available to vulnerable populations, such as refugees in

Toronto. By engaging with the voices of frontline staff who consistently interact with refugees, this study sheds light on the intersectional praxis of service provision and the limitations service providers confront when administering programs for vulnerable populations in Toronto. Finally, this study unveils the roles community and grassroots organisations, such as the Ontario

Coalition Against Poverty, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, and

Parkdale Organize!, play in (re)imagining housing justice in Toronto. This study identifies and contributes a novel methodological and conceptual approach to housing research in geography by bringing to the fore frontline staff as a key category of analysis seldom featured in studies on

Canada’s housing system.

iii Acknowledgements

This dissertation was made possible through the support, feedback and guidance of many important individuals. To begin, I would like to thank all the research participants and staff interviewed for this project. Thank you for sharing your experiences, opinions and expertise with me. Your willingness to participate and share your knowledge for this project was invaluable. Thank you for your open and honest conversations and for all the work you do on a daily basis. I hope I have given your voices and the communities you serve justice within this project.

I would like to thank my supervisor, Rachel Silvey, for taking me on as a student and providing me with feedback and encouragement throughout. It has been quite the journey!

To all committee members, including Marieme Lo, Michelle Buckley, Audrey Kobayashi and Susannah Bunce, your discussions have been illuminating. Thank you for taking the time to read, challenge and contribute to my work.

I would like to give a very special thanks to Marieme Lo. You have witnessed and greatly contributed to my personal and professional growth as an antiracist feminist scholar. Your perseverance, work and dedication to antiracist praxis within the academy is truly inspiring. Scholars such as yourself have paved the way for future generations to pursue critical, antiracist feminist work and I am incredibly honoured to have been able to work with you throughout my university career. Thank you for your knowledge, insights, advice and warm encouragement. Words cannot express my gratitude.

I would also like to thank all of my PhD colleagues who I have met throughout the years. Thank you for sharing your insights and knowledge about your own research interests. I am privileged to witness the different types of critical research projects emerging from geography.

A special thanks goes out to all of my friends. I know you have all been waiting for this moment as much as I have. Thank you for always giving me love, support, advice and guidance during this time. You all motivated and contributed to my growth in different ways. Your support,

iv patience and care are not lost on me. Thank you for always being there for me and encouraging me to keep going. Your gestures of support meant more to me than you know! I want to give a special thanks to Thom, Sumaya, Ashley, Ania and Killian for their edits, discussions, advice and necessary breaks. Your company during this time meant a great deal.

Finally, to my mom, dad and brothers. Heartfelt thanks and gratitude to you for your patience, love and support. I am extremely excited to finally be able to share this very important moment with you all!

v Table of Contents Table of Contents ...... vi

List of Tables ...... ix

List of Figures ...... x

List of Acronyms ...... xi

List of Appendices ...... xii

1 Introduction ...... 1

1.1 Defining and contextualising the housing crisis in Canada: ...... 3 1.1.1 What is the housing crisis and whom does it impact? ...... 3 1.1.2 Why focus on refugees and housing inequality? ...... 6

1.2 Problem Statement ...... 8

1.3 Research objective and research question(s) ...... 10

1.4 Theoretical framework ...... 11

1.5 Research Methodology ...... 17 1.5.1 Data and research methods ...... 19 1.5.2 Being an insider/outsider in research: Situating my positionality ...... 28

1.6 Research contributions and map of dissertation ...... 29

2 Chapter 1: Engaging housing scholarship: Analysing the complex realities of refugees in Canada ...... 33

2.1 Introduction ...... 33

2.2 Part I: Race, space, and place: Conceptualising housing inequality in Canada ...... 35 2.2.1 The spatialisation of race and poverty in Canada ...... 36 2.2.2 Gentrification and the financialisation of the housing market in Canada ...... 41 2.2.3 Inclusionary zoning, municipal by-laws and supportive housing ...... 47

2.3 Part II: Limitations and tensions of the housing literature in Canada ...... 53 2.3.1 Refugees and housing access in Canada ...... 53 2.3.2 Housing discrimination in the Canadian private rental market ...... 57

2.4 Part III: A Housing justice model informed by antiracist feminist frameworks ...... 61

vi 2.5 Conclusions ...... 67

3 Chapter 2: Seeking refuge in non-profits: Neoliberal governance and access to affordable housing among refugees in Toronto ...... 68

3.1 Introduction ...... 68

3.2 Background and methods ...... 70

3.3 The political, economic, and social context of the housing crisis in Canada ...... 72

3.4 The settlement process for government-assisted refugees ...... 78

3.5 Housing help and Resettlement Assistance Programs explained ...... 81

3.6 Barriers to accessing housing in the city among recent refugees ...... 84 3.6.1 Vacancy rates and family size ...... 84 3.6.2 Lack of affordable rental units in Toronto, gentrification, and renovictions ...... 89 3.6.3 Housing discrimination ...... 97 3.6.4 Language, employment, and access to housing ...... 103

3.7 Discussion ...... 110

3.8 Limitations of study ...... 111

3.9 Conclusions and future research ...... 111

4 Chapter 3: Navigating the terrains of the state: The importance of informal networks among social service providers in Toronto ...... 113

4.1 Introduction ...... 113

4.2 Theoretical framework ...... 114

4.3 Research Methods ...... 116 4.3.1 Research Participants ...... 116

4.4 Part I: Working within the confines of the state: The experiences of frontline workers 118 4.4.1 Program-specific competitive funding ...... 119 4.4.2 Lack of resources, time and energy ...... 121 4.4.3 Reliance on the private housing market to support clients ...... 122

4.5 Part II: Solutions, avenues, and pathways proposed by frontline staff ...... 124 4.5.1 Social and political networks ...... 124 4.5.1.1 Housing ...... 125

vii 4.5.1.2 Employment ...... 128 4.5.1.3 Health ...... 130 4.5.2 State responsibility and the call for more affordable and public housing ...... 132

4.6 Discussion ...... 135

4.7 Conclusions ...... 136

5 Chapter 4: Activist realities and the re-imagining of home: Moving towards a housing justice framework in Toronto ...... 137

5.1 Introduction ...... 137

5.2 Theoretical framework: anti-racist feminisms, resistance, and place-making ...... 141

5.3 Research methods ...... 145

5.4 Part I: Housing affordability and adequate housing: Definitions and community critiques 146

5.5 Part II: Housing initiatives in Toronto ...... 154

5.6 Part III: What is happening in Parkdale? Tenants building neighbourhood power ...... 160

5.7 Part IV: Discussions of intersectionality in community organising ...... 165

5.8 Concluding thoughts ...... 166

6 Conclusions, Discussions and Future Research ...... 168

6.1 Research limitations and reflections ...... 171

6.2 Contributions to literature ...... 173

7 References ...... 179

8 Appendices ...... 206

8.1 Appendix A: Interview Guide ...... 206

8.2 Appendix B: Preliminary List of Potential Organizations in the City ...... 207

viii List of Tables Table 1. Breakdown of organisations and research participants interviewed from 2018-2019. ... 23 Table 2. Brief descriptions of the general roles and responsibilities for each frontline position. 24 Table 3. Brief descriptions of the types of programs offered by each organisation ...... 25

ix List of Figures Figure 1. Negative google review regarding the Radisson Hotel as a refugee hotel...... 1 Figure 2. Clip of Globe and Mail article showcasing the settlement of Lebanese people in Canada...... 28 Figure 3. Housing search form given to government-assisted refugees who are supported by their service provider organisations...... 83 Figure 4. Reprinted from Shady Ontario landlords are sharing illegal eviction tips on a coupon website, by Lauren O'Neil, September 2019...... 94 Figure 5. Advertisement for a new and developing condominium in Regent Park...... 97 Figure 6. Condo construction on River Street and Dundas, Toronto...... 97 Figure 7. Simplified summary of rights and responsibilities of a tenant posted on OCASI’s website...... 105 Figure 8. Screenshot of signing a lease document.Reproduced from Housing Information for newcomers to Canada by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation ...... 108 Figure 9. CBC (2019) Anti-poverty group wants vacant downtown properties turned into affordable housing...... 140 Figure 10. Condo construction juxtaposing a high-rise apartment building on River Street and Dundas, Toronto...... 159

x List of Acronyms ACORN ...... Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now BVOR ...... Blended-visa office referred CBSA ...... Canadian Borders and Services Agency CMHC ...... Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation COIA ...... Canadian-Ontario Immigrant Agreement DHNS ...... Dixon Hall Neighbourhood Services FMTA ...... Federation of Metro Tenants Association GAR ...... Government-assisted refugee GTA ...... Greater Toronto Area IRB ...... Immigration Refugee Board IRCC ...... Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada LINC ...... Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada OCATo ...... Open Architecture Collaborative Toronto OCAP ...... Ontario Coalition Against Poverty OCASI ...... Ontario Coalition of Agencies Service Immigrants ODSP ...... Ontario Disability and Support Program OHRC ...... Ontario Human Rights Code OHRC ...... Ontario Human Rights Commission OMB ...... Ontario Muncipal Board OW ...... Ontario Works POE ...... Point of Entry PSRs ...... Privately sponsored refugees RAP ...... Resettlement Assistance Program REITs ...... Real Estate Investment Trusts SHJN ...... Shelter and Housing Justice Network SPO ...... Service Provider Organisation TCHC ...... Toronto Community Housing Corporation UNHCR ...... United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees VAW ...... Violence Against Women

List of Appendices

Appendix A. Interview guide…………………………………………………………………..202

Appendix B. Preliminary List of Potential Organisations in the City………………………….203

xii

1 Introduction On October 2nd, 2018, the Radisson Hotel—a temporary residence housing more than 500 refugee claimants—was the scene to anti-immigrant hatred and violence. It was reported that a fire was set deliberately in the hallway of the third floor of the hotel by a non-resident. Though police released a photograph of the suspect, there have been no known arrests in connection to the attempted arson. News outlets, such as CBC, Global News, and the Toronto Star followed the story, interviewing residents, settlement service staff and government officials. Residents interviewed by CBC described a scene of fear, chaos and disappointment. According to CBC, a Sudanese refugee said, “she believed the hotel was targeted because of the refugees staying there” (CBC Radio, 2018, para. 7). COSTI’s1 executive director, Mario Calla, was also interviewed, stating the fire “was a serious attempt at burning the place down” (CBC Radio, 2018, para. 19). Substantial fears faced by refugees temporarily housed within hotels are not isolated to this one event; rather, the Radisson hotel had previously garnered media attention with a slew of negative reviews that labelled the hotel as a “refugee hotel”.2 Though major news outlets covered the particularities of the fire, the report also elicited a discussion on housing and services for refugees in Toronto, a discussion I argue throughout this dissertation to be integral to understanding housing inequality and exclusion in Canada.

Figure 1. Negative google review regarding the Radisson Hotel as a refugee hotel. Reprinted from Radisson Hotel Toronto East google reviews, 2019.

1COSTI is a community based multicultural organisation that offers settlement services to newcomers. It is one of the largest settlement organisations in Canada. 2Various online negative reviews of the Radisson hotel range from xenophobic comments to complaints about unaccompanied children playing in the hallways. Additionally, Rebel Media, which is a far-right media organisation, posted a video reproducing xenophobic narratives and denouncing the liberal government for accepting refugees and housing them in hotels in which “regular” guests pay the full amount for a room. Though the hotel continues to act as a temporary shelter for refugees, the stigma attached to the hotel reflects the continuous forms of exclusion and violence directed at refugee bodies and the places they inhabit.

Although the fire took place more than a year ago, it remains relevant today. It reveals the ways in which anti-immigrant sentiments and exclusionary practices work in the context of the housing crisis in Toronto. The attack on the hotel brings to light the re-emergence of right-wing organisations across Canada;3 the violence and fear refugee bodies consistently undergo within the context of Canada; the inter-governmental divides between federal, provincial and local governments in narrating and responding to the housing crisis as it relates to refugees;4 the use of privatised housing to supply temporary and transitional housing for refugees; and the role that settlement organisations, such as COSTI, play in securing and advocating for affordable housing among refugees and refugee claimants in Canada. The story of an attack on a hotel known to house refugees thus complicates the common narrative within housing studies in geography that often limit the conceptualisation of housing to the availability of physical infrastructure and shelter as it relates to capital and the market. The attack on temporary and transitional housing, known to house refugees, displays the exclusionary practices that shape home, homemaking, belonging and housing access for refugees living in Toronto. Additionally, the nature of the attack uncovers the context confronted by settlement providers and non-profits in their efforts to secure housing for refugees as they navigate the exclusionary practices and narratives of “othering” that demonise refugee populations. This research identifies and investigates the roles service providers play and the challenges they confront in administering housing and settlement assistance in Toronto. Centring the vantagepoints of “frontline”5 workers, this study discloses the intersectional politics of Canada’s housing crisis, and the particular challenges of housing

3These groups include, but are not limited to, organisations such as Proud Boys, Sons of Odin, Yellow Vests of Canada, Rise Canada, and student organisations at the University of Toronto, including the self-proclaimed University of Toronto White Student’s Union. 4Maxime Bernier is a former member of Parliament and also the founder of the Peoples Party of Canada (PPC)—a party known for its xenophobic electoral platform. The PPC has proposed to end Canada’s official policy of multiculturalism, calling, instead, for a united Canadian national identity (read: white, Christian, English-speaking, middle-class). Coupled with its proposal to decrease the number of immigrants and refugees admitted to Canada, the PPC’s platform reflects a growing anti-immigrant sentiment in Canada. Such discourses have been contested, reproduced and maintained within different political parties at the provincial, federal and municipal level. 5 It is important to note that the language of “frontline” is militaristic in origin. Additionally, frontline has been popularly used in the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic to mainly refer to healthcare workers. Despite its military origins and ideologically loaded meanings, I have chosen to maintain the language of frontline staff throughout this research. Frontline staff is commonly used within social service provision in Ontario. I decided to maintain the language that is used by service providers to describe themselves for this project. I characterize frontline work as work performed by service providers who engage with communities experiencing institutional and interpersonal forms of violence on a daily basis.

2 exclusion and inequality faced by refugees based on race, class, language and citizenship status in Toronto. 1.1 Defining and contextualising the housing crisis in Canada: 1.1.1 What is the housing crisis and whom does it impact? For the last decade, Canada’s housing crisis has garnered much attention among policymakers and the media. Considerable scholarly attention has also been allocated to understanding the rising costs of real estate and rising rents in Canada (see August & Walks, 2018; Kalman-Lamb, 2017; Moore & Skaburskis, 2004; Rosen & Walks, 2013). One of the key issues of the housing crisis dominating the public narrative include the soaring prices to the cost of homes across Canada. Such steep increases in the cost of buying a house were seen across major Canadian cities, most notably in Toronto, Vancouver, and London, where the average price for homes nearly doubled between 2013 to 2018 (Statistics Canada, 2019a). In the context of Toronto, the median cost of a detached home rose from $589, 646 in 2013 to $1,143,067 in 2018 (Statistics Canada, 2019a). Despite this fact, a large percentage of Canadians continued to become homeowners. According to Statistics Canada, “in 2016, 63% of Canadian families owned their homes, up from 60% in 1999” (2019b, p.2). This trend can largely be attributed to the Federal Government’s adoption of asset-based welfare approaches to housing, which encouraged property ownership among middle-class households. Alan Walks (2016) highlights the shift in the 1980s and 1990s from investment in social welfare policies to federal investments to “stimulate the private sector to provide mortgage and housing credit” (p.762). Some of the changes included reducing barriers to homeownership and lowering the down-payment needed to qualify for a mortgage, which increased the rate of homeownership in Canada.

Though the percentage of homeownership has increased in Canada, it has also been noted that a rising percentage of Canadians have become burdened by mortgage debt, which has accounted for an increasing percentage of family debt: “Between 1999 and 2016, mortgage debt accounted for 84% of the total increase in family debt” (Statistics Canada, 2019b, p.7). This increase is partially attributed to the rising median mortgage debt among families, which in 1999 was at $91,900 and doubled to $180,000 in 2016 (Statistics Canada, 2019b, p.9). The increase in mortgage debt is reflective of federal incentives and benefits given to those purchasing homes

3 (see Walks, 2016). Additionally, minor increases in income have not met the increases in average homeownership costs. In the context of Toronto: From 2006 to 2018, median household income grew only 30% while average home ownership costs grew 131% reducing movement of middle-income households from rental housing to ownership. (Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis, 2019, p.2)

This rising indebtedness and the increasing cost of housing ownership have created conditions of widening income and housing inequality gaps across Canadian cities, like Toronto and Vancouver. Though rising costs of housing ownership among the middle-class in major Canadian cities is one element of the housing crisis, deepening housing inequality and its relationship to wealth and income inequality is most pronounced between property owners and renters.

A report released by the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (2019) outlines the increasing income gap between homeowners and renters. It states that from 1991 to 2016, income among renters increased from an average of $36,872 to $53,559, while income among homeowner households increased from $63,782 to $117,409 (Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario, 2019, p.11). Additionally, it discloses that renters in Ontario experience various barriers to housing, which include “high and rapidly increasing rents, lack of available apartments, and stagnating incomes” (Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario, 2019, p.12). As of 2016, the percentage of people living in core housing need6 across Canada was 12.7 percent; a percentage that has been growing in Ontario—which sits at 15.3 percent (Statistics Canada, 2017c). For Toronto, the projected number of low-income households living in rented dwellings will increase by 30,000 in 2031 at which time almost 40% of households will be living in core housing need (Toronto Housing Market Analysis, 2019, p.3). The inequality between homeowners and renters is stark and extensive data has been collected showcasing such inequalities. For example, a recent report released by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC)7 has identified problems with the current measurement of housing affordability that understate its relationship to

6Statistics Canada (2017c) states that “a household is said to be in core housing need if its housing falls below at least one of the adequacy, affordability, or suitability standards and it would have to spend 30% or more of its total before-tax income to pay the median rent of alternative local housing that is acceptable (meets all the housing standards)” (para. 1). 7The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) is a crown corporation, which implements and oversees Federal housing policies and directives.

4 deepening housing inequality. As stated in the report, “almost one-fourth of Canadian households lived in dwellings with shelter costs that were not considered affordable, that is the households spent 30% or more of their average income on shelter costs” (CMHC, 2019a, p.1). The report suggests an alternative means of measuring housing affordability—a residual income approach—which defines a household as having “affordability problems if it is unable to purchase a minimally acceptable basket of non-shelter goods after having paid all the housing expenses” (CMHC, 2019a, p.1). This is particularly pertinent to renters, where “[i]n 2006, 40% of renters, compared to 18% of owners, had a housing affordability problem” (Statistics Canada, 2016, para. 12). As income inequality has increased, so too has housing inequality worsened. Such data are reflective of the differential impacts of the housing crisis between renters and property owners.

This research contextualises the housing crisis within the context of the growing inequality between renters and homeowners. When referring to the housing crisis within this dissertation, I refer to it as experienced by growing populations housed in emergency shelters, transitional housing, social housing, affordable rental housing, and market rental housing.8 The housing crisis has had a dire impact on housing availability and affordability among low-income communities. Some scholars have explored compounding layers of housing inequality among low-income communities by investigating the particular sets of barriers to housing faced by newcomers, such as immigrants and refugees, to Canada (see Murdie, 2002, 2010; Owusu, 1999; Teixeira, 2006, 2008; Zine, 2009). Engaging with housing studies literature in geography, I utilise and expand on current definitions of housing inequality that refer to income polarisation as a determinant of housing access (see Hulchanski, 2011; Walks & Bourne, 2006; Walks, 2014, 2016), to include intersections across race, class and citizenship status in the discussion. I argue that by centring systemic barriers experienced by refugees to accessing Canada’s rental housing market, I engage and expand on definitions of housing inequality and exclusion to include the intersections of race, class, language and citizenship status.

8 Canada’s housing system also includes affordable homeownership and market home ownership. Since the majority of newly arrived refugees and low-income peoples—the focus of this study—interact with shelters, transitional housing, social housing, and private rental housing, this dissertation refers to access to housing through social housing and the private rental market. When referring to the private rental market, this dissertation also does not distinguish between the primary and secondary rental market.

5 1.1.2 Why focus on refugees and housing inequality? In 2015, Justin Trudeau pledged to accept 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2016 as part of his Liberal political platform. By the beginning of 2017, Canada had accepted 40,081 Syrian refugees—21,876 of whom were government-sponsored (Government of Canada, 2017). 9 Between 2011 and 2016, Canada admitted 1,212,075 immigrants, the majority (60.3 percent) of whom were admitted through the economic class, while refugees constituted about 11.6 percent of those admitted (Statistics Canada, 2017d).10 Additionally, the number of refugee claimants increased from 16,000 in 2015 to over 50,000 in 2017 (Statistics Canada, 2019d). The majority of claimants arrived in Quebec or Ontario—predominantly settling in Toronto and Montreal (Statistics Canada, 2017d). For refugees settling in Toronto, the housing crisis consists of compounding factors, which include various barriers to accessing the private rental market, such as lack of funds, employment and English language skills. Such barriers have forced many refugees, particularly refugee claimants, into Toronto’s shelter system.

Municipalities, such as Toronto, have conducted research on the demographics of those living in emergency shelters. In particular, the 2018 Street Needs Assessment11 report conducted by the City of Toronto, cited an increase in the number of refugees within city-administered shelters. According to the report, about 40% of those using municipal shelters are refugees and 80% of families living in city-administered shelters are refugees. Refugees in the shelter are also racialised: Within City-administered shelters, the highest share of racialised respondents were families staying in shelters. The large share of refugees in the family shelter sector in Toronto, in part, accounts for this greater share of racialised respondents compared to other groups. (Street Needs Assessment, 2018, p.20)

9Government assisted refugees are sponsored by the Canadian government on recommendation of the United Nations (Government of Canada, 2018a). They are supported by the Canadian government for one year upon arrival. They also receive permanent residency upon arrival. Refugee claimants are those seeking asylum from within Canada. Their permanent status is not guaranteed and must be reviewed by the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) of Canada to determine their ability to stay in Canada. 10 In Canada, there are categories for admission, which include economic class, family class and refugee class. Economic immigrants are defined as immigrants selected to “meet labour market needs, to own and manage or to build a business, to make a substantial investment, to create their own employment or to meet specific provincial or territorial labour market needs” (Statistics Canada, 2019c, para. 1). This study focuses mainly on refugees and refugee claimants. 11The Street Needs Assessment report is the fourth of its kind. A core question survey was completed among 2,000 individuals experiencing homelessness and living in shelters. The survey does not capture hidden homelessness. However, it was developed to address the needs of homeless populations in Toronto.

6 Racialised groups also accounted for the majority of respondents accessing the shelter system in Toronto in general: [A]lmost two-thirds of all respondents identified as members of racialised groups, with the largest percentage identifying as Black. This finding demonstrates that racialised groups are overrepresented in the homeless population relative to their share of the general population in Toronto. Visible minorities represent 52% of the total population, compared to 63% of the overall homeless population. (2018, p.19–20)

The overrepresentation of racialised and, in particular, racialised refugees, in Toronto’s shelter system, unearths the racialised dynamics of homelessness in Toronto. For this reason, it is important to ask: Why is there an overrepresentation of racialised groups in the homeless population? What specific barriers do racialised refugees face in accessing permanent long-term housing in Toronto? The report mentions various reasons for homelessness in general, but for refugees and refugee claimants, three of the major reasons included migration, inability to pay rent/mortgage and unsafe housing conditions (Street Needs Assessment, 2018). Similarly, academic studies on newcomers, particularly refugees and immigrants, reveal the varied barriers faced by refugees in accessing housing in Canada (see Francis & Hiebert, 2014; Miraftab, 2000; Murdie, 2002, 2003, 2010; Murdie & Teixeira, 2011; Owusu, 1999; Teixeira, 2006, 2008; Zine, 2009). The deepening inequality between homeowners and renters in tandem with the increase in the number of refugees accessing shelter services in Toronto, is subject for academic concern. Addressing the growing concern of homelessness among refugees in Toronto, this research emphasises the significance of interrogating the available housing options for refugees and the barriers they encounter in accessing the private rental market in Canada.

Expanding on current literature among housing scholars, I define housing inequality not only through the lens of income inequality, but through its relationship with racial inequality and inequalities based on language and citizenship status. This study also employs the language of housing exclusion, which I define as a combination of landlord exclusionary practices that have a particularly dire impact on refugees navigating the private rental housing market, and dominant public narratives of “othering” that view refugees as non-citizens who do not belong within the Canadian national imaginary. These concepts shape understandings of housing access, which I investigate within the context of a Canadian housing crisis in Toronto. For the purposes of this

7 research, the housing crisis is situated within a crisis of inequality and exclusion in Toronto’s housing system that interlinks, and crosscuts inequalities tied to race, class and citizenship status.

1.2 Problem Statement This research explores two aspects of the housing crisis as it relates to refugees. From a political point of view, there is a standard narrative circulated among policymakers and the public, which have correlated the housing crisis with the influx of refugees and refugee claimants to Canada. For example, the Street Needs Assessment (2018) report discussed in the section above, stipulates that “the key drivers of homelessness in Toronto are the economy, housing market and increased number of refugee/asylum claimants accessing shelter services” (p.42). Similarly, in the Summer of 2018, Mayor John Tory of Toronto, pressed the Canadian Federal Government to provide more resources for housing, mainly because—as mentioned above—40 percent of those utilising city-administered shelters were refugees.12 Immigration is considered the responsibility of the federal government, whereas housing is considered to be under the domains of the provincial and municipal governments. The demands made by the municipal government of Toronto to the federal government to extend its services beyond contact with refugees at the border, reflects inter-governmental divides on issues of housing and immigration. These institutional tensions and gaps between federal, provincial and local governments, result in an overreliance on non-profit organisations and service providers, situated within municipalities and contracted by the Canadian government, to support the unique needs of refugees. This study identifies and explores the actors in non-profits and community organisations, who are uniquely positioned to fill such institutional uncertainties and gaps for highly vulnerable and marginalised populations, such as refugees.13

Rather than blaming refugees for contributing to the housing crisis in Toronto, this study explores the barriers faced by refugees in accessing Toronto’s housing market and the frontline workers and grassroots organisations who fill the gap in service provision for refugees as they

12Immigration is the responsibility of the Federal Government under Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, whereas housing is generally considered to be under the domains of the provincial and municipal governments. 13 This dissertation uses the terms vulnerable and marginalised populations interchangeably. Both terms are used to signify the lack of attention given to those experiencing housing inequality and housing exclusion in Canada, which include low-income refugee populations.

8 navigate the complex housing market in cities like Toronto. Shields (2003) clearly articulates the inter-governmental tensions, which put pressure on municipalities to support newcomers and immigrants. He states: Municipalities, where many of the settlement services and social support services for immigrants are delivered, are creatures of the provinces, with no independent constitutional status. The cities are often caught between the provinces and the federal government, and often have been left to deal with the consequences of policies for which they have had no say, nor an adequate financial base from which to respond. (Shields, 2003, p.12)

In Toronto, settlement and social support services, are central to the lives of refugees in navigating a new country (see Ashton, Pettigrew & Galatsanou, 2016; Khanlou et al., 2017; Shaw & Funk, 2019; Tastsoglou et al., 2014). However, studies reveal the precarity of funding based on federal and provincial governments, which impact the capacities to deliver services and programs to newcomers (Mukhtar et al., 2016). By identifying inter-governmental gaps and tensions, this inquiry focuses on the intermediate, yet central, roles filled by frontline workers in non-profit organisations, who are at the axis of managing the housing crisis among vulnerable populations, such as refugees, in cities like Toronto.

This study converges with and extends critical analyses of housing inequality and settlement among refugees in Toronto. Few studies have already examined some of the particular barriers faced by newcomers in Canada (see Mensah, & Williams, 2013, 2014; Murdie, 2002; Teixeira, 2008). Additionally, scholars have identified the roles of non-profits, particularly immigrant organisations, in helping newcomers navigate the new Canadian landscape (see Ashton, Pettigrew & Galatsanou, 2016; Marshall & Béland, 2019; Mukhtar et al., 2016). There remains a lack of academic scholarship on the particular roles frontline workers play in securing long-term permanent housing for refugees in Canada. This study, therefore, contributes to housing inequality scholarship during a particular moment in time, where income inequality and homelessness among refugees, have intensified in major Canadian cities, like Toronto. Such scholarship contributes to the growing literature that addresses the different ways in which the housing crisis is experienced by refugees as a distinct population with particular sets of barriers to housing access in Toronto.

9 1.3 Research objective and research question(s) This study is primarily focused on access to housing in the city of Toronto among newly arrived refugees and the service providers who support them in navigating settlement and housing. This research investigates the relationships between Canada’s immigration and housing policies and practices, current models of housing service provision for vulnerable populations, such as refugees, and the broader context of deepening inequality in accessing affordable housing in Toronto. The Canadian state propagates a particular set of laws, policies and strategies, which shape the program-specific community organisations and social services available to precariously housed populations, such as refugees.14 This study identifies the specific roles that these organisations play in mediating how vulnerable populations—refugees in particular—are integrated into and excluded from housing in the city. Two overarching questions drive this research. Firstly, how have service providers addressed the housing and settlement needs of refugees in the context of Canada’s housing crisis? Secondly, how are race, class, language and citizenship status tied into the politics of housing and settlement service provision in Toronto? To answer this set of questions, this study a) examines current literature on access to housing among refugees in major Canadian cities; b) explores the roles of intermediate institutions, such as service provider organisations, who fill governmental gaps in securing housing and resources for vulnerable populations, such as refugees; and c) identifies and focuses on grassroots organisations offering alternative strategies and imaginaries of affordable housing in Toronto.

Identifying and exploring the theoretical and practical limitations and gaps in current housing scholarship and policies in Canada, the broader purpose of this dissertation is to elicit—and expand on—valuable sets of analytics and frameworks in geography about the housing crisis. This dissertation employs an antiracist feminist framework to examine and analyse Canada’s housing system. In particular, I draw on intersectionality to explore barriers faced by refugees navigating Canada’s housing market—with a specific emphasis on Toronto. Refugees come with compounding and intersecting sets of differences including race, citizenship status, class, and language, which affect their access to shelter and housing. Intersectionality provides a particularly useful framework for understanding housing inequality as it relates to refugees

14 An earlier version of this dissertation sought to also explore Indigenous-specific housing organisations in Toronto. Due to limited research capacity, this research could not investigate specific housing policies and practices that uphold the settler-colonial state.

10 within Toronto and allows for an exploration of the different ways in which race, class, and citizenship status shape one’s experience with access to housing in Toronto. As noted in the problem statement above, the disjuncture between federal responsibilities and local institutional capacities, in cities that refugees inhabit, has created conditions in which frontline workers must be attuned to the complex needs of vulnerable populations such as refugees. This study identifies and situates the actors at the frontlines of the housing crisis and their perspectives as a lens to understand the particular sets of systemic barriers to housing that newly arrived refugees face in Toronto.

1.4 Theoretical framework This research is unique in that it converges antiracist feminism with political economy approaches to housing scholarship. Drawing on antiracist feminism, this study employs an intersectional analysis to conceptualising refugee housing access in the context of a Canadian national housing crisis. This research extends literature in housing studies, which focus predominantly on income inequality in relation to housing inequality in Canada, to include an analysis of the intersecting barriers faced by refugees in navigating Canada’s housing system. In particular, I draw upon housing scholarship to demonstrate the relationship between neoliberalism and housing access as it pertains to rental housing in Canada. Housing scholarship provides important foundations for understanding growing income inequality in Canada and its implications on access to housing in Toronto (see August, 2014; August & Walks, 2018; Hulchanski, 2011; Kalman-Lamb, 2017; Simone & Walks, 2019; Walks & Bourne, 2006). However, questions of race and citizenship status remain largely absent within such scholarship. For this reason, I engage with antiracist feminisms, particularly intersectional theory (Crenshaw, 1991) and theories of home-making (hooks, Eizenberg & Koning, 1994; hooks, 2009), to investigate the differential and intersectional impacts of the housing crisis on refugees and the frontline staff who support them in Canada. This study is largely informed by antiracist feminisms, which offer analytical and conceptual tools to unpack the relationship between citizenship status, race, class and language, in the context of a housing crisis intensified by neoliberal governance.

11 Antiracist feminist thought has shaped how scholars theorise social justice. This scholarship highlights how different axes of power, all of which are context-specific, shape one another. Most notably, intersectionality has been used as an analytic tool to address the ways people experience interlocking systems of oppression. For example, Kimberlé Crenshaw, who is credited with coining the term intersectionality, discusses its importance in the context of violence against women in the United States. Crenshaw’s (1991) article “Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color” illuminates the different ways in which power operates in the lives of women of colour when experiencing domestic violence. Drawing on her observations in battered women’s shelters in Los Angeles, Crenshaw addresses the compounding issues faced by women seeking protection in the shelter. Based on her analysis, she argues: Many women who seek protection are unemployed or underemployed, and a good number of them are poor. Shelters serving these women cannot afford to address only the violence inflicted by the batterer; they must also confront the other multilayered and routinized forms of domination that often converge in these women’s lives, hindering their ability to create alternatives to the abusive relationships that brought them to shelters in the first place. Many women of color, for example, are burdened by poverty, childcare responsibilities, and the lack of job skills. (Crenshaw, 1991, p.1245)

According to Crenshaw, those seeking help from battered women’s shelters are unified by their experience of domestic violence as women; however, there are compounding factors of race, poverty, childcare responsibilities and lack of job skills, which limit women of colour’s capacities to seek support in Los Angeles. Written in the 1990s, Crenshaw makes a critical theoretical intervention for conceptualising experiences of domestic violence among differently situated women. Her intervention paved a critical pathway to intersectional scholarship within the academy, particularly among feminist scholars. Since its inception, intersectionality has reached a wide range of disciplines, which has had profound impacts on the types of research conducted within academia (Cho, Crenshaw & McCall, 2013).

Expanding on Crenshaw’s use of intersectionality, this study draws upon Collins and Bilge’s (2016) interpretation of intersectionality, which stipulates six core ideas to understanding intersectionality as an analytical tool. These include analyses of social inequality, power, relationality, social context, complexity, and social justice. This study predominantly expands on intersectional definitions of social inequality, power and social justice to explore the housing

12 crisis and its impacts on service providers and the refugee clientele they support in Toronto. According to Collins and Bilge (2016), “intersectionality encourages understandings of social inequality based on interactions among various categories” (p.26). Situating refugees as an analytical category, this study examines social inequality as it relates to housing access based on the categories of race, class, language and citizenship status. Additionally, I define an intersectional analysis of social inequality by examining relations of power, where “peoples’ lives and identities are generally shaped by many factors in diverse and mutually influencing ways” (p.26). Such relations of power operate across structural, cultural and interpersonal domains, where everyday interactions are impacted by their positionality. Examining intersecting forms of exclusion and inequality in relation to social service provision and housing access, situates the complexity of Canada’s housing market and the social service providers who fill the gap to support vulnerable populations. Such analysis is situated within the context of structural relations of power across sets of policies, procedures and practices propagated by the Canadian state, which includes federal, provincial and municipal governments. Intersectionality thus offers essential insights and analyses to understanding refugee access to housing in Canada, as the barriers they face when settling in a new country are compounded by their intersecting identities across race, class, and citizenship status. Additionally, intersectionality highlights the importance of social justice commitments which is explored through an engagement with service provision and activist commitments to affordable housing in Canada.

In addition to incorporating an analysis of social inequality and power, this research draws on intersectionality to engage with the relationship between theory and practice. As noted by Collins and Bilge (2016), “We have been careful to point out that intersectionality is not a simple substitute for social justice. Each project must be interrogated for its connections to social justice, not just some facet of social inequality, it is by default furthering social justice” (p.202). The use of intersectionality does not, in itself, further social justice projects, but rather is context- specific and explicitly connected to social justice initiatives. The connection to social justice projects and movements is a core principle of intersectionality, as the concept in itself is tied to the lived experiences of women of colour in social movements. For example, social movements in the 1960s and 1970s in the U.S. did not address the particular forms of social inequality experienced by Black women. Collins and Bilge (2016) state that:

13 in the 1960s and 1970s, African-American women activists confronted the puzzle of how their needs simply fell through the cracks of antiracist social movements, feminism, and union organizing for workers’ rights. Each of these social movements elevated one category of analysis and action above others, for example, race within the civil rights movement, or gender with feminism or class within the union movement. (p.3)

Black women, thus, had to carve out their own spaces to address multiple axes of division that cut across gender, race, class, and sexuality. Intersectionality plays a seminal role in connecting theory to practice, as it emerged out of lived experiences of women of colour. The commitment to social justice is vital to this study, as it sheds light on the ways social service providers navigate the compounding barriers their clients face when first settling in Toronto. Thus, this study examines the practice of an intersectional analysis through the roles of frontline staff, who consistently engage with sets of populations with diverse racial, ethnic, and classed backgrounds.

This research is grounded in an intersectional framework to conceptualise the housing crisis by situating refugees as a distinct analytical category. In addition to intersectionality, this study draws on theories of home-making and belonging. The literature that explores the politics of home (see Ahmed, 1999; Blunt, 2005; Habib, 1996; hooks et al., 1994; hooks, 2009; Lo, 2015; Mahtani, 2008; Pulido, 2016) has examined identity, belonging, and exclusion at the national- as well as the urban-scales (see Blunt & Sheringham, 2019; Dam & Eyles, 2012; Mallett, 2004). I am particularly interested in understanding the politics of home and housing services at the scale of the city and examining the ways that racialised refugee communities express agency in fighting to make Toronto their home. In so doing, I utilise and expand on the definition of home discussed by Jennifer Woodill and Lori Wyson in collaboration with the Romero House15 where the house and home are distinguished: “A house is where you sleep and eat, but feeling at home has emotional and psychological components” (Woodill & Wyson, 2000, p.5). In this study, I pay attention to these emotional and psychological elements of home to enrich understandings of housing inequality, housing access and housing justice.

15The Romero House is a community and charitable organisation that provides transitional housing for refugees in Toronto. They also offer various programs ranging from settlement assistance to accessing social assistance. The Romero House was first founded in 1991 when a Toronto refugee shelter was threatened with closure. It was given its name after Oscar Romero who was the fourth Archbishop of San Salvador and a social activist that spoke out against injustices faced by poor communities. The founders of the Romero House highlighted the importance of creating community through inclusive neighbourhoods.

14 In addition to antiracist feminism, this study draws and expands on housing studies literature to understand and analyse the neoliberal context of Canada’s housing crisis. Critical scholarship on neoliberalism offers insights into the changing social service provision and housing landscapes in Toronto. David Harvey’s (2007), “Neo-liberalism as creative destruction” offers a particularly useful definition of neoliberalism. He states: Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices which proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by the maximization of entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional framework characterized by private property rights, individual liberty, free markets and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices. (Harvey, 2007, p.145)

His analysis of neoliberalism suggests an important context, which this study explores in relation to social service provision and Canada’s housing crisis. In particular, I employ his definition of neoliberalism as “the corporatization, commodification and privatization of hitherto public assets” (p.153) to analyse the impact of federal and provincial cuts to both the non-profit sector and to social housing in Ontario. For example, Shields (2004) makes note of the particular impacts of neoliberal restructuring in Ontario on settlement organisations by stating: In 1995, the Province of Ontario revamped its settlement program, cutting it by almost 50%. The province also shifted away from core funding to nonprofit service and providers toward competitively-tendered service contracts, as did the federal government. Neoliberal restructuring of nonprofit services has caused a crisis in the sector, as providers have been forced to do more with less. In the process, programs have been eliminated, service quality has deteriorated, and many smaller agencies have been forced to close. Front line support for immigrants has, in the process, been gravely compromised. (p.21)

Additionally, various housing scholars in geography have noted the cutbacks to social housing and affordable housing during the 1990s (see August & Walks, 2018; Hulchanski, 2009; Walks, 2016). Critical literature on income inequality, housing and neoliberalism thus proves useful for contextualising and understanding the impact of federal and provincial legislative changes, especially on the material capacities of vulnerable populations, such as refugees, to settle and live in Toronto.

Finally, critical praxis illuminates crucial debates and optics to this research. In the context of geography, there have been subfields, particularly Marxist theorists in geography and feminist geographers (see Fuller & Kitchin, 2004 for a review of debates, tensions and discussions of

15 critical praxis among critical geographers), who have contributed tremendously to the growing scholarship that connects theory with practices of social change. However, for the purposes of this research, I extend on two relevant framings of critical praxis, which include intersectional articulations of critical praxis (Cho, Crenshaw &McCall, 2013) and critical praxis as articulated by radical urban planners (Stein, 2019).

The intersectional articulations of critical praxis demonstrate the ways in which social change is enacted through the lived experiences of racialised communities. Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall (2013) define praxis as: encompassing a wide range of phenomena, from society- and work-centered movements to demand greater economic justice for low-income women of color (e.g., Carastathis 2013; Chun, Lipsitz, and Shin 2013); to legal and policy advocacy that seeks to remedy gender and racial discrimination (e.g., Carbado 2013; Verloo 2013); to state-targeted movements to abolish prisons, immigration restrictions, and military interventions that are nominally neutral with respect to race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, and nation but are in fact disproportionally harmful to communities of color and to women and gays in those communities. (p.786)

For Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall, intersectionality offers a particularly useful framework for understanding the lived experiences of racialised communities, which has a relational impact on social movements and community organisations. I build on this framework to explore and investigate the practices of frontline workers and housing justice activists in the city of Toronto.

Similar to intersectional commitments to social justice and praxis, radical urban planners, illustrate the importance of critical praxis. For example, Samuel Stein’s (2019), Capital city: Gentrification and the real estate state, engages with the importance of taking and making space at the urban scale. Though his main focus is on urban planners, which he locates within government institutions, practices and policies, he encapsulates the importance of urban social movements in planning “strategies for survival and resistance” (p.13). This research explores some of the nuanced ways in which frontline workers, community organisations and activists develop different strategies for survival and resistance when it comes to accessing affordable housing in Toronto. In a similar fashion to Stein (2019), who argues that “things will only change when people make them—people organised in buildings, neighbourhoods and cities, through institutional and contentious politics, as a social force that can alter the balance of class

16 power” (p.158), this research explores what it means to (re)imagine Toronto when we situate the experiences of low-income racialised communities, such as refugees. The current housing system under neoliberal governance is hostile towards low-income peoples; however, critical praxis scholarship encourages us to explore how people have resisted, challenged and fought for their rights to access housing and create a home in Toronto.

1.5 Research Methodology This dissertation offers a qualitative, multi-scalar approach to analysing the intersections of housing and service provision in Canada, with a particular emphasis on Toronto and refugees. Focusing on refugees as an analytical category to examine the consequences of the housing crisis in Toronto, this study highlights the voices of frontline staff and activists, who navigate the complex housing and service provision ecosystem to secure pertinent services, including housing for refugees upon arrival to Canada.16 I position frontline staff who provide services to newly arrived refugees against the backdrop of federal, provincial and municipal policies on housing and immigration. This allows the study to provide a multi-scalar analysis. Though debates around scale in geography range from the fixities and politics of scale to utilising scale as a metaphor (see Massey, 1991; Silvey, 2004), this study employs the meso-scale in two important ways. Firstly, I draw upon the definition of the meso-scale, that is ambiguously defined in human geography as: [A]n intermediate spatial scale (country, region, metropolis) and a set of middle-level abstractions (structured coherence, local labour market, vertical disintegration, local dependence, or local mode of social regulation). Geographers using meso-scale concepts have mainly focused on the contradiction within capitalism between globalization (the expansion of the market, and interregionalism) and simultaneous localization (the territorial embedding of exchange relations, and indigenous economic development). (Jonas, 1994, p.260)

Second, I draw on an understanding of meso-scale as “an intermediate level of structure that guides and channels interactions that can, in turn, shape less proximate or higher order

16 This study does not focus on an in-depth analysis of the lived experiences of refugees navigating settlement and housing services in Toronto. Rather, this study identifies and engages with the roles service providers play in helping precarious populations, such as refugees, navigate settlement and housing services in Toronto. By focusing on the experiences of service providers who serve refugees against the backdrop of contemporary policies and procedures on immigration and housing, this study offers illuminating insights into both the working experiences of settlement workers, housing workers and shelter workers and the observations they have made while serving precarious communities in Toronto.

17 structures” (Dokko et al., 2019, p.164). I understand housing service providers as meso-scale institutions that refugees must navigate in order to settle and live in a city such as Toronto; they are also institutions that mediate between the global and national scales and the everyday lived experiences of refugees. I focus on the experiences of frontline workers within these meso-scale institutions in order to understand how they are mediating the consequences of the housing crisis in Toronto and its impact on refugees.

Emphasising the voices of frontline workers in this study, I demonstrate the complex ways the non-profit sector operates in Toronto’s housing market. The rationale for centring the experiences of service providers stems from the growing recognition of the critical roles service providers play in servicing marginalised communities in cities across Canada. Due to a recognition of the downloading of state responsibilities to municipalities and the non-profit sector, most notably settlement agencies, scholars have paid more considerable attention to frontline workers in Canada (see Ashton, Pettigrew & Galatsanou, 2016; Khanlou et al., 2017; Shaw & Funk, 2019; Tastsoglou et al., 2014). Such studies have often focused on the role of service providers in the areas of immigrant access to health services (Khanlou et al., 2017) and employment (Senthanar et al., 2020). However, few studies have engaged with the intersections of settlement and housing provision for refugees in particular. This study thus adds to the growing literature on social service provision, but with a unique emphasis on refugee access to housing in Toronto.

Situating the experiential knowledge of frontline service providers emphasises the expertise of practitioners who are consistently interacting with marginalised people seeking settlement and housing services in Toronto. For this reason, intersectionality as critical praxis informs my methodology. Frontline workers’ daily encounters with clients necessitate the practice of intersectionality as they interact with federal, provincial and municipal policy changes that impact differently positioned communities living in Toronto. Collins and Bilge (2016) articulate the importance of studying praxis among frontline actors and community organisations. They state: Practitioners and activists are often frontline actors for solving social problems that come with complex social inequalities, a social location that predisposes them to engage intersectionality as critical praxis…For practitioners and activists, intersectionality is not

18 simply a heuristic for intellectual inquiry but is also an important analytical strategy for doing social justice work. (Collins & Bilge, 2016, p.42)

The predisposition of frontline actors, such as settlement and housing workers, to the needs of their clients facing “complex social inequalities” offer integral insights into housing access in Toronto. This study underscores the significance of critical praxis among frontline staff and community activists whose social location forces them to engage intersectionality as praxis when administering services and advocating for their clients and/or community members.

1.5.1 Data and research methods In order to gain a better understanding of how resettlement operates in the daily encounters service providers have with precariously housed populations, such as refugees, I conducted semi- structured interviews with thirteen (n=13) frontline staff working across nine different settlement organisations, shelters, and housing organisations for one year between 2018 and 2019. Each interview ranged between 45 minutes to 1 hour and 15 minutes, depending on time and availability. All but two interviews were held in the office spaces of the organisation contacted, and the other two interviews were held in informal spaces of the participants’ choosing. Only three of the interviews were tape-recorded to respect the privacy of clients coming in and out of the often small and shared office spaces. Seven of the thirteen staff interviewed worked as settlement service providers, five staff interviewed were housing counsellors/workers,17 and one staff interviewed was a caseworker for a provincially funded shelter. All organisations and staff chosen for this research are located in Toronto. I made the decision to interview settlement staff and housing workers based on preliminary findings showcasing the intersections between settlement and housing needs among newcomers, particularly refugees settling in major cities in Canada.

I first contacted frontline staff via e-mail or telephone from a list of organisations available on the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada website (https://www.cic.gc.ca/english/newcomers/services/index.asp). The list of organisations

17 One housing counsellor worked specifically with an Indigenous housing organisation, two housing counsellors worked in housing organisations open to the general public, the other two housing counsellors worked specifically in organisations catered to newcomers, particularly refugees.

19 contacted were based on several criteria: the presence of a settlement worker, the availability of settlement services, the diversity of the clientele in which the centre catered to, and the availability of housing help programs and services (see Appendix A for preliminary list of organisations initially contacted).18 Following these initial contacts, I adopted a snowballing approach to contact service providers as some staff were willing to put me in contact with those that they thought would be helpful to the research project. This proved to be useful as some of the organisations I initially listed and contacted were unresponsive until I was referred by another settlement worker. Adhering to ethical protocols, I have given pseudonyms to each organisation and the frontline staff interviewed. Tables 1, 2 and 3 outline the pseudonyms for each frontline staff and their affiliated organisation (Table 1), the list of responsibilities and duties often assigned to each title (Table 2), and the types of programs/services offered within each organisation (Table 3). The programs available at most of these organisations range from one-on-one appointments, drop-in sessions, tailored programs geared towards specific demographics, and practical and educational workshops. The frontline staff employed within these organisations are responsible for the everyday administration of such services and programs, resulting in daily face-to-face encounters with people seeking settlement and housing help.

Frontline workers are uniquely positioned as mediators between the state and recipients of social services. Attending to the diverse needs of their clientele on a daily basis, the jobs of frontline staff require that they understand and explain services, laws, policies, programs and possibilities to people seeking social services. Frontline staff offer important perspectives at the interface of the state and the recipients of social services. Similarly to the rationale taken by Tastsoglou et al. (2014) who’s research is located at “the intersection of state policies and civil society, in particular, service providers’ and NGO practices vis-à-vis refugees and refugee claimants” (p.70), this study draws on the intersection between settlement services, housing services and practices and policies of the state on immigration and housing. Frontline staff’s intermediate position offers a critical intervention into how policies and practices play out in the everyday encounters and experiences refugees face when settling and searching for permanent long-term

18 This list also includes Indigenous specific organisations in Toronto. However, the majority of organisations contacted were settlement and housing organisations.

20 housing in Toronto. Their perspectives, which have received very little scholarly attention (see Shaw & Funk, 2019), allow for an analysis of intersectionality as praxis. Navigating the different ways in which their clients experience Canadian laws, policies and practices based on race, class, status and gender, frontline staff practice the politics of intersectionality, without identifying it as such. Understanding their viewpoints, thus, reveals the intersectional layers of service provision and housing access among refugees in Toronto.

I decided to utilise semi-structured interviews for this study to emphasise the importance of frontline staff as knowledge-producers, while also signalling important themes for discussion. The questions in the semi-structured interviews centred around barriers faced by government refugees and their experiences with navigating the rental housing market in Toronto (see Appendix B for list of guiding questions). The semi-structured interviews allowed for a participant-led style of conversation, which opened up discussions beyond the guided questions about how they assisted people with navigating the housing market in Toronto, to include questions about how people accessed settlement services, challenges frontline staff themselves faced, and general barriers faced by vulnerable populations navigating Toronto. As articulated by Brinkmann et al. (2014) semi-structured interviews, in comparison to structured interviews, allow for “much more leeway for following up on whatever angles are deemed important by the interviewee” while also allowing the interviewer “a greater chance of becoming visible as a knowledge-producing participant in the process itself” (p.16). Moreover, feminist methodologies highlight the importance of challenging existing power-relations between researcher and research participant. For example, Caroline Ramazanoglu and Janet Holland (2011) underscore such power relations by stating that social researchers “can exercise power by turning peoples’ lives into authoritative texts; by hearing some things and ignoring and excluding others” (p.9). Expanding on feminist methodologies that centre the experiences and agencies of research participants, I allowed conversations to flourish based on the wealth of experiences of frontline staff through semi-structured interviews. The choice to utilise semi-structured interviews for this study was motivated by my feminist commitments of challenging relations of power within the research process.

21 In addition to conducting semi-structured interviews, I employed participant observations of the chosen non-profit organisations. Through spending time with respondents in their work contexts and being present within them, I developed insights into the quality of their work lives. I showcase such observations through personal narratives, reflections and descriptions threaded throughout the dissertation. My observations while spending time with respondents proved vital to unpacking the networks of services, programs and organisation referrals available within each non-profit organisation. Though there are limitations with employing participant observation as a research method including restrictions of what I choose to observe based on my positionality, my feminist ethics challenged me to interrogate my own subject-position throughout the research process. As discussed in the following section, interrogating my positionality and contextualising my role as a researcher with an insider/outsider perspective through self-reflexivity reaffirmed and challenged my political and feminist commitments to conducting ethical research.

Attention to the voices of staff on the frontlines of the housing and refugee crisis in Toronto, helps me understand the effects of intersections between immigration and housing policies, and specifically the effects of disjuncture between government initiatives and the experiences of frontline service providers. Moreover, this dissertation reads the particular experiences of frontline staff in relation to various federal, provincial and municipal policies relevant to housing and immigration. This study analyses the roles of frontline staff administering services to refugees in the context of relevant federal documents and reports, including the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Development Plan (2018) and the Resettlement Assistance Program and Service Provider Handbook (2019) developed by Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). Additionally, settlement staff and housing counsellors, are responsible for aiding their clients fill out government applications for social welfare programs and must be acutely aware of the policies and procedures of social welfare services in Ontario. For this reason, I analyse the social welfare policies, programs and procedures of Ontario Works (OW), Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), the Ontario Child Benefit Programs (OCBP), and subsidised housing programs in conversations with the perspectives of frontline staff interviewed for this study. In addition, I draw on data from Statistics Canada and the CMHC, concerning the average rents in Toronto based on unit size, vacancy rates in Ontario and Toronto, and average family size of refugees in Canada. I thread my understanding of the policies and programs that

22 have a direct impact on refugees and refugee claimants throughout this dissertation. I also analyse the effects of housing policy and housing needs as they are mediated by frontline service workers who navigate the intersections between settlement of refugees and housing inequality and exclusion in Canada.

This dissertation explores federal and provincial legislative changes to housing from 1995 to the present. This includes an analysis of changes to Ontario’s Promoting Affordable Housing Act (2016), Canada’s newly adopted national housing strategies, and changes to funding requirements for settlement organisations brought about by federal and provincial changes in the 1990s. Chapter four has a particular focus on the policies and practices of local governments. It pays specific attention to municipal policy initiatives, which include revitalisation projects across Toronto as well as the Housing Now-TO plan currently underway. Examining policy changes concerning housing from 1995 to 2020 offers an outline of how housing affordability has been defined and addressed in the city during this time period. I analyse these policy documents in conversation with analysis of reports, statements, newsletters and websites by three prominent grassroots organisations in Toronto— Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now (ACORN), and Parkdale Organize!. These documents allow me to explore the ways some activists are redefining and re-imagining how affordable housing can be approached and understood in Toronto. I argue that the question of status and citizenship must be addressed in relation to housing policy initiatives in Toronto, as housing inequality and exclusion are encountered differently by racialised refugees attempting to settle in Canada’s second most expensive city—Toronto.

Table 1. Breakdown of organisations and research participants interviewed from 2018-2019. Organisation Interviewee Pseudonym Settlement organisation 1 Housing counsellor Participant one (Downtown location) Settlement organisation 1 Settlement staff Participant two (Downtown location) Indigenous housing organisation Housing worker Participant three 1 (East end location) Settlement organisation 2 Settlement worker Participant four (East end location) (Works specifically with Arabic- speaking population)

23 Settlement organisation 3 Settlement worker Participant five (North York location) Settlement organisation 4 Two settlement workers Participants six and seven (East end location) (run programs specifically for women and children)

Settlement organisation 5 Settlement worker Participant eight (North West location) Housing organisation 1 Housing counsellor Participant nine (West end location) Housing organisation 2 Caseworker Participant ten Shelter (East end location) Refugee Centre Housing counsellor and women’s Participant eleven Temporary housing 1 program coordinator (West end location) Housing organisation 3 Housing counsellor Participant twelve (Downtown east location) Settlement organisation 6 Settlement worker Participant thirteen (East end location) (works specifically with Arabic speaking people)

Table 2. Brief descriptions of the general roles and responsibilities for each frontline position. Position General roles and responsibilities

Housing worker/counsellor o Helps clients find and maintain housing o Conducts intakes o Provides information and appropriate referrals o Maintains files and statistical data o Advocates on behalf of clients o Maintains ties with landlords Settlement staff o Refer clients to appropriate services and resources o Provide information through organised orientation sessions o Deliver one-on-one support to fill out pertinent applications, such as Child Tax Benefits, Ontario Works, Work Permits o Referrals for employment related services

24 o Some staff many run programs particular to the needs to their clients in the community Caseworker o Intakes of new clients o Assessment of needs of clients o Developing a plan for clients o Monitoring and tracking progress of clients o Referrals

Table 3. Brief descriptions of the types of programs offered by each organisation Organisation Programs/Services offered

Settlement organisation 1 o Provides a wide range of services to newcomers in Canada o Offers both housing help and settlement services o Settlement services available include referrals, employment related services, assisting with document applications, interpretation, counselling and information and orientation sessions o Housing programs include crisis intervention, aid with housing applications, coaching and counselling o Languages spoken at this organisation include Arabic, Farsi, Dari, Albanian, Vietnamese, Spanish, Italian, and French Indigenous housing organisation 1 o Housing support catered specifically to Indigenous people in Canada. o Programs and services offered include referrals to agencies, housing workshops, social housing applications, helping with house searches, and furniture bank referrals Settlement organisation 2 o Provides a wide range of services to newcomers in Canada o Main focus is on delivering settlement services to newcomers

25 o Settlement services include referrals, English classes (LINC), employment counselling, and programs for women o Languages spoken include Tamil, English, French, Arabic, Dari, Hindi, Farsi, Pashto, Russian, Singhal, Urdu, and Turkish Settlement organisation 3 o Offers programs and services to newcomers in Canada o Wide range of programs offered, including refugee support, employment, youth mentorship, and programs for seniors o Settlement services offered include referrals, counselling, workshops, help with filling out forms

Settlement organisation 4 o Organisation catered specifically to immigrant women and their families o Settlement services available include support for temporary or permanent housing, English language classes, employment services, legal services, health services, and assistance with filling out forms o Other programs available at the centre include women’s support services and services for Live in Caregivers Settlement organisation 5 o Offers a variety of programs to meet the needs of the communities in which they are located in o Youth and family services o Settlement services include, needs assessment and referrals, information and orientation, educational workshops on housing, employment, legal aid, transportation and health services o Translation and interpretation services for Spanish, Somali, Karen, Urdu and Punjabi languages

26 Housing organisation 1 o Shelter services o Programs include case management, housing support, mental health and wellness support and community support

Housing organisation 2 o Shelter services for families o Programs include children’s programs, emergency shelter, furniture bank, food bank, case management

Refugee centre o Offers temporary housing for Temporary housing 1 women and children refugee (West end) claimants o Women’s programs o Employment services o English classes o Educational workshops o Housing help Housing organisation 3 o Offers a wide range of services (Downtown east) o Not limited to settlement services o Services include health services, homeless outreach and harm reduction, programs specific to immigrant and refugee populations, youth programs and community development o Housing support worker is available at this centre Settlement Organisation 6 o Serves newcomers in Toronto (East end location) o Provides counselling services to newcomers and refugees, persons with disabilities, trauma cases, youth and women, seniors o Also offers sessions on citizenship, computer literacy, English conversation circles, information sessions o Operates from an anti-oppressive framework

27 1.5.2 Being an insider/outsider in research: Situating my positionality

Figure 2. Clip of Globe and Mail article showcasing the settlement of Lebanese people in Canada. Reprinted from The Globe and Mail, January 31, 1977.

While writing this dissertation, a photo clip from the Globe and Mail article (see Figure 2.) appeared on my mother’s WhatsApp story. I quickly noticed my mother’s photo with my aunt in the top right-hand corner, and I smiled. Growing up, I had heard partial stories of my mother’s migration experience to Canada during the 1975 civil war in Lebanon; however, she rarely shared detailed accounts of that experience with me. When this image appeared, I hastily messaged her, and she immediately responded, briefly sharing with me the types of jobs she worked when first arriving in Toronto and the English classes she attended to learn the new language. The article and the stories she shared reminded me of the position I inhabit and my relationship with my research commitments. Though my mother did not enter Canada as a refugee, some of the stories she shared with me reminded me of this research.

This article, which is dated January 31st, 1977, reminds me of the headlines and narratives surrounding the Syrian refugee crisis today. The article highlights the language proficiency and economic independence of many of the Lebanese immigrants at that time; it articulates the importance of the Arab community for new Lebanese immigrants settling in Toronto, and it

28 accentuates the Lebanese capacity to assimilate and integrate into Canadian society. The prioritisation of economic integration and language proficiency in English or French are still seen as markers of successful integration by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, something I observed while reviewing available programs within settlement agencies. The picture of my mother and her sister featured in the article show them happily sewing a car seat cover in a factory she worked in when she first came to Canada. What is somewhat hidden from this narrative are the difficulties of employment, income and settlement; my mother and her sister were not working solely to be able to live and work in Canada, but they had family obligations to raise funds to bring the rest of the family to Toronto. As I was growing up, I witnessed my parents try to make a home in a new country, and I believe this experience and positionality shaped my theoretical and methodological choices for this research.

As noted by Audrey Kobayashi (1994), “anti-racist scholars, many of whom work within their own visible minority communities, see the struggle to overcome racism as a transformation of themselves as much as it is a transformation of the social norms and practices through which racism occurs” (p.74). My positionality as an antiracist feminist of colour plays a large role in my political and academic endeavours. I am deeply committed to critical academic scholarship and praxis. Similarly to Kobayashi (1994) who is “deeply convinced that no social scholarship is independent of political action” and is “personally committed to acknowledging…research as political and to using it more effectively for social change” (p.79), I am both academically and politically invested in employing intersectional research to housing studies. Additionally, I capture my own embodied experience of conducting this research as someone who lives, rents and collectively organises and protests in Toronto through personal reflections throughout the research process. My positionality as a daughter of Lebanese immigrant parents played an important role in many of my decisions throughout this research process. Such documentations and analyses of my own subject-position within this research are important components of this study.

1.6 Research contributions and map of dissertation As previously discussed, housing inequality in Canada extends beyond income inequality to include compounding issues of poverty, racialisation, citizenship, nationality and identity. This

29 study illuminates the importance of articulating the barriers refugees face when accessing the private rental market and the creative ways frontline workers help their clients challenge and overcome such barriers. In addition, this study explores the relationship between housing discrimination and neoliberal governance; the disjuncture between the rental costs assumed by social welfare organisations, such as Ontario Works, and the increasing costs of rent in the private rental market; the intersections between language, employment and housing; and the role of organised resistance in planning for a more affordable Toronto. The insights presented within this study are underscored by a socio-political context in which the affordable housing crisis is urgent, pressing, and relevant for understanding the social geographic inequalities shaping our cities.

As a doctoral student and an activist, I hope to continue to bridge critical questions of intersectionality with the everyday experiences and encounters of frontline workers, community organisations and individuals resisting and advocating for a more affordable Toronto. This dissertation unpacks some of the integral ways in which such collaborations with frontline workers can be beneficial for understanding housing inequality and exclusion. Frontline workers collaborate with one another to navigate the housing market’s specificities, the state’s housing, immigration, and welfare policies and the needs of their clients, but are seldomly seen as knowledge makers. Collaborating with frontline workers sheds light on the possibilities for understanding the multiple layers of housing access as experienced by a diverse client population, most of whose voices are marginalised and silenced. Each chapter of this dissertation offers unique insights into the housing crisis as it pertains to refugees served by housing and settlement services in Toronto.19

Chapter one, “Engaging housing scholarship: Analysing the complex realities of refugees in Canada,” reviews relevant housing studies literature. It identifies the tensions, gaps and debates within this literature and integrates antiracist feminist theoretical contributions to the

19 It is important to note that I have opted for the paper-model dissertation. Each paper has its own set of methods and theoretical frameworks. However, all four papers are informed by the theoretical and methodological frameworks outlined in this introduction. Adhering to the guidelines of the paper model, each paper consists of an independent abstract, key words, along with separate methods and theoretical sections. Please note that there will be some repetition within the methods sections of each paper. For the purposes of clarity, each paper will be referred to as chapter and its correlating chapter number as outlined in this introduction.

30 conceptualisation of how the housing crisis is affecting marginalised groups, specifically refugees in Canada. The first section of this chapter reviews key scholars in housing studies, which examine the relationship between housing inequality and income inequality (see Hulchanski, 2011; Simone and Walks, 2019; Walks and Bourne, 2006;). Subsequently, the second section of this literature review highlights particular tensions and gaps in the housing scholarship by engaging with literature on the access to housing among refugees and immigrants in Canada (see Murdie, 2002, 2010; Murdie & Teixeira, 2011; Owusu, 1999; Teixeira, 2006, 2008). In the third section of this chapter, I extend the conversations of housing inequality to include antiracist feminist theoretical frameworks and conceptual tools (see Abu-Laban, 2002, 2015; Bannerji, 2000, 2011; hooks, 2009; Lo, 2015; Razack, 2002), most notably intersectionality and theories of home-making, to offer a critical analysis of the ways in which racialised refugees experience and renegotiate power and the politics of housing access in Canada. Chapter one of this dissertation offers critical conceptual framings for the following chapters of this study.

Chapter two, “Seeking refuge in non-profits: Neoliberal governance and affordable housing in Toronto,” engages with the experiences of frontline staff in housing and settlement organisations across Toronto. In this chapter, I identify the main actors supporting refugees in their housing searches and explore the important—but limited—roles these frontline actors in non-profit organisations play in supporting vulnerable communities, such as refugees, in Canada to secure affordable housing. This chapter highlights the intersecting barriers faced by refugees in navigating Toronto’s private rental market through the viewpoints of frontline staff working within non-profit organisations across Toronto. Showcasing the differential impacts of the housing crisis as they cut across race, class and citizenship status, this chapter investigates the systemic limitations faced by refugees in navigating the private rental housing market in Toronto.

Chapter three, “Navigating the terrains of the state: The importance of informal networks among social service providers in Toronto” engages with the limitations, strategies, and recommendations employed by frontline staff when navigating access to housing for marginalised populations, such as refugees, in Toronto. This chapter draws on growing

31 scholarship that has showcased the importance of service providers in administering essential services for marginalised populations in Canada (Ashton, Pettigrew & Galatsanou, 2016; Khanlou et al., 2017; Shaw & Funk, 2019; Tastsoglou et al., 2014). Building on this literature, I analyse the limitations of service provision through the perspectives of frontline staff themselves. Moreover, this chapter explores and unveils the creative ways in which frontline staff navigate policy, programs and services to help meet the needs of refugees attempting to settle and live in Toronto. Working with different socially located communities that cross-cut identities of race, class, gender, and citizenship status, frontline staff employ intersectionality as praxis to challenge the structural limitations their clients face when settling in Canada. Identifying the limitations of working within state-funded organisations, programs and services, this chapter segues into the final chapter on political agency, grassroots organising and housing justice in Toronto.

Chapter four, “Activist realities and the re-imagining of home: Moving towards a housing justice framework in Toronto,” concludes the research with the praxis of housing justice in the city. This chapter highlights grassroots and community critiques of federal, provincial and municipal definitions, measurements and policies on housing affordability in Toronto. Drawing on critiques from community organisations, such as OCAP, ACORN, and Parkdale Organize!, this chapter identifies the limitations, gaps and tensions of Toronto’s Housing Now initiative and Regent Park’s revitalisation project. Examining the viewpoints, content and political initiatives fostered by community organisations, illuminates important limitations of current housing policies and their failure to reflect the experiences and needs of marginalised peoples seeking housing in the city. This chapter ends with a review of the activist initiatives of Parkdale Organize! and the possibilities of a housing justice framework informed by intersectional praxis. This dissertation, therefore, is not just an academic endeavour, but one with a vested interest in politically transforming housing access in Toronto.

32 2 Chapter 1: Engaging housing scholarship: Analysing the complex realities of refugees in Canada

Abstract This literature review analyses contributions made by housing scholars on the differential impacts of the housing crisis on people living in major Canadian cities. What remains largely absent from these discussions is an analysis of the intersections of race, citizenship status and class in conversation with housing access and inequality faced by newcomers, such as refugees. This literature review engages with different sets of scholarship focused on housing access in Canadian cities, settlement of refugees, and home and belonging. By engaging with a diverse set of scholarship, I extend conversations of housing inequality to include antiracist feminist theoretical frameworks and conceptual tools, most notably intersectionality and theories of home-making, to offer a critical analysis of the ways in which racialised refugees experience and renegotiate power and the politics of housing (in)access and inequality in Canada.

Key words: housing inequality, housing exclusion, refugees, antiracist feminism, home and belonging

2.1 Introduction

A great deal of scholarly attention over the last decade has focused on what has come to be seen as a housing crisis facing people in major cities across Canada, most notably Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Montreal. One key element of the housing crisis is the deepening housing inequality in Canadian cities (see Hulchanski, 2011). Existing housing literature highlight the relationship between political-economic policies and practices and deepening housing inequality in Canada (see Walks, 2016). This chapter reviews such scholarship with a focus on its relevance to understanding the intersections of housing inequality with race, class and citizenship status as it pertains to refugees. Drawing on antiracist feminism, this review expands housing scholarship to include an intersectional lens and theories of home-making to conceptualise housing inequality, housing access and housing justice in Canada.

This review unpacks critical strains of housing literature focused on analysing housing inequality in Canada. The questions threaded throughout this literature review are: What does the current

33 literature on housing explain about inequality and access in Canada’s housing system? What does an intersectional analysis centring race and citizenship status contribute to the literature on housing access and inequality? I address these two questions by reviewing existing dominant housing studies literature and housing scholarship focused on the experiences of housing access among immigrants and refugees settling in major Canadian cities. This chapter then concludes with an engagement of antiracist feminist frameworks which conceptualise the housing crisis as it relates to home and belonging. I contend that antiracist feminisms—particularly as they inform concepts of home-making and intersectionality—provide useful and conceptual tools for analysing housing access and imaginings of home among racialised refugees.

The scope of this review is quite vast and incorporates scholarship on housing across several fields and disciplines. It identifies and engages with: a) housing literature focused on analysing the political-economic underpinnings of Canada’s housing system, b) housing scholarship engaged with the experiences of immigrants and newcomers settling in Canada, and c) antiracist feminist literature that employ an intersectional politics of home, belonging and housing access. The literature examined is attentive to the urban context of housing. The purpose for engaging with the different theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding housing access and inequality is to expand narratives of the housing crisis to include intersectional analyses across race, class and citizenship status in tandem with the roles marginalised communities play in practicing their rights to housing and home in Canada.20

This literature review is divided into three main sections. Section one of this chapter identifies and engages with housing scholarship that centralise questions of housing affordability and housing inequality in Canadian cities. I review such scholarship under the umbrella of three

20 The literature chosen for this review focuses on the contemporary context of Canada’s housing system. Literature chosen reflects dominant and canonical housing scholarship that emphasises political economy approaches to conceptualising the housing crisis in Canada. It is not to say that there are no scholars employing antiracist, critical race, and feminist frameworks to understanding housing access in Canada (see Buckley, 2019; Masuda, Franks, Kobayashi & Wideman, 2020), but rather that an explicit intervention in how dominant studies on housing access and inequality are framed and analysed in relation to race, language and status in the Canadian context is needed. For this reason, I draw on antiracist feminist scholars from a range of disciplines and fields to highlight the particular conceptual and analytical tools employed to understand housing inequality, housing exclusion and housing access in Canada.

34 significant theoretical and empirical interventions in analysing and understanding Canada’s housing crisis, which include: a) the spatialisation of race and poverty as it pertains to housing inequality, b) the financialisation of the housing market as it relates to processes of gentrification and displacement, and c) the implementation of inclusionary zoning, municipal by-laws and supportive housing policies. Section two of this chapter identifies the analytical gaps within existent housing scholarship and extends the conversation on housing inequality and access to include literature focused on the differential experiences of racialised communities accessing Canada’s housing system. I review such scholarship based on two important themes: a) immigrant and refugee access to housing in Canada, and b) the relationship between housing inequality and housing discrimination. The third section of this literature review highlights critical antiracist feminist frameworks in differentiating and analysing the relationship between housing access and conceptualisations of home and belonging through an intersectional lens. Engaging with theories of belonging and exclusion as it relates to home-making among racialised communities and peoples, this chapter extends conversations on housing inequality to include the intersections of race, class and status, as they contribute to the compounding barriers faced by racialised refugees in accessing housing in Canada. Converging different sets of scholarship that seldom engage with one another, this literature review highlights the importance of an intersectional politics of housing access and inequality in Canada.

2.2 Part I: Race, space, and place: Conceptualising housing inequality in Canada Since the 2008-09 global economic crisis, housing has received remarkable scholarly attention. Urban geographers in particular have been central to conducting research on the housing landscape across major Canadian cities (see August 2016; Buckley, 2019; Hackworth & Mah, 2011; Simone & Walks, 2019; Walks, 2014). The data gathered and analysed by urban geographers have revealed and shed light on three major theoretical and empirical contributions to understanding Canada’s current housing system; these include: a) the spatialisation of race and poverty as it pertains to housing inequality in Canada; b) the financialisation of the housing market as it relates to processes of gentrification and displacement, and; c) inclusionary zoning, municipal by-laws, and supportive housing policies. This section illustrates the significance of such analyses in narrating housing inequality and housing access within Canadian cities, with an

35 emphasis on Toronto.21 These three sets of analysis have been integral to theorising and contextualising changing political, economic and global relations as they relate to Canada’s housing system in the post-2008 context.

2.2.1 The spatialisation of race and poverty in Canada There is a growing set of scholarship within geography and urban studies focused on the spatialisation of poverty across cities in Canada. Much of the research on the changing social geography of Canadian cities focuses predominantly on income inequality and the concentrations of poverty and wealth in various urban neighbourhoods (see Hulchanski, 2011). The majority of such studies often rely on quantitative data collection methods, which utilise government databases to inform their analysis. For example, Ades, Apparicio, and Segun (2012) performed a longitudinal study to address the changes in the “intra-metropolitan distribution of poverty in Canada’s eight largest CMAs [census metropolitan areas]: Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec, Toronto, Vancouver, and Winnipeg” (p. 340). The study maps out the changing landscape of Canadian metropolitan areas in relation to poverty and its impact on the inner city and suburbs. Their findings conclude that: [Z]ones where poverty has increased over the past twenty years are mainly located further away from the CBD [central business district] than they were in 1986, in areas where there had been less poverty than before, especially in neighbourhoods located in the suburbs of large metropolitan areas. (Ades, Apparicio & Segun, 2012, p. 358)

This study is one of the many conducted by various geographers who have explored the impacts of growing socio-economic inequality in relation to geographies of poverty. Additionally, Bolton and Breau (2012) have traced the “distribution of earnings across 87 metropolitan areas in Canada” (p. 1378). In order to track the changes in distribution, the authors use “the 20% long- form sample of the census for the years 1996, 2001, and 2006” (p. 1378), where it was discovered that urban inequality was much more prevalent within larger cities. Walks (2013, 2014, 2016) has also performed considerable research to analyse housing inequality in Canadian cities, where he has been able to document increasing income polarisation and segregation across major Canadian cities. Such work produced within urban studies and geography across Canada is

21 Since the following chapters of this dissertation focus on the settlement of refugees in Toronto, this literature review focuses mainly on housing scholarship in Canada, with a particular emphasis on Toronto.

36 central to understanding the spatial implications of the housing crisis in Canadian cities; it visually lays out the changing socio-economic patterns and their impacts on the housing landscapes of Canada.

Hulchanski’s (2011) report on income polarisation in Toronto’s neighbourhoods played and continues to play a prominent role in shaping discussions around housing access and inequality in Canada. Titled “The three cities within Toronto: Income polarisation among Toronto’s neighbourhoods, 1970–2005,” his report has been central to understanding the ways in which current economic trends in Toronto directly impact neighbourhoods. Hulchanski analyses Toronto’s socio-economic and ethnic demographics over the period from 1975 to 2005, and he makes a persuasive case that Toronto has become increasingly polarised based on income, and he shows how income polarisation impacts differentiated neighbourhood formations. The report provides detailed empirical insights into the ways low-income communities have become increasingly concentrated and segregated from upper-middle-class neighbourhoods in Toronto, a pattern that he demonstrates is also cross-cut by racialised spatial segregation. Most importantly, it “provide[s] a new way of looking at Toronto” (p.3) by focusing on the ways in which residents’ socio-economic status determines the status of three neighbourhoods, which he categorises as City #1, City #2, and City #3. These categorisations reflect income differentials between high-income (City #1), middle-income (City #2), and low-income (City #3) neighbourhoods. Highlighting the growing income inequality as reflected within Toronto’s neighbourhoods, Hulchanski (2011) notes that the average income individuals earned in City #1 in 2005 was $88,400, compared to the average income of $26,900 earned by individuals in City #3 (p.6). In addition to his findings on growing income inequality in Toronto neighbourhoods, Hulchanski’s empirical findings contribute to unpacking the spatialisation of race and ethnicity as they intersect with income.

In the same report, Hulchanski documents the changing demographics based on language, immigration, and those who identify as visible minorities. He details that the immigrant population in City #1 decreased from 35% to 28%, while in City #2 it increased from 38% to 45%, and City #3 experienced the most growth from 31% to 61% (Hulchanski, 2011, p.20). Hulchanski also uses census data to demonstrate the changes to the white population in Toronto.

37 Between 1996 and 2006, the white population decreased most substantially in City #3, from 46% to 34% (p.20). Additionally, Hulchanski highlights the changing migration patterns and their impact on Toronto’s three distinct neighbourhoods. Although about 10% of recent immigrants resided in City #1 in 1996, this population decreased to 4% in 2006 (p.20). Documenting the shifting percentages of immigrant communities in Toronto, Hulchanski examines how wealthy neighbourhoods continue to be occupied by white residents, while lower-income neighbourhoods have become home to new immigrant communities.

However, Hulchanski is not the first to outline the concentration of poverty in Canadian cities and its relationship to the racialisation of poverty. A few years prior, Walks and Bourne (2006), using census information from 1991 to 2001, explored “the relationship between the spatial concentration of visible minorities and the growth of neighbourhood poverty” (p.275). Walks and Bourne (2006) argue that the “relationship between visible minority concentration and high- poverty neighbourhoods in Canada, however, remains underexamined, with most studies concerned with segregation conducted by a small number of devoted sociologists and geographers” (p.274). The devoted few geographers and sociologists in Canada who have interrogated the spatialisation of race and immigration in relation to housing include Dylan Simone and Alan Walks (2019), who have more recently focused on wealth inequality as it relates to increasing debt among immigrant homeowners; Vanessa Rosa (2019), who examines the intersections of national identity, multiculturalism, and urban revitalisation projects; Joe Darden and Sameh Kamel (2000) who focus on the differences in black and white homeownership rates in correspondence to racial discrimination in Toronto’s private homeownership market; Eric Fong and Rima Wilkes (2003) who examine racial and ethnic residential patterns in multicultural cities, such as Toronto; and Michelle Buckley (2019) who employs an intersectional framework to engage with homeownership renovations and its intersections with racialised and gendered labour. These scholars who have prioritised questions of race and space, have been pivotal to developing an analysis of the housing market in Canada that understands socio-economic status as inter-related with other aspects of identity to shape housing access in Canadian cities. For example, Darden and Kamel’s (2000) study concluded that race, regardless of socio-economic class, proved to be a barrier to homeownership among Black Canadians in Toronto. This study contributes to the growing literature among Canadian

38 scholars mapping the intersections of race, income and housing access in Canada by systematically showcasing the role race plays in projected homeownership rates among the Black population in Toronto.

The intersections of race and housing access is often analysed (and therefore implicitly theorised) using quantitative research methods that rely heavily on census data tracts that measure visible minorities in various neighbourhoods. Such studies have relied on mapping the concentration of poverty as it relates to race, which is important for political advocacy groups and for challenging provincial legislation and municipal by-laws. However, such methods have limitations with regard to understanding the racialisation of the housing crisis in Canada. Specifically, census data often leaves out a large percentage of racialised people, including refugee claimants and those without status living in shelters and/or rooming homes not formally registered with the state. For example, Faria Kamal and Kyle Killian (2015) argue: Scant literature explores the lives of undocumented residents in Canada and most countries of the Global North, which have, in recent decades, become home to significant numbers of undocumented migrants. This lack of research is attributed largely to the fact that undocumented migrants actively and quite consciously remain hidden from public view in order to avoid detention and deportation. (p.63-64)

In addition to the lack of access to such populations among researchers, Kamal and Killian (2015) argue that the state “ensur[es] that undocumented populations remain outside the ambit of conventional scientific inquiry because such scrutiny could reflect poorly on state policy and ideologies” (p.64). The reliance on quantitative research methods to illustrate the relationships between race and housing, leaves out important segments of the population, including people living without status.

Such an empirical gap is not limited to undocumented populations, but includes people living in informal rooming houses that are not officially registered with municipalities. Due to lack of formal regulations and cheap rents, informal rooming houses have attracted a larger segment of the immigrant population in major urban cities in Canada. For example, Preston et al. (2011) shed light on the growing number of new informal rooming houses in the suburbs to specifically target new immigrants. They argue that, “often illegal, suburban rooming houses can offer deplorable housing. Many of the new rooming houses target immigrants from specific places of

39 origin or specific ethno-racial and religious groups” (Preston et al., 2011, p.36). Due to zoning bylaws which prohibit rooming houses in certain neighbourhoods in Toronto (see Mah, 2011), the lack of statistical data on such housing arrangements, represents a limitation in literature focused on quantitative research methods. Depending on government data to illustrate uneven dynamics in housing access, can potentially leave out extremely vulnerable communities.

This critique is also true for measuring homelessness in Canada. Non-governmental organisations and scholars have underscored the difficulties in collecting data on people experiencing homelessness. Williams and Cheal (2010) state “[m]ost numeric data on homelessness arise either from limited and differentially collected official statistics or result from ad hoc head counts of street homeless people” (p.313). For example, census data collected on the demographics of shelters in Canada, are based on the population in the moment in time of which the data are collected. With high turnover rates and a transient population, data collected does not accurately reflect the homeless population in Canada. Though important, a reliance on quantitative data does not reveal the full extent of the housing crisis in major Canadian cities, as some of the most vulnerable segments of the population are often left unidentified. For this reason, feminist geographers stress the importance of engaging with feminist methodologies that employ qualitative research methods.

Feminist debates and challenges to quantitative research methods highlight the use of qualitative research to add to the social texture of the everyday lived experience of marginalised communities. Feminist epistemological challenges to positivist approaches to knowledge production reveal the limitations of quantitative research. For some feminists, “the identification of bias and androcentrism in traditional scientific research pointed to male scientists’ failure to live up to the principles of good science” (Gillies & Alldred, 2012, p.46). Qualitative research methods, which some may argue to be “sympathetic to feminist approaches of empathy and understanding” (Sharp, 2005, p.305), pose a challenge to the idea of universal claims to truth and knowledge. Qualitative research methods, such as interviews and ethnographies, open opportunities for researchers to act as “conduits, channelling perspectives and voices which would otherwise remain silent, muted or invisible” (Gillies & Alldred, 2012, p.49). Though qualitative research methods are employed to disrupt hierarchical modes of knowledge

40 production, feminists have been particularly attuned to the relations of power embedded in speaking for marginalised communities.22

Feminist geographers have been cognizant of the ways in which knowledge production can reproduce top-down approaches that privilege the expertise of academics and policy makers (see Coddington 2017). Qualitative research methods are employed to challenge relations of power between the researcher and research participants. However, Coddington (2017) states, “It is important to not only consider the moment of encounter within the research project, which perhaps could be framed by questions about consent, risk and power imbalances between researcher and participant, but to consider the wider structure of power within which the research encounter takes place” (p.317). Challenging structures of power that shape how research is produced goes beyond examining the relationship between researcher and participant; it includes a wide range of positionalities embedded within particular structures and institutions that produce research. The reliance on quantitative data to illustrate the racialisation of poverty does not take up questions of power and privilege within research institutions.

Though it is clear that quantitative data collection methods are important for challenging and informing government policy on housing, there are some limitations of using such methods to explore the spatialisation of race and poverty as it relates to housing inequality among extremely vulnerable populations. In contrast, studies of gentrification often showcase the experiences of displacement and dispossession of racialised communities that coincide with capital investment and rising property values. Employing qualitative and quantitative methods, scholarship on gentrification adds social texture to the everyday lived experiences of communities and neighbourhoods undergoing gentrification. In the next section, I offer a discussion of this gentrification literature from urban studies and critical geography.

2.2.2 Gentrification and the financialisation of the housing market in Canada Scholarship on Canada’s housing system has made significant contributions to understanding the changing and uneven geographies of Canadian cities (see Bunting, Walks, & Filion, 2004; Chen,

22 Critical race theory, antiracist feminisms, Indigenous feminisms and post-colonial theory have debated and challenged Eurocentric knowledge production in analysing racialised and colonised peoples within the academy.

41 Myles, & Picot, 2012; Walks & Bourne, 2006). Scholarly attention among urban geographers on processes of gentrification, in particular, have received a lot of reception within housing studies (see August & Walks, 2008, 2018; Bélanger, 2012; Mazer & Rankin, 2012). Grant et al. (2018), defines gentrification as a “process of neighbourhood change that transforms working-class or vacant industrial lands into middle-class areas, displacing poorer residents” (p.56). Unlike studies mapping out the spatialisation of race and income across the Canadian housing landscape, literature focused on gentrification employ a variety of quantitative and qualitative research methods to understand and explore factors driving gentrification as well as the economic and social consequences gentrification has on low-income and working-class communities. The connections drawn between gentrification and accumulation by dispossession have been more recently articulated by scholars focused on state-sponsored gentrification, where social housing has been demolished and replaced with mixed-income housing (see August, 2014; Slater, 2004).

Some literature on gentrification has also focused on social and political agency among working- class communities displaced within major Canadian cities, such as Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. For example, Mazer and Rankin (2012) locate social space and political agency in the everyday lives of rooming-house tenants and proprietors of commercial shops they argue are most affected by gentrification. By focusing on the everyday realities of marginalised communities living in gentrifying neighbourhoods, Mazer and Rankin integrate the experiences of rooming-house tenants who remained during the gentrification of South Parkdale in Toronto. Mazer and Rankin employ qualitative research methods, including semi-structured interviews and cognitive mapping, to expand on conceptualisations of social space as they relate to the “right to the city” narratives. In so doing, they argue: a fundamental proposition of our research is that exploring how marginalised people experience neighbourhood upgrading allows us to critically examine and reimagine our knowledge of gentrification. In this sense we place our work within an explicit commitment to scholarship and praxis and take the everyday life of capitalism as a central category of analysis. (Mazer and Rankin, 2012, p.823)

Similarly, Helene Belanger (2012) discusses the ways in which revitalisation projects alter access to public spaces between long-term residents and new residents, emphasising the need to analyse how public spaces of long-term residents are often appropriated and/or co-opted. The

42 everyday realities of capitalism are not encapsulated by quantitative research methods that make up the majority of literature on housing inequality in conversation with income inequality and spatialisation in Canada. Critical geographers like Mazer and Rankin, who share similar methodological approaches with feminist and critical race theorists, have centred questions of gentrification and its impact on precariously housed tenants. For Mazer and Rankin, reimagining gentrification knowledge entails accounting for the ways in which marginalised peoples imagine space. However, they do not dismiss literature that focus on the systemic accounts of gentrification, but rather extend the analysis to include the experiences of low-income tenants who are often displaced during processes of gentrification.

In addition to qualitative approaches to understanding the housing crisis in Canadian cities, many geographers have critiqued and analysed state-sponsored gentrification and neoliberal governance by tracing changing government policies and their impacts on residents in working- class neighbourhoods. Tom Slater (2004), in particular, has been integral to understanding the historical transformation of urban spaces in Canadian cities, paying specific attention to recent events in South Parkdale, Toronto. His engagement with the use of zoning bylaws to effectively push single tenants out of Parkdale demonstrates how municipalities participate in the displacement of marginalised communities. In a similar fashion, Martine August and Alan Walks (2008) discuss ethnic enclaves and processes of gentrification using a case study approach. Their research sheds light on the ways in which race and space take form within processes of gentrification in the city of Toronto, while critically challenging redevelopment projects that advocate for mixed social housing, despite the displacement of mainly working-class people of colour living in social housing. For example, August (2016) examines the redevelopment of Toronto’s Don Mount Court using qualitative interviews and ethnographic research. Her scholarship challenges the mixed-income narratives,23 in which it is assumed that redeveloping social housing areas will generate greater investment in the neighbourhood and therefore offer an impetus for people living in poverty to break the cycle of poverty. Her research exposes the various ways in which property owners generate profit from revitalisation projects while

23 Mixed-income housing includes different types of housing. It usually includes a mixture of market-rent housing and low-income housing. It has often been the narrative used recently for revitalisation projects happening across major cities in Canada.

43 displacing and dispossessing working-class people. By interviewing both tenants and those leading the revitalisation projects, which include planners, developers and politicians, August (2016) showcases the tensions and gaps between the mixed-income model and the experiences of low-income tenants. Similarly, Hackworth and Reckers (2005) address gentrification by exploring ethnic-specific enclaves, focusing on Little Italy, India Bazaar, and Greektown, with a particular analytical emphasis on the consumption of ethnic landscapes. Hackworth and Reckers (2005) pose a challenge to the economic reductionist model of gentrification by providing a nuanced understanding of how space and place are culturally consumed and narrated for the sake of profit. The contributions made by urban theorists and geographers have created a critical space to engage with tenants’ voices, subsequently offering a more multifaceted understanding of race and space in relation to changing provincial and municipal housing policies.

Much of this geographic research on state-led gentrification contextualises the housing crisis within a critique of broader neoliberal processes. As stated by Grant et al. (2018), “the rising influence of neoliberal political philosophies in planning policies in the 1990s encouraged urban revitalisation and intensification” (p.56). In addition to the growing literature on gentrification in the context of increasing neoliberal governance, important studies have highlighted the effects of the financialisation of the housing market on the housing crisis. For example, August and Walks’ (2018) recent article, “Gentrification, suburban decline, and the financialisation of multi-family rental housing: The case of Toronto,” discusses provincial legislative changes to housing in the twenty-first century and the roles these changes played in shaping the housing crisis across Canadian cities. In particular, August and Walks examine and interrogate the transition into the financialisation of multi-family rental units in Toronto, where the housing market is regulated by the interests of financial markets, financial actors, and financial institutions. They state, “The housing crisis, deregulation, and welfare state retrenchment created the perfect conditions for attracting private investors to multifamily housing in the 1990s” (August & Walks, 2018, p.127). Harris’s gutting of rent control in 1997 opened the housing market to investors who could then make immense profits on rental units in Toronto. Moreover, August and Walks identify and

44 investigate an important piece of Canadian legislation that created Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITS),24 which encouraged private investment in rental real estate.

In 1993, the creation of REITs, which aimed to attract private investors to the housing market, had a direct impact on the private rental housing landscapes of Toronto. According to August and Walks (2018), REITS changed the ownership of multi-family rental housing units. They argued that through REITs, landlords are now “spread among a diffuse array of investors (in relation to their share of securities), who share in the income stream generated by monthly rents” (August & Walks, 2018, p.125), and are focused on generating profit rather than ensuring affordable housing units for long-term residents. Additionally, their creation ignited a set of neoliberal policy changes that had dire impacts on low-income tenants. August and Walks (2018) note that, in “1997 and 1998, the first REITs to invest in multifamily rental housing were launched at exactly the moment that the Province of Ontario set about to decontrol rents, deregulate tenant protections, and withdraw from social housing provision” (p.127). These changes in the 1990s cultivated the perfect conditions for gentrification. In the 1980s, private rental housing units were no longer being built, and in 1993, the Federal Government eliminated funding for new social housing and simultaneously shifted responsibilities for housing onto the provinces (August & Walks, 2018; Hulchanski, 2009). Such responsibilities were then transferred onto municipalities, as provinces were unable to build new, affordable housing units. The lack of regulation, the lack of newly built affordable homes, and growing income inequality set the conditions for an influx of condominium development and rent increases that effectively priced out many immigrant and working-class peoples from the city.

Similar to August and Walks, Gideon Kalman-Lamb (2017) discusses the importance of exploring the financialisation of Canadian housing in relation to neoliberal accumulation. Kalman-Lamb identifies changes to national policies regarding housing in Canada as a precursor to the financialisation of housing. However, Kalman-Lamb draws parallels between such changes to wealth inequality. He states, “Despite the collapse of stock markets in 2001 and the 2008-2009 global liquidity crisis, financial capital fared even better, averaging 26.4% profit

24 REITS allow Canadians to purchase trust units, which essentially work as shares, to buy and manage real estate.

45 rates” (Kalman-Lamb, 2017, p.305). The 2008–2009 financial crisis reinforced uneven geographies and thus had especially dire impacts on working poor people. Additionally, Kalman- Lamb (2017) points to the intersections of wealth and race by stating: Given intersecting power structures of colonialism and ‘race’ in Canada, Indigenous and racialized households disproportionately experience rent-based wealth dispossession. Racialized households across Canada experience three times the low-income incidence of non-racialized households and Indigenous households earn average 17% lower incomes and experience 23% lower rates of homeownership than non-indigenous households. (p. 307)

Kalman-Lamb clearly articulates the relationship between colonialism, racism and housing inequality. Given that geography more broadly as a discipline has only more recently engaged with intersecting power structures of settler-colonialism and racism (see Price, 2010), few studies within the housing literature have explored the intersections of race, class and citizenship status. Rather, housing literature in Canada remains dominated by political-economic approaches to analysing housing inequality and access. However, critical race geographers have provided useful frameworks and debates on race to explore in conversation with housing inequality and housing access.

Several critical race geographers (see Kobayashi, 2013; Mahtani, 2014; Price, 2010; Pulido, 2016) have articulated the potential for geographers to engage with intersecting power structures of settler-colonialism and racism. For example, Patricia Price (2010) examines the points of convergence and contention between critical geographies of race and critical race theory. She states: insights from critical geographies of race concerning scale and place, and from [critical race theory] CRT concerning the specific role of law in the making of race, can mutually inform and thereby enrich one another. I have demonstrated that the all-encompassing nature of race, the problematic status of the black/white binary, and the strategic deployment of narrative constitute key ideas for both critical geographers of race and critical race theorists, which allow us to explore how disciplinary differences might be brought to bear in mutually informative ways. (p.166)

Highlighting the similarities and differences between two theoretical frameworks, Price (2010) notes the importance of expanding on the ways in which race is theorised within geography to include the legal and political commitments that have informed critical race theory. A similar argument has been made by Laura Pulido (2015), who underscores the importance of analysing

46 race on a structural level rather than on an interpersonal level, particularly within the context of research on environmental racism. Her insights on racial inequality as structural inequality foreground analyses of race within geography. She argues that “In order for neoliberalism to be considered legitimate, the social formation must not be seen as racist. Thus, there is a refusal to grapple with structural racism and an insistence on reducing racism to personal prejudice and racial hostility” (p.811). Though discussed in the context of research on environmental racism, Pulido aptly demonstrates the importance of viewing relations of race within larger structures of white-supremacy and white privilege that have racial and classed ramifications. Understanding neoliberalism through an analysis of structural racism, has the potential to drive analyses on the relationship between housing inequality and racial inequality. The literature on gentrification in urban studies and geography has helped analyse the empirical contours of housing inequality in Canadian cities. Critical race scholars, such as Pulido and Price, however, challenge us to think about the ways in which race is discussed within geography by paying attention to the intersections of such structures which facilitate relations across race, gender, class and status. Analysing intersecting structures of power extends the lens in which gentrification literature is read beyond questions solely focused on political-economic forces, but rather about its intersections with racism and settler-colonialism. A similar critique can be made about analyses on inclusionary zoning policies and practices in Toronto.

2.2.3 Inclusionary zoning, municipal by-laws and supportive housing In 2016, through the Promoting Affordable Housing Act, Ontario introduced the option for municipalities to implement inclusionary zoning regulations and bylaws.25 According to Social Planning Toronto (2018), inclusionary zoning “refers to programs requiring developers to provide affordable units as part of residential development” (p.3). The number of affordable housing units required as a part of inclusionary zoning bylaws and regulations varies depending on the area. In the context of Ontario, approximately 5% of affordable housing units are required (Social Planning Toronto, 2018).26 Urban planners’ use of inclusionary zoning has been one

25 Amendments made included adding a subsection to Section 16 of the planning act to include the authorization of the “inclusion of affordable housing units within building or projects containing other residential units” (Promoting Affordable Housing Act, 2016, Sec. 16(4)). 26 Though the legislation is based on models enacted in the United States of America, the percentage of affordable housing units required by inclusionary zoning is well below the average of the United States.

47 avenue taken by local governments to address the housing crisis. Critical urban scholars have investigated the uses of zoning by-laws in the context of building new shelters and rooming homes in major Canadian cities. This section explores literature on the politics and practices of inclusionary zoning and municipal zoning by-laws in creating affordable housing, shelters, and rooming houses in the urban context.

Inclusionary zoning in particular has become an important model for housing scholars to identify and analyse. Urban planners have explored the implications of the implementation of zoning by- laws to create more affordable housing units. Julie Mah (2009) studies the impact inclusionary zoning by-laws have on producing more affordable housing units in Canadian cities. In the context of Ontario, Mah reviews section 37 of the Ontario Planning Act to “investigate how effective section 37 has been in generating affordable housing and to test the assumption that section 37 agreements have yielded very little new affordable housing” (p.5). According to Mah (2009), “[s]ection 37 enables municipalities, with related Official Plan provisions in place, to pass a zoning by-law authorizing increases in the height and/or density of a development in exchange for the provisions of facilities, services or matters also known collectively as community benefits” (p.5). Her findings suggest that negotiations with developers to push for affordable housing units in the form of community benefits happen on an ad hoc basis, where “the types of community benefits extracted largely depend on the priorities of the local councillor in each ward” (p.9).27 Mah concludes that the lack of strict legislation mandating affordable housing units allocates power to councillors in different wards who may or may not push for affordable housing developments.

Similarly, Hackworth and Mah (2011) explore inclusionary housing practices in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. Contextualising the role municipalities began to play in housing development during the 1990s, Hackworth and Mah investigate the efficacy of inclusionary housing programs in producing more affordable housing units in major Canadian cities. Though inclusionary housing laws are mandated by the provinces, “negotiated efforts by cities to get developers to consider setting aside land or units in exchange for zoning concessions” (p.59)

27 Community benefits can include affordable housing units, community centres, recreational facilities etc.

48 became an important tactic employed by affordable housing advocates in municipalities. Utilising a policy analysis, Hackworth and Mah (2011) find that “[t]hough there are real limitations to IH [inclusionary housing] as a comprehensive policy, it would be a mistake…to conclude that it should not be a part of the planning dialogue as a way to generate some housing in certain circumstances” (p.74). Noting the limitations of inclusionary housing policies and programs, Hackworth and Mah maintain that such policies can still be effective in advocating for more affordable housing units in major cities. Housing scholarship on inclusionary zoning reveal the politics and practices of housing legislation on municipalities’ capacities to ensure the development of affordable housing in the urban context. Additionally, one thread of research (see Ranasinghe & Valverde, 2009) on zoning by-laws unpacks the shortfalls, limitations and gaps in such programs and practices.

One major limitation that scholars analysing inclusionary zoning policies have illustrated is managing contestation from middle-class property owners who believe their property value will decrease with the introduction of shelters and affordable housing units in their area. For example, Prashan Ranasinghe and Mariana Valverde (2009) interrogate the difficulties of implementing new zoning bylaws that allow for the creation of shelters in residential areas. They argue that even if, theoretically, a shelter or transitional housing unit can be opened in a residential neighbourhood, residents who live there often oppose the creation of such housing types in “their” neighbourhoods. They argue, “While public input is, theoretically, open to all concerned citizens, it is often the propertied who have most to say about development proposals. Advocates for the homeless and for homeless shelters cannot construct an argument based solely on rights” (p.3). Thus, while inclusionary zoning was developed for the purposes of creating more affordable housing in the city, the rights of property owners and those paying private market rent often dominate and overpower the rights of low-income, working-class, and homeless communities that would benefit the most from shelters and affordable housing units. The rights- based framework invoked by inclusionary zoning, often utilised among urban planners, implicitly privileges the rights of property owners at the expense of mainly racialised and low- income tenants.

49 Critical analyses of inclusionary zoning explore the challenges associated with utilising by-laws to build more affordable housing and homeless shelters. For example, in 2001, the City of Toronto proposed a plan to build a homeless shelter on Danforth Avenue and Dawes Road. However, some residents of the neighbourhood actively protested against the potential shelter, arguing that it would be too close to another pre-existing shelter nearby. The case was eventually taken to the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB), which ruled in favour of the residents, and the shelter was not built (Ranasinghe & Valverde, 2009). This incident is not an isolated one. In 2014, Cornerstone Church proposed to open a men’s shelter at Vaughan Road and Oakwood Avenue, but the proposal needed to be passed by City Council. Cornerstone operated a homeless shelter on St. Clair Avenue West, but the building had been sold to a new developer (Karstens- Smith, Toronto Star, 2014). The sale of that building left many of those housed in the shelter with no affordable or emergency shelters in the area. However, like the previously mentioned case study, local residents raised adamant opposition to the building. Based on a Toronto Star article, members of the Oakwood Village Community Association (OVCA) expressed concern about housing homeless residents in the neighbourhood. Most of the members of the association argued that the area was not suitable for homeless residents, as there were a number of bars and much “illegal activity” in the neighbourhood (Karstens-Smith, Toronto Star, 2014). Additionally, local residents expressed concern that people from the shelter would loiter on the streets during the day, as there was a lack of coffee shops and public spaces in the surrounding area. Underpinning these concerns, however, was the immense sense of entitlement that property owners have in relation to the rights of those who do not have shelter. Those who did not own property in the neighbourhood—and particularly residents who had been displaced due to the shelter closure—were not afforded the same rights as those who did own property there. The assumptions and fear of stigma among property owners in the neighbourhood prevailed over the necessity of having a shelter. It is interesting to note that most residents accepted the idea of shelters for the homeless in principle, but they preferred that the shelters not be built “in our backyard”. Inclusionary zoning attempts to rectify the effects of the segregationist model of housing in the city, but in practice, it has not been able to address the housing needs of those most impacted by the housing crisis in Toronto, which include people experiencing homelessness.

50 The inclusionary zoning model aims to cater to the development of more mixed-income neighbourhoods in order to address housing needs for people with a variety of income levels. Despite such efforts, mixed-neighbourhood housing continues to cater to the needs of those who can afford private rental-market prices. For example, Moos, Vinodrai, Revington, and Seasons (2018) analyse the use of mixed-income developments to create more housing affordability in the downtown cores, where significant mixed-use development occurs. As they argue, “Mixed- use zones can be found across metropolitan regions, but they are often located in downtown or central city locations, where they are believed to promote environmental benefits such as shorter trip distances” (Moos et al., 2018, p.8). Based on their findings, however, mixed-use zones do not create more affordable housing; rather, they create conditions that increase property values and, therefore, increased rents and housing prices. This increase in rents and housing prices subsequently allows a wealthier neighbourhood to expand closer to amenities in the downtown core while effectively pushing immigrants, single-income families, and those on social assistance to the peripheries, where rooming houses28 are sparse and the quality of housing is poor. In the areas of Etobicoke and York, which are outside the city of Toronto, rooming houses are permitted, but sparingly; meanwhile, in North York, Scarborough, and East York, rooming houses are prohibited (Shelter, Support & Housing Administration Shelter, 2010, p.17). As rent becomes too high for people to continue living in the downtown core, the outskirts become home to many newcomers, single-income families, and those on social assistance; however, as rooming houses are the most affordable type of homes for people with low income, the lack of licensed rooming houses in Scarborough, North York, and Etobicoke adds another barrier to finding adequate and affordable housing in Toronto.

Similar to scholarship focused on inclusionary zoning, those researching rooming houses are aware of the ways in which stigmatisation of low-income neighbourhoods and housing types contribute to the processes of gentrification. For example, Grant et al. (2018) documents the link between gentrification of low-income neighbourhoods with stigmatised land-uses, such as rooming houses by arguing that municipalities “have adopted revitalisation policies that promote economic upgrading in areas where low-rent rooming houses once flourished” (p.55). Rooming

28 Rooming houses are furnished bedrooms with shared kitchen and bathroom.

51 houses, which are seen as a viable option for many single low-income peoples, are increasingly disappearing across Canadian cities. When government policies depend on the housing needs of lower middle-class and middle-class people with status, low-income peoples are effectively erased from the housing landscape in major Canadian cities. Urban geographic scholarship attuned to the impacts of the housing crisis on low-income peoples is vast, as this review chapter has begun to explore. Yet, the inclusionary housing literature and critiques of zoning by-laws do not often engage with systemic racism as it relates to legislation and the production of urban space.

As previously mentioned, critical race scholars identify and engage with the ways in which systemic racism embedded within the law (Price, 2010). For example, Sherene Razack’s (2002), Race, space, and the law: Unmapping a white settler society explores “how race becomes place through the law” (p.1). Her book brings together a collection of essays that investigate and analyse the relationship(s) between the racialisation of space and its enactment through the law. In the context of Toronto, Engin Isin and Myer Siemiatycki (2002) examine “case studies of mosques struggling to make space for themselves in the Toronto area and incorporates the issues of citizenship, racialization, identity, and space” (p.189). By centralising questions of status, race and space, Isin and Siemiatycki expose the ways in which land use and zoning are a “source of conflict for immigrants in the Greater Toronto Area” (p.196). Analysing three case studies of the establishments of mosques in the Greater Toronto Area—Talim-Ul-Islam Mosque, Canadian Islamic Trust Foundation Mosque, and El-Noor Mosque—Isin and Siemiatycki highlight the ways in which the law is not applied equally to all citizens based on race, status and social citizenship. In all three case studies, municipal by-laws coupled with responses and reactions by residents were used to attack and deny the applications for the building of mosques in Toronto. For example, El-Noor mosque existed in North York since 1986. In 1996, renovation plans were submitted to the City. The renovations included enlarging the worship space and redesigning the second storey of the mosque with dome and minaret. The City of York’s Committee of Adjustment found the renovation plan to expand the mosque “as an acceptable minor variation of the existing zoning bylaw, requiring only that the minaret be scaled down from the proposed height of 80 to 60 feet” (Isin & Siemiatycki, 2002, p.204). However, residents in the neighbourhood rallied against the expansion with 252 signatures on a petition against the

52 renovations and $16,000 in funds raised to appeal the decision (Isin & Siemiatycki, 2002). Though the Ontario Municipal Board approved the proposed renovations, the conflict and uproar of residents in the neighbourhood exposes the ways in which public space is informed by relations of race and social citizenship. Similar to critiques made by urban scholars on the privileged voices of proprietors challenging the building of new shelters in a residential neighbourhood, critical race scholars explore the intersections of the law, race, citizenship and public space. I argue that such extensions of the housing scholarship, are useful for investigating the relationships between housing inequality and housing access among refugees and refugee claimants in Canada. Thus, the following section illustrates some of the limitations of the housing studies literature with particular emphasis on scholarship that engages with the specific experiences of refugees and refugee claimants in accessing Canada’s housing system.

2.3 Part II: Limitations and tensions of the housing literature in Canada As illustrated in the previous section, housing scholarship in geography is acutely focused on housing inequality as it pertains to low-income peoples without significant attention to the ways that class intersects with other axes of identity. The lack of engagement with the lived realities of marginalised communities and the minimal space given to those working on the frontlines, which include grassroots organisations, of the housing crisis are representative of the broader limitations within the subfield of housing studies in geography. This section addresses the gaps in political-economy approaches to housing studies, which seldom engage with the intersections of race, class and status in housing access in major Canadian cities. The following section provides an overview of studies that do shed light on race-, class- and status-differentiated experiences of people interacting with Canada’s housing system.

2.3.1 Refugees and housing access in Canada A new kind of literature has recently emerged to address the specific barriers that refugee claimants and sponsored refugees face when it comes to accessing affordable housing in major cities across Canada (Murdie, 2002, 2003). Most of this research has focused on Winnipeg, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, as the majority of government-assisted refugees and refugee claimants gravitate towards areas where people from the same countries of origin have established themselves and continue to maintain important social networks. Though the literature

53 is growing, few studies in urban geography have focused on access to housing among refugees in Canada. Robert Murdie (2008) makes a similar claim stating that “little Canadian research has focused on access to housing by refugees” (p.84). Rather, the majority of studies on migration and housing access have focused more generally on immigrants as a homogenised analytical category (Teixeira, 2006). A small but growing body of scholarship has recognised the importance of researching and analysing the specific housing needs of refugees and refugee claimants. This section of the chapter outlines some of the debates and discussions integrating race and status with studies on housing access in Canada.

The majority of studies on settlement and integration in Canada have identified housing as one of the major barriers to settling in Canada as a government-assisted refugee (GAR) (Francis & Hiebert, 2014). Francis and Hiebert (2014) in particular argue that, “previous research emphasizes housing as one of the first and most immediate needs for newcomers that also has long-term implications for integration” (p.66). Studies on access to housing have centred on GARs, who are usually funded for the first year upon arrival to a Canadian town or city. However, some studies articulate the different sets of barriers to housing experienced by GARs and refugee claimants. For example, Murdie’s (2010) study on the experiences of sponsored refugees and refugee claimants in accessing permanent housing in Toronto demonstrates the discrepancies between those sponsored under the UN conventions relating to the status of refugees and those who seek refugee status within Canada. Some of the findings include the following: Three-quarters of the sponsored refugees spent their first night with family or friends. Twenty per cent spent the first night in a hostel or shelter (World Vision). In contrast, only 37% of refugee claimants spent their first night with family or friends and one-third in a hostel or shelter (Romero House, Matthew House, Salvation Army Red Door). A further 29% of claimants spent the night wherever they could find a place—a motel, a church, a stranger’s house or even outside in a park. (Murdie, 2010, p.92)

Because refugee claimants’ immigration status is much more precarious than that of those sponsored by the government, they often face more compounding challenges to accessing housing in Canada. For example, landlords are more likely to rent to those with status than to those whose status is in question or pending due to referrals and/or available references from a

54 social service agency. A person’s citizenship status or lack thereof, thus plays an important role in whether one can secure long-term, affordable housing in Canadian cities.

Some of the major barriers to accessing permanent housing among GARs concern income, jobs, family size, and language. For example, based on Murdie’s (2010) interviews with refugees, “the most important barriers in the search were lack of a job (20 mentions), low income (15), being on social assistance (14) and large family size (10)” (p.93). In addition to analysing the difficulties with securing permanent housing among refugees, scholars have researched the financial stress rent puts on refugee families. Murdie draws on Kisoon (2007, p.189), who found that, in Toronto, “67% of her refugee respondents were (materially) houseless and 60% felt (emotionally) homeless at some point since coming to Canada” (Murdie 2010, p.50). Murdie attributes these percentages to high rental costs and unaffordable housing. He states, “in Toronto, where rental costs are higher, about three-quarters of the respondents were still paying more than fifty per cent of their household income on shelter” (2010, p.50). The high percentage of income allocated to rent continues to be a common thread within Toronto’s rental housing market, particularly among low-income communities, and especially for those newly arrived in Canada.

Some scholarship has pointed to the importance of assessing the differences in origins of nationality in accessing affordable housing in major cities in Canada. For example, Miraftab (2000) examines the differences faced by Somali and Kurdish refugees in settling in Canadian society. Others have noted that country of origin and skin colour are also both important factors in securing affordable housing in cities (Francis & Hiebert, 2014). Jasmin Zine’s (2009) work on the differences between Latin Americans and Muslims and their experiences of homelessness also accentuates the importance of understanding Islamophobia in the context of Toronto’s housing market. Based on such studies, it is clear that the differential treatment across race and national origin is an important area of analysis for understanding the housing crisis in Canada. For example, Francis and Hiebert (2014) state that “it is also worth noting that newcomers of European background experience better housing conditions than those who identify as members of a visible minority group” (p.66). Murdie (2003) also found that Somali immigrants experience greater barriers to accessing the housing rental market in comparison to Polish and Jamaican immigrants in Toronto. Refugees as a homogenous analytical category is further deconstructed

55 and analysed based on the intersections of race, ethnicity and status. Such studies underscore the nuances of housing access and housing inequality based on different axes of identity.

In addition to studies attuned to the intersections of race, ethnicity and status in housing access, a select number of scholars have incorporated their intersections with gender. For example, Francis and Hiebert (2014) investigate the challenge of affordable rent for newcomers while offering a gendered analysis of their research in the context of Vancouver, British Columbia. They state, “[T]he proportion of those in core need is highest among those immigrants in lone-parent households, which are more likely to be headed by women, followed by those in ‘non-family households’ (i.e., lone persons or those living with roommates)” (Francis & Hiebert, 2014, p.66). Similarly, Jones and Teixeira (2015) explore the housing experience of single mothers in Kelowna, British Columbia. Their study offers a gendered conceptual lens to understanding housing access by drawing on data retained from surveys completed by 30 single mothers and semi-structured interviews with 11 research participants. Their findings conclude that “the three most important challenges low-income single mothers face in Kelowna’s rental housing market are affordability, finding right size housing, and discrimination based on based on income level and family type” (Jones & Teixeira, 2015, p.131). Being one of the few studies to address the particular barriers faced by single mothers in accessing housing, it reveals multiple layers to housing inequality and housing access as experienced by single mothers. Though literature addressing the intersections of identity to housing access is growing, there remains a lack of research on intersectional forms of oppression, i.e., the intersections of citizenship, refugee status, socio-economic status, gender, race/ethnicity, religion, family form, and sexuality within housing scholarship. In particular, there is a lack of engagement with housing discrimination as it relates to exclusionary practices of private housing markets. The following section articulates the importance of studies on housing discrimination to reveal the exclusionary housing practices based on race, class and status.

56 2.3.2 Housing discrimination in the Canadian private rental market There is scant scholarly attention paid to housing discrimination in Canada’s housing system.29 Hanson, Hawley, and Taylor (2011) note that individual housing discrimination is a form of subtle discrimination, which they argue is “particularly difficult to measure in housing market transactions where interaction (face to face, and telephone) cannot be practically measured on a large scale; nonetheless, landlords may use subtle discrimination to discourage minority clients from pursuing housing options” (p.276). According to Jones and Teixeira (2015), who cite Novac, et al., (2002), housing discrimination includes “the denial of access to housing as well as charging higher prices or rents, applying more stringent or inappropriate screening criteria, or treating certain residents differently” (p.120). Although—as previously discussed—a small number of geographers have been attuned to the spatialisation of race and poverty in conversation with housing inequality, individual forms of housing discrimination have yet to be theorised in great depth within housing studies in Canada.

The limited scholarship that does exist on housing discrimination in the context of Canada focuses on housing discrimination tied to differential homeownership rates (see Darden & Kamel, 2000; Simone & Walks, 2019). For example, Darden and Kamel’s (2000) study found that discrimination on the basis of race proved to be a barrier to black homeownership in Toronto. They argue that “Canadian scholars often explain the pattern of differential treatment in the housing market by cultural differences inherited from blacks' countries of origin” (p.70). Utilising a logit regression analysis, Darden and Kamel (2000) conclude that “race has a strong effect on the chances of homeownership among blacks and whites with equal age, marital status and household type, immigration status, educational level, and income level” (p.71). Darden and Kamel’s study served as a specific intervention into Canadian scholarship rendering unequal rates of homeownership between the white population and people of colour to individual preferences and choices (see Skaburskis, 1996); a position devoid of a structural analysis of racism. Though more recent Canadian scholarship has been attuned to some of the particular

29 Systematic studies on housing discrimination have been conducted in the context of the United States of America. Though research on race and housing in the USA provide important insights on race relations in the context of housing in Canada, this section of the literature review engages specifically with scholarship on Canadian cities. There is little to no systematic studies on housing discrimination and landlord exclusionary practices on the basis of race, class, language, status, religion, gender and their intersections in the context of Canada.

57 barriers faced by newcomers, there has been very little theorising on housing discrimination, predominantly within the private housing market, in the context of Canada. However, some housing scholars, such as Dylan Simone and Alan Walks (2019), acknowledge the presence of housing discrimination within Canada’s housing market. Simone and Walks (2019) state that “despite Canada’s positive image and general tendency toward integration, racialized immigrants and those with poor language skills often face discrimination in the job and housing markets” (p.289). Adding to this scholarship, I explore how discrimination based on race and status play a large role in reproducing housing inequality and exclusion for racialised refugee communities in major Canadian cities, such as Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

Not unlike the sparse literature on housing discrimination based on race and status, only recently has a modest amount of literature emerged that highlights the housing discrimination on the basis of gender and family structures experienced by single mothers in Canada (see Jones & Teixeira, 2015; Lauster and Easterbrook, 2011). Jones and Teixeira (2015) explicitly discuss the lack of engagement with experiences of housing discrimination with respect to single mothers in Kelowna, British Columbia, stating, “few studies have focused on housing discrimination against single parents in Canada” (p.120). Although they conclude that affordable and adequate housing to support a family as two major barriers to housing access, the majority of those surveyed also mentioned housing discrimination as an additional major barrier. Within their study, they found that “more than two-thirds of the respondents (70%) felt that they had been discriminated against by landlords simply because they were single parents” (Jones & Teixeira, 2015, p.127), while “twenty respondents (66.7%) felt they had been discriminated against because they had children” (Jones & Teixeira, 2015, p.125). Jones and Teixeira offer a gendered analysis to understand the rental housing market in a mid-sized city in British Columbia; however, the lack of engagement with housing discrimination on the basis of race and its intersections with gender, speaks to broader limitations of housing literature that erases the particular experiences of racialised people of colour, specifically racialised single mothers, in accessing the private rental market in Canada.

In contrast to academic scholarship, human rights organisations and non-profits have documented and analysed instances of housing discrimination, particularly within the context of Ontario. One of the ways to challenge housing discrimination in Canada is by reporting it to the

58 human rights commission. According to the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC), the Ontario Human Rights Code (OHRC) prohibits discrimination based on race, creed, colour, and citizenship. The Code and the Commission are necessary because instances of discrimination continue to persist across various sectors and institutions in Ontario. The OHRC has highlighted some studies demonstrating that discrimination within the housing market. They state: It is likely that the most common problem that racialised persons continue to face is the denial of opportunities to apply for rental housing to view properties. In this regard, landlords may use subtle screening methods to bypass certain individuals in the tenant selection process. [As noted above,] [r]acialised persons may be advised that an apartment has already been rented only to have a white friend inquire about the availability of the accommodation and be told that it is still available. (OHRC, n.d., para. 8)

Citing the case of Richards v. Waisglass,30 the OHRC exhibits the ways in which preferential treatment is given to those who are white, which accounts for the lack of affordable and adequate housing available to people of colour. This type of discrimination is intensified based on immigration status: “According to Statistics Canada seventy-five per cent of new immigrant households settling in Canada use the rental market to satisfy their housing needs. At the time of their arrival, many in these households do not possess the employment, savings, and/or credit rating required to purchase property” (OHRC, n.d., para. 22). As the OHRC case demonstrates, the explicit preferential treatment for white bodies within the rental housing market is not a new phenomenon. The OHRC has recorded innumerable instances of housing discrimination to include the intersections of race and class.

According to the OHRC, housing discrimination can manifest in a multitude of ways, which include subtle and illegal demands or expectations made by landlords. This nefarious treatment of tenants by landlords is particularly true for new immigrants, who are often in precarious positions as first-time tenants in Canada. For example, the OHRC states: In a meeting with newcomers receiving services from COSTI and throughout the consultation, the Commission heard about tenants being asked to pay exorbitant amounts of money as deposits to be able to rent units. In the most egregious cases, prospective

30 The 1991 case of Richards v. Waisglass ruled in favour of Ms. Richards, a black woman in her 30s at the time, who was denied tenancy of Waisglass’s one basement apartment on the assumption that she would hold parties and may not have been able to afford the rent. Ms. Richards had then sent her friend, who is white and in her 30s at the time, to view the place the same evening. Her friend was met with a lot more reception and was offered the place right on the spot.

59 tenants, many of whom are Aboriginal, new Canadians, or permanent residents, were asked to pay up to 12 months of rent in cash before occupancy. (OHRC, n.d., Section 4.2)

Housing discrimination faced by newcomers operates differently and at different stages of the housing search and application process. Additionally, the OHRC has documented cases in which landlords discriminate against those on social assistance. According to the OHRC, “It was reported that housing workers have difficulties finding landlords willing to rent to people on social assistance” (n.d., Section 4.1). The documentation of such findings by the Ontario Human Rights Commission reveal the multifaceted ways in which housing discrimination operates within the housing system in Ontario. Although there does exist a set of literature on barriers that newcomers, particularly government-assisted refugees, face when accessing affordable housing within Canada, it is framed within a liberal, multicultural narrative that prioritises integration and settlement over housing justice. In so doing, an “us” versus “them” dichotomy is reproduced, wherein refugees simply become case studies that either integrated well into Canadian society or did not integrate at all. The lexicon of housing discrimination within housing studies scholarship has the potential to reveal the insidious ways in which racialised peoples are excluded from Canada’s rental housing market. Expanding on political-economy frameworks of understanding housing inequality and housing access in Canada, critical race and antiracist scholarship highlight the specific ways in which housing inequality and housing access are shaped by relations of race, class and citizenship status.

As previously identified, antiracist and critical race scholars centralise the analyses of intersecting power structures and subsequently the political praxis of racial justice. Though housing scholarship on access to housing among refugees exists, few scholars have incorporated antiracist feminist frameworks into housing scholarship (see Buckley, 2019). The following section expands analyses of housing inequality and housing access to include intersectionality and theories of home-making. Antiracist feminist scholarship on home, belonging and race, as the next section explores, offer critical optics to investigate the intersections of race, class and status as well as peoples’ political agencies in negotiating power when it comes to housing access.

60 2.4 Part III: A Housing justice model informed by antiracist feminist frameworks shelter matters—everywhere in the world someone is longing for shelter racial apartheid has always informed the allocation of space here and globally who can live where and how beyond these imposed acts of aggression— the barriers they create to keep everyone apart is a shelter of sameness where the everyday life that takes place in houses bind us— in spite of politics and domination we are joined in our separateness in a world without walls we would see and know we would understand that ways we make home unite us we would learn from that knowing how to meet one another across boundaries of difference of time, space, and culture the shared intimacy of understanding ways we make house and home everywhere (hooks, 1994, p.22)

By unpacking some of the limitations and gaps within housing studies literature, I extend conversations in geography to include antiracist theorisations around home and place. Utilising an intersectional framework to analyse the experiences of refugees in accessing Canada’s housing system requires (re)conceptualising housing beyond the confines of physical infrastructure. An expansion of housing studies to include theories and practices of home and belonging as they cut across race, class, status and gender facilitates an analysis of unequal relations of power within Canada’s housing system and the ways in which racialised bodies (re)negotiate their power when looking for shelter. Home, belonging and exclusion have been explored by antiracist feminist scholars in Canada (Abu-Laban, 2002; Ahmed, 1999; Bannerji, 2000, 2011; Habib, 1996; Lo, 2015; Razack, 2002; Thobani, 2007). Antiracist feminist interventions to Marxist and political economy approaches on race and racialisation have brought to surface important debates and discussions within academia. For example, Abigail Bakan and Enakshi Dua’s (2014), Theorizing anti-racism: Linkages in Marxism and critical race theories, bring together an array of scholars who point to the divergences of theorising around race and

61 racism through critical Marxist scholarship and critical race studies. Drawing on the limitations of both bodies of scholarship, Bakan and Dua (2014) showcase the possibilities of “bringing together these approaches in an identified and engaged relationship” (p.9). In a similar fashion, this literature highlights the utility of antiracist feminist theorising within housing scholarship. In particular, this section unpacks some of the important discussions driven by antiracist scholars who analytically centre experiences of racialised communities. Additionally, this section draws on antiracist feminist frameworks to contextualise the importance of viewing refugees as agentic subjects, rather than passive victims and recipients of service provisions.31

Intersectionality entered academia in the late 80s and early 90s, through Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1991) pivotal piece, “Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Specifically addressing ways in which the law failed women of colour, Crenshaw exposed institutionalised relations of power that cut across race, gender and class. Though intersectionality has been defined, contested and adapted by various fields of study, I utilise the definition proposed by Collins and Bilge (2016) who describe intersectionality as: a way of understanding and analysing the complexity of the world, in people, and in human experiences. The events and conditions of social and political life and the self can seldom be understood as shaped by one factor. They are generally shaped by many factors in diverse and mutually influencing ways. When it comes to social inequality, people’s lives and the organization of power in a given society are better understood as being shaped not by a single axis of social division, be it race or gender or class, but by many axes that work together and influence each other. Intersectionality as an analytic tool gives people better access to the complexity of the world and of themselves. (p.2)

For Collins and Bilge, intersectionality compels people to make sense of the world in which they inhabit. A person’s positionality and how they interact with various institutions within the social world, cannot be understood through a single axis of power, but rather through social divisions that are raced, gendered and classed. When it comes to housing, intersectionality offers a particularly useful lens to understand the uneven experiences of housing access among racialised

31 This literature review engages with Black feminist scholars in the United States, particularly Kimberlé Crenshaw, bell hooks and Patricia Hill Collins, who sparked important, novel and critical contributions on white supremacy, settler-colonialism and patriarchy in relation to the subjective experiences of Black women. I draw and expand on their critical insights and theorisations on intersectionality and race to explore various critical literatures on home, belonging and place-making that are important to conceptualising and analysing housing access and exclusion in Canada.

62 refugees. Intersectionality reveals the complex and multifaceted ways in which race, citizenship status, income, and language intersect within Canada’s housing system.

In addition to intersectionality, antiracist feminists recognise the importance of racialised subjects in challenging, subverting and reclaiming power. In the context of housing, bell hooks’ (2009) book, Belonging: A culture of place and bell hooks, Julie Eizenberg and Hank Koning’s (1994), exchanges in “House”, extend conversations on housing to include an intersectional analysis of space and practices of home-making that necessarily challenge traditional conceptualisations of housing. Housing, home and belonging, thus cannot be read as neutral, apolitical nor mutually exclusive, but rather relational, changing, complex and situated within relations of power that cut across, race, gender, class and citizenship status.

In “House” hooks, Eizenberg and Koning (1994) challenge the common assumption that racialised working-class and poor people are incapable of imagining spaces of belonging. Beginning with hooks’ experience of a classroom assignment that asked her to design the house of her dreams, hooks is able to interrogate the ways in which black working-class folks are denied imaginative geographies. She states: This expansive and more inclusive understanding of architecture makes the vernacular as relevant as any other form of architectural practice. It allows critics to theorize black experience in ways that promote documentation of our historical and contemporary relationship to space and aesthetics. Few scholars are working to theorize black experience from a standpoint that centralizes the perspectives of poor and working-class folks. Yet to ignore this standpoint is to produce a body of work that is neocolonial insomuch as it violently erases and destroys those whose knowledge, if visible and remembered, could erupt, disrupt, and serve as acts of resistance. Documentation of cultural genealogy of resistance invites the making of theory that highlights cultural practice that transforms ways of looking and being in a manner that resists re-inscription by structures of domination. (p.25)

The very act of theorising from black experience in relation to space and place, hooks argues, disrupts neocolonial forms of knowledge production that are epistemically violent towards black working-class bodies and ways of knowing. In this argument, hooks challenges traditional conceptions of home often rooted in racial apartheid, segregation and colonialism. By documenting her own experiences of imagining the spaces she inhabits or could inhabit, hooks

63 goes on to discuss the assumptions people make of poor and working-class bodies, who are denied the ability to produce space.

Making note of the ways in which people make spaces a home, hooks (1994) states, “Writing these memories seems absolutely essential because we live in a world today where we are led to believe that lack of material privilege means that we can have no meaningful, constructive engagement with our living space and certainly no relationship to aesthetics” (p.25). She argues against victimizing narratives that render racialised subjectivities as devoid of agencies and finds power in her own genealogy of place-making. bell hooks’ intervention into housing, architecture and race, extends conversations on housing inequality to include differently positioned subjects as well as ways in which marginalised communities transform spaces. Recent literature on migrants and home-making demonstrate the relationship between social relations of power and a reclamation of power.

For example, Amrita Pande (2012) documents how the space of the balcony in Lebanese high- rise buildings is used by migrant workers as a way to build collective power. Pande (2012) states:

The balcony is often claimed as a space where the MDW [migrant domestic worker] can get more privacy and escape the surveillance of her employers. But, more importantly, this space, carved out by live-ins facing the most restrictions on access to public space, is where they can converse with MDWs in apartments in adjacent buildings or with women walking on the streets below. For women with no support structures, and with the most restrictions on movement, alliances across balconies become a critical source of information sharing. (p.392)

Different meanings are attached to the physical structure of the balcony when told through the subjective experience of migrant workers in Lebanon, whose mobility and capacities for collective unity are socially, economically and politically limited. Expanding on active agency, Marieme Lo’s (2015) article, “Senegalese immigrant families’ ‘regroupment’ in France and the im/possibility of reconstructing family across multiple temporalities and spatialities” discusses ways in which home is reimagined and reconstituted among two Senegalese people living and working in France. Lo (2015) offers a dynamic discussion that positions the embodied experiences of her research subjects against the backdrop of “French immigration discourses and

64 policies” (p.2673). In addition to analysing the differently positioned subjects, Lo (2015) illustrates how “the intersecting insights of agency, countering the script of victimization and reckoning possibilities of active agency that make immigration and family reunion the art of the possible, even if only virtually” (p.2673). Such possibilities of agency are important contributions to understanding the ways in which marginalised bodies negotiate power across institutions, places and people.

In a similar fashion, a collection of essays edited by Mona Fawaz, Ahmed Gharbieh, Mona Harb and Dounia Salame (2018) entitled, Refugees as City-Makers document the varied ways in which refugees (re)define and make spaces their homes. The publication challenges polarised representations of refugees as either victims or security risks by employing a “lens of individual and collective agency and the transformative roles that individuals tagged as refugees play as home-makers, city navigators, urban producers, or political subjects” (p.4). At its core, this publication offers counternarratives that highlight the ways in which refugees are seen as producers, home-makers and negotiators of power. For example, Fawaz et al.’s (2018), “Inhabiting the city, remaking its quarters” explores the settlement of young Syrian refugees in the Beirut neighbourhood of Getawi, which is known to be a conservative Christian, middle- class neighbourhood. Interviews and observations with Syrian refugees who settled in Getawi reveal “important nuances in our understanding of ‘refugees’ and their practices as city makers by locating at the heart of the discussion of forced displacement and resettlement the importance of political identity and positionality of our respondents” (p.110). Similarly, Sibylle Yasmeen George (2018) documents the everyday struggles of refugees in an informal tented settlement of Qabb Elias, Lebanon, which has housed approximately 13,000 Syrians since 2011. By documenting their daily experiences, George highlights salient ways refugees demonstrate their “remarkable agency” (p.143). For example, through her documentation of stories in the tented settlement, George reveals “how amidst these processes, displaced Syrians’ skills (e.g. construction, agriculture, sewing, mechanics) determine the establishment of shops and small enterprises inside and outside the camp” (p.141). Repositioned as producers of urban space, George challenges victimizing narratives of Syrian refugees in Lebanon and proposes a municipal community centre as informed by the everyday experiences of their lives.

65 The above examples reveal the importance of documenting the everyday encounters and transformations of home as experienced by refugees, migrants and racialised subjects. I argue that such analyses extend conversations on housing inequality that seldomly engage with practices of home-making among colonized and racialised subjects. In this way, housing access, as conceptualised in relation to processes of home-making, challenges simplified narratives of inclusion or exclusion and instead centres the role of people of colour in shaping and transforming space. Utilising antiracist frameworks in the context of Canada’s housing crisis therefore offers a set of optics that understands refugees’ experiences and voices as analytically significant. This framework enables a reading of belonging, home and exclusion as mutually constitutive elements of the production of difference within Canada’s housing system.

Antiracist frameworks also offer insight into theorising around the politics of exclusion. bell hooks’ (2009) Belonging: Culture of Place addresses the theoretical significance of examining how structures of power facilitate social relations that determine who can live where. For example, she discusses the relationship between racial discrimination and housing in the United States. Referencing a town she lived in, Berea, Kentucky, hooks traces the anti-discrimination commitments made during the early development of the town, which required people “to sign a covenant reinforcing this commitment, one that publicly declared their willingness to live next to a white or black neighbor” (2009, p.73). However, she notes recent changes of housing development in the area that reinforced racial segregation. She states: Unfortunately in recent years the building of exorbitantly priced homes has created segregated all-white neighborhoods where the presence of people of color is often not welcomed and where there are residents who would not choose to live among black people in racially integrated subdivisions. Most, if not all, of these segregated white communities are new developments and sometimes potential homeowners must be vetted by associations and boards before they can purchase in these locations. This is a perfect setup for discrimination to occur. The underlying principle of many new housing developments, particularly those that are gated, is the notion of exclusion and exclusivity, keeping undesirable elements out, which frequently means people of the wrong class or color. Of course most of the residents in these communities will argue that their choice of housing is not influenced by racial prejudice, because they are not racists, but rather by a desire for comfort and safety. (hooks, 2009, p.74) hooks’ analysis of housing showcases the insidious ways in which housing reproduces racial inequality throughout appreciating property values among exclusively white wealthy

66 neighbourhoods. She goes on to demonstrate how such racial dynamics work within gentrifying neighbourhoods, where those with privileged backgrounds move into traditionally working-class neighbourhoods of people of colour. She argues that the movement of white affluent bodies into these neighbourhoods increases real estate taxes and prices, which oftentimes pushes most working-class communities of colour out of their neighbourhoods. Though hooks’ analysis is embedded within the context of the United States of America, her analysis of exclusion and housing can be translated to the context of Canada. Antiracist feminist critiques of housing thus position class inequality and racial inequality as intersecting social factors that are relegated by the market and the state. Home-making acts as a form of resistance to such barriers. This dissertation identifies and examines the intersecting barriers refugees face in accessing rental housing in Toronto through the perspectives of settlement and housing workers. Additionally, this dissertation extends the housing scholarship to include an intersectional analysis of service provision and housing access for refugees, while also engaging with antiracist feminist’s conceptions of political agency and home-making. It relocates political agencies among frontline staff and community organisations who re-imagine a more affordable Toronto.

2.5 Conclusions This literature review analyses contributions made by housing scholars on the differential impacts of the housing crisis on people living in Canadian cities. By engaging with different sets of scholarship by geographers, feminist, critical race and antiracist theorists, this literature review extends theorisations of housing inequality to include intersectional analyses. Employing a set of optics that centres racialised peoples, refugees in particular, definitions of housing inequality and accessibility begin to expand to include intersections of race, class and status. Through an engagement with current housing scholarship and possible areas of convergence among antiracist feminist scholarship, a housing justice framework that centers the experiences of racialised and colonized subjects helps redefine what housing affordability and accessibility look like in Canadian cities. Understanding the housing crisis in Canada is not just a question about average market rent, but also about racialised legacies that continue to impact the everyday lives of communities of colour in Canada. This literature review points to how adopting an antiracist feminist framework within housing studies can begin to push forth critical analytics to Canada’s housing crisis and its intersections across race, class and citizenship status.

67 3 Chapter 2: Seeking refuge in non-profits: Neoliberal governance and access to affordable housing among refugees in Toronto

Abstract This study highlights the intersecting barriers faced by refugees in navigating Toronto’s private rental market through the viewpoints of frontline staff working within non-profit organisations. Based on semi-structured interviews with thirteen staff across nine organisations, this study highlights the ways in which neoliberal restructuring directly impacts settlement and housing provision for low-income peoples, particularly refugees in search of housing in Toronto. This study contributes to studies on housing inequality by engaging with the intersections of class, race and status as they relate to housing access among refugees.

Key words: refugees, neoliberal governance, service provision, intersectionality, housing inequality

3.1 Introduction Government-assisted refugees (GARs) and refugee claimants32 face a variety of barriers to accessing adequate and affordable rental housing in the city of Toronto—a situation that forces non-profit organisations and some of the staff that work in them to find creative ways to secure housing in a market that continually displaces low-income, racialised communities. At the interface of the state and the private housing market and attesting to the needs of clients, frontline workers33 in non-profit organisations are uniquely positioned to observe the challenges refugees face and the forms of exclusion they encounter across Canada’s housing system. By employing semi-structured interviews with thirteen frontline staff across nine social service organisations in tandem with a policy analysis centred on housing and immigration, this chapter unpacks the changes to Toronto’s housing system and its impacts on frontline workers’ capacity

32 Government-assisted refugees (GARs) are convention refugees who are granted status on various grounds while living abroad. Convention refugees can be sponsored by the government, a private sponsor, or a mix of both. For the purposes of this chapter, I will be focusing mainly on government-sponsored refugees. Refugee claimants are persons who make claims for permanent residency while residing within the country. Some interviewees also speak to the experiences of refugee claimants, which will be noted throughout the chapter. 33 For the purposes of this chapter, frontline staff will refer to those working in non-profit organisations who directly cater to the needs of their clients. Such frontline staff include—but are not limited to—housing counsellors, settlement workers, case management workers, and shelter staff. It is important to note that most of these workers have held various positions across different organisations, which is why I believe their interviews to be important for academic research.

68 to find housing for refugees settling in Toronto. This research contextualises the changing political-economic landscapes of both social service provisions and the private rental market in Toronto, with a particular focus on how such transformations impact refugees’ material capacity to live in Toronto. I argue that a focus on the meso-scale34 of access to housing among refugees encapsulates the analytical significance of engaging with frontline staff in non-profit organisations to address housing inequality as it relates to intersectional forms of oppression— most notably across race, citizenship status, literacy in English, and income—that refugees face in Toronto.

This chapter identifies and explores non-profit actors who are responsible for the settlement and housing provision of refugees in Toronto. Four core questions guide this chapter of the dissertation. Firstly, who are the main actors supporting refugees’ search for housing in Toronto? Followed by, what do the conversations with frontline staff reveal about refugee access to housing? Thirdly, this study asks how do frontline staff interpret and respond to the housing crisis? Finally, what barriers do frontline staff face when providing settlement and housing services to refugees? In centralising these research questions, this study underscores three important objectives. Firstly, this research locates the intersectional politics of difference within the rental housing market in Toronto as it applies to refugees. Secondly, it engages with the multifaceted ways frontline workers respond to and react to the housing crisis in Toronto. Lastly, it investigates the relationship between neoliberal governance, social welfare retrenchment, and Toronto’s housing crisis as it relates to the settlement of refugees in Toronto. Frontline staff’s wealth of experience is central to analysing the ways in which settlement and housing services are administered within the city and the limited ways frontline staff respond to such constraining housing availability. I argue that frontline workers in non-profit organisations play an important but limited role in accessing affordable housing for vulnerable populations, such as refugees in Canada. More specifically, this chapter addresses the limitations faced by staff employed in non- profit organisations in helping secure affordable housing for refugees, as well as the lengths to which some frontline workers go to ensure refugees are housed in the city.

34 The meso-scale of analysis refers to social service provider organisations and the encounters frontline staff have with their clients, while also managing federal directives. See “Introduction” of this dissertation for a more in-depth definition of the meso-scale and how it is employed within this study.

3.2 Background and methods This research is based on semi-structured interviews with thirteen (n=13) frontline staff across nine different organisations operating within Toronto.35 The organisations in this study all receive funding from one or more levels of the Canadian government—federal, provincial, and/or municipal. The staff interviewed include four housing support workers, eight settlement workers, and one caseworker36 working within the shelter system, who directly engage with a wide range of clientele, including, but not limited to, refugees.37 Adhering to ethical protocol and to maintain the confidentiality of research participants, this chapter refers to each staff member with a participant number; Table 1 lists the research participants and the positions held within each non-profit organisation, Table 2 outlines some of the core responsibilities performed under each job-title, and Table 3 outlines pertinent programs and services administered in each organisation. In addition to content used from the interviews, personal narratives based on observations of waiting and being present within the organisations at the time of the interviews are threaded throughout this study.

The findings from these interviews and observations are contextualised within the current political, economic, and social context of Ontario, with a particular focus on Toronto. Quebec and Ontario continue to be the top two provinces in which refugees settle (City of Toronto, 2018b). Toronto, in particular, “receives the highest numbers of arrivals in classes that have more complex needs, such as refugees and refugee/asylum claimants” (City of Toronto, 2018b, para. 1). The majority of service providers that administer settlement and housing services are concentrated within the city of Toronto. However, all levels of governance play a particular role in the settlement of refugees in the city. Thus, the inter-governmental relationships between

35 This section outlines the data collection methods used for this chapter. Please see “Introduction” of this dissertation for the complete methodology that informs this study. 36 Housing support workers have the sole responsibility of helping clients secure housing, while settlement workers work specifically with government assisted refugees and assistance ranges from filling out organisations to referring clients to necessary services and community organisations. 37 Though some non-profit organisations are specific to newcomers and refugees, other organisations are not advertised as such. For example, one caseworker discussed the high number of refugee claimants that would arrive at the shelter in search of temporary accommodations. Though there are no shelters specific to refugees, many family shelters house refugee claimants. According to the Street Needs Assessment report of 2018, “The largest share of respondents who reported coming to Canada as refugee/asylum claimants is found in City-administered shelters (40%) and, in particular, among families staying in these shelters (80%)” (City of Toronto, p.18).

70 settlement services, service provision and housing access, are discussed and analysed throughout this study.

In order to politically ground the narratives and viewpoints of the frontline staff interviewed, this chapter analyses several federal, provincial and municipal policies, reports, and program initiatives which include: Immigrant, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Development Plan of 2018; Service Provider Organisation Handbook developed by IRCC (2019), monetary values of Resettlement Assistance Program (RAP), Ontario Works (OW), Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), Child Tax Benefits, and Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) revitalisation projects. Additionally, this chapter draws on data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and the City of Toronto with regard to private rental housing, vacancy rates and social housing waitlists in Toronto. Offering a qualitative analysis of service provision in relation to housing access among refugees, this chapter unpacks the multifaceted layers of housing access among some of the most vulnerable segments of the population, such as low-income refugees.

The semi-structured interviews with frontline staff reveal the barriers refugees face in settling and accessing housing in Toronto and the different challenges frontline staff encounter when attempting to advocate on their clients’ behalf. The purpose of engaging with frontline staff stems from the lack of initiatives on housing among policymakers and academics, who fail to recognise the important roles that non-profit organisations and those working on the front lines, play in securing and/or providing temporary housing for refugees. Although there has been limited engagement within non-profit frontline staff in assessing the housing crisis in Toronto among academics, several studies have revealed the importance of engaging with intermediate institutions, such as non-profit organisations, in order to address systemic barriers faced by particular segments of the population (see Khanlou et al., 2017; Shaw and Funk, 2019). Drawing on studies that engage with immigrant services and service delivery, this chapter highlights the important roles frontline staff in non-profit organisations play in operating as a temporary solution to the housing crisis for refugees.

71 Research by Mukhtar, Dean, Wilson, Ghassemi, and Wilson (2016) demonstrate the ways in which neoliberal governance directly impacts the delivery of services. Their research is based on twenty-one semi-structured interviews with frontline staff and executive directors in settlement organisations within the Peel Region of Ontario. Their data unveils the ways neoliberalisation of immigrant settlement services limited the capacity to serve the needs of new immigrants because of the “conditions attached to funding, such as the types of programs settlement providers are able to offer, mandatory quotas, and restrictive eligibility criteria” (Mukhtar et al., 2016, p.389). Their research challenges the policy framework often utilised to understand changes to funding among social service providers. By working with frontline staff, Mukhtar et al. (2016) assess the subtle and insidious ways that changes to funding impact the availability and types of resources settlement agencies can deliver to their clients, how they are delivered, and the challenges of a competitive model that stifles collaboration among other non-profit organisations. Drawing on Mukhtar et al.’s (2016) methodology regarding settlement agencies, this chapter seeks to unpack similar concerns around social service provision, but in the context of housing. I argue that many of the non-profit organisations that offer settlement services also include housing support workers who have invaluable insight into the changes to funding within the non-profit industry, and they are well attuned to the changing policies and programs on immigration, resettlement and housing in Toronto. Additionally, frontline staff working within shelters are acutely familiar with the barriers faced by refugees, as some of their clients are government assisted refugees and refugee claimants. This research thus offers a unique glimpse into the lives of frontline workers and the barriers they have identified as contributing to Toronto’s housing crisis among highly vulnerable populations, such as refugees.

3.3 The political, economic, and social context of the housing crisis in Canada Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, the implementation of neoliberal policies began to change the fabric of local governments in Canada. Critical scholarship in geography have driven many of the debates and analyses of neoliberal ideology. The wealth of literature on the effects of neoliberalism on Toronto has been integral to radical urban planning studies (see Harvey, 1989, 2007). This study mainly focuses on sets of policies and practices that support political and economic neoliberal hegemonies in relation to social service provisions and housing. Drawing on In Isin’s (1998) analysis of the rise of neoliberalism in local governments, this chapter illustrates

72 the shifts in urban governance in relation to the neoliberalisation of public services and assets in Toronto. Isin (1998) stipulates that there has been a shift in the proliferation of new technologies of power, most notably the increase in quasi-autonomous, non-governmental organisations. She argues that the proliferation of public-private relationships “emerge[s] out of the shifting of responsibilities from governmental agencies and authorities to organisations without electoral accountability and responsibility (for example, the ‘privatisation’ of ‘public’ utilities, civil service, prisons, insurance and security)” (Isin, 1998, p.175). The shift to increasing neoliberal governance in the context of Toronto was in part due to the recession of 1989, which created conditions for a conservative Provincial Government headed by Mike Harris in Ontario. The changes enacted by the conservative provincial government in 1995 had profound impacts on the housing and social service provision models of Toronto.

The cuts to social spending during the Harris years of the 1990s38 brought many changes in access to the different types of housing in the city of Toronto. The deregulation of rent, the lack of tenants’ rights, and the shift of federal and provincial housing responsibilities to municipalities (August & Walks, 2018) had significant impacts on low-income people’s access to affordable housing in the city. This context has set the conditions for a housing crisis, where renters, in particular, are faced with low vacancy rates, long social housing waiting-lists, few affordable rental units, and high unaffordable private-market rents. Additionally, the influx of refugees and refugee claimants at the Canadian border has received scholarly and media attention alike; often citing the phenomenon as a refugee crisis. Narratives of the dominant immigrant other have resurfaced in the post-2008/09 global economic crisis, and the conflation of accepting refugees and the housing crisis has been particularly potent within Canada’s global cities, most notably Toronto. This section unpacks some of the dominant narratives surrounding the “refugee crisis” and the “housing crisis,” highlighting the point at which these crises converged. By reading these crises in tandem, I argue that Toronto’s neoliberal governance has created conditions in which refugees are excluded from the city’s housing market and are simultaneously blamed for Toronto’s lack of affordable housing. Contextualising the changing political, economic, and

38Progressive Conservative Mike Harris was the premier of Ontario from June 1995–April 2002. His leadership was responsible for severe cuts to many social services.

73 social landscapes of housing and service provision in Toronto offers critical insights into the increasing pressures faced by non-profit organisations in securing housing for refugees in Toronto.

In the past four years, Canada has been heralded as one of the staunchest supporters of refugees on the international stage, particularly for refugees from Syria. Indeed, since Justin Trudeau’s pledge during the 2015 Canadian Federal elections to accept 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2016, Canada has accepted more than 40,081 refugees (Government of Canada, 2017). Thus, the legacies of Pierre Trudeau’s Multicultural Act and acceptance of “difference” have resurfaced in the wave of Justin Trudeau’s ascendency. Yet, the valorisation of multiculturalism in Canada does not speak to its deepening racial inequality (Galabuzi, 2006). This paradox of diversity has been widely critiqued among critical scholars (see, for example, Bannerji, 2000, 2011; Dua and Robertson, 1999; Mahtani, 2004).

Scholarship critiquing the discourse of multiculturalism, deconstruct the dominant multicultural narratives of acceptance of cultural diversity in relation to the lived experiences of racism—both systemic and interpersonal—of racialised peoples in Canada. Though multicultural cities such as Toronto, performatively embrace diversity,39 the imaginary of the nation is based on a national unity that is under threat by an imagined other. In particular, Sara Ahmed (2004) argues that: We might note as well that this emotional reading of others as hateful works to align the imagined subject with rights and the imagined nation with ground. This alignment is affected by the representation of both the rights of the subject and grounds of the nation as already under threat, as ‘failing’. It is he emotional reading of hate that works to stick or bind the imagined white subject and nation together. (p. 26)

National and international news outlets have narrated the refugee experience and reproduced an imagined “us” versus “them.” This dichotomy has had dire consequences for refugees’ lived experiences of housing in Toronto. At the national level, the process of othering was particularly exacerbated during the Syrian refugee crisis, when tolerance, acceptance, and integration became important catchphrases for the commitment to accepting thousands of Syrian refugees to Canada. However, the narratives of tolerance and acceptance quickly began to transition into a burden on

39 For example, Toronto’s motto embedded into its coat of arms reads: “Diversity Our Strength”.

74 the housing market, particularly in large urban areas, such as Toronto. Years after Operation Syrian Refugees40 was launched, the narratives of acceptance, benevolence, and gratitude transitioned into xenophobic narratives that have scapegoated refugees for the failure of the housing system in Canada. In so doing, citizenship status has become central to one’s right to housing in Canada.

In the summer of 2018, John Tory, the current mayor of Toronto, expressed concern to the federal and provincial governments that the municipal government of Toronto was unable to house any more refugee claimants within the city (CBC, 2018). Stating that 40% of those in Toronto’s shelter system were refugees and refugee claimants, Tory called on the Canadian Federal Government to involve itself beyond contact with refugees at the border (CBC News, 2018). Intentionally or not, Tory effectively framed Toronto’s housing crisis as a product of the current waves of refugee claimants and GARs entering Canada. In doing so, he reproduced the xenophobic narratives that scapegoat migrant subjects for the poor planning and policies that have been ineffective in addressing Toronto’s housing crisis—a crisis that has been unfolding since the gutting of welfare policies, including slowing the production of social housing, starting in the 1990s. Tory’s claims and actions elicited a number of mixed responses, which simultaneously provoked an important discussion around governance and scale. The federal government’s response argued housing to be the responsibility of the provincial governments. In response to the housing crisis, the federal government pledged $11 million to help with shelter services, which would be handed to the province of Ontario (CBC News, 2018). Although money was allotted to major cities in Ontario, the provision of such services continued to be the core responsibility of non-profit organisations, particularly service provider organisations, and the staff and volunteers who work within them. Thus, the bulk of the responsibility for supplying and finding housing to support the settlement of refugees continued to fall on frontline workers and volunteers in municipalities.

40 Operation Syrian Refugees was launched by the Canadian Federal Government in the beginning of November 2015 as a humanitarian response to the crisis in Syria. This operation was intended to settle 25000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2016.

75 The apparent lack of collaboration between levels of government clearly exhausted municipal resources. Such trends extend back to the constitutional changes made in 1992. In August of that year, housing and municipal affairs became the responsibility of the provinces (Hulchanski, 2009). Subsequently, federal power over social housing was relinquished in 1996. The federal government would no longer be tasked with providing subsidised and affordable housing but would continue to play an active role in the homeownership sector and the housing market; this neoliberal trend would continue to influence the housing system in Canada. Thus, the 1990s brought about federal and provincial cuts that had dire impacts on marginalised communities renting and living in Canadian cities. Such a lack of coordination and communication among governments aggravated current housing conditions, where municipal governments and community organisations are left to address the lack of funding put towards affordable housing.

Similarly, the funds provided to non-profit organisations to help refugees with the settlement process in Canada have undergone a series of cuts that impact the system of delivering settlement services in Toronto. According to Susan McGrath and Ian McGrath (2013), “With respect to immigrant settlement policy, the Constitution grants the Federal government primary responsibility for immigrant selection and the Provincial governments’ jurisdiction over language training, education, economic and social welfare of immigrants” (p.2). In the context of Ontario, the Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement (COIA) helps facilitate communication between the federal, provincial, and local governments. The agreement recognises that “The Parties agree that Local Governments play an important role in attracting and retaining newcomers, in supporting the successful settlement and integration of Immigrants in Ontario in ensuring that communities are welcoming and inclusive” (Government of Canada, 2017b, Section 6.2.1). Wide acknowledgement of the important roles local governments plays in attracting and settling immigrants and refugees is not reflective of the allocation of financial support of agencies helping to facilitate such settlements.

In particular, increasing neoliberal policies, which intensify the rates in which public assets are privatised, have resulted in a reduction of funding catered to non-profit organisations. According to Shields (2003) “In 1995, the Province of Ontario revamped its settlement program, cutting it by almost 50%” (p.20). In addition to provincial financial cutbacks, there was a shift “from core

76 funding to non-profit service and providers toward competitively-tendered service contracts, as did the federal government” (Shields, 2003, p.20). Such dramatic shifts have resulted in additional strain on non-profit organisations, who are allotted greater responsibilities on addressing complex issues faced by their clientele, while simultaneously lacking the financial resources to do so. Although the provinces rely mainly on funding from the Federal Government to support GARs, organisations within cities often bear the brunt of the hard work in performing settlement services for GARs.

Frontline workers often have to ensure that federal program requirements are met, and funding is secured, while also attempting to cater to the specific needs of refugees in the community. In the context of finding housing, the lack of federal responsibility in ensuring that housing is affordable and more social housing is developed has placed a strain on GARs who seek long- term permanent housing in Toronto. Local governments and organisations are thus left to find creative ways to ensure that people are adequately housed. However, as discussed in further detail in chapter three of this dissertation, because settlement agencies and housing organisations continue to be strained beyond capacity and remain reliant on inadequate state funding, their ability to search for and secure housing for refugees is often precarious and difficult. Frontline staff must operate under the current political and economic context of the housing and refugee “crisis”, thus limiting their abilities to challenge current processes of exclusion operating within the housing system of Canada.

The following section outlines the Federal Government’s role in funding resettlement assistance programs in Ontario and the limitations of how Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has framed settlement. Unpacking the ways in which IRCC resettles refugees upon arrival reveals the ways in which non-profit organisations, particularly settlement agencies, must work within the confines of a state agenda that relies heavily on neoliberal principles of privatisation and individualism in order to help find and secure affordable housing for refugees living in Toronto. The inter-governmental divides between housing and resettlement services are investigated through the experiences of frontline staff attempting to mitigate between policies and programs, while simultaneously attending to the intersecting needs of a diverse clientele.

77 3.4 The settlement process for government-assisted refugees As previously mentioned, there are various levels of governance and actors to help facilitate the resettlement of GARs in Canada. Although some studies have focused on the settlement process upon arrival in Canada (see Francis & Hiebert, 2014; Murdie, 2008, 2010; Murdie & Teixeira, 2011), the particular roles that frontline staff play in helping refugees secure housing through service providers is seldom discussed. This section outlines some of the core programs and services offered to GARs to help facilitate their resettlement in Canada and the relationship between IRCC and service provider organisations where resettlement services and programs are administered.

Workshops on settlement services begin in the host countries that house refugees prior to permanent residency in Canada. Thus, while they wait in host countries, refugees abroad are given what is called a “Canadian orientation,” the intention of which is to provide a “realistic view” of their arrival in Canada. According to the Resettlement Assistance Program (RAP) Service Provider handbook, the goals of Canadian Orientations Abroad are as follows: Provision of a realistic view of life in Canada, including difficulties that individuals may encounter as they settle in Canada—particularly in the first few months following their arrival—as well as information and strategies to address these challenges (e.g., cost of living, housing, finding a job); the importance of obtaining the knowledge and tools to live independently in Canadian society; Rights and Freedoms of Individuals according to Canadian law, understanding of Canadian values, as well as their responsibilities and obligations as permanent residents and future citizens of Canada. (IRCC, 2019, p.12)

The orientation abroad serves as a disclaimer that life in Canada will entail various challenges ranging from employment to housing, while also informing GARs of the available services and programs—that help facilitate this transition—they have access to upon arrival. These services and programs are often performed by Service Provider Organisations (SPOs) that receive funding from IRCC and other organisations, such as United Way. Though informational, the undertone of Canada’s orientation abroad is embedded in a narrative of settlement that places the onus on individuals to integrate into dominant Canadian society. The orientation, therefore, operates as a way to facilitate the connections with service provider organisations GARs have access to upon arrival to Canada, and it also serves as a reminder that it is the individuals’ responsibility to search for housing, work, and community programs when arriving to Canada.

78 Access to various programs and resources also differs based on the assigned refugee category. The Federal government classifies refugees based on their sponsorship in order to manage and facilitate the responsibilities of refugees and service providers. There are three classifications of refugees in the Canadian system: 1) GARs, 2) privately sponsored refugees (PSRs), and 3) blended-visa office referred (BVOR). Those eligible for the Resettlement Assistance Program (RAP) are predominantly GARs although those classified as PSRs and BVORs do have access to certain settlement services, as well. RAPs are performed by service provider organisations. The most notable programs funded by IRCC are Language Instruction for Newcomers in Canada (LINC) and Employment Services, but they also include referrals, counselling, and help with completing government documents. Although SPOs are mainly responsible for servicing GARs and BVORs, many of the services are open to refugees and immigrants who fall under different classifications.

Organisations focused on settlement provisions administer a variety of services, and their primary responsibilities include translating documents, completing forms, providing English classes, employment help, and reaching out to other necessary services and organisations (Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, 2018). The specific services that agencies provide depend on the type organisation, the particular needs of the communities they serve, and the types of government funding they receive. However, there are several limitations with administering such services. Firstly, despite information given on the availability of resources during orientation, the settlement process upon arrival relies heavily on the participation of refugees in the funded programs of SPOs and the referrals frontline staff working within these organisations are able to make. Secondly, since resettlement assistance is funded by the Federal and Provincial governments, the social service provision and available services changes based on changes in political ideologies.

As Zhu (2016) articulates in her research, there has been a shift in immigration policies that reflects the importance of “short-term economic development” (p.145). She states, “this shift echoes neoliberal ideology, which concentrates on more immediate economic benefits of immigration and requires immigrants to integrate quickly into the local labour market” (Zhu, 2016, p.145). Such shifts are reflected in the types of programs that are government funded along

79 with the IRCC departmental plan (2018). For example, settlement and integration are often read as the ability to integrate into Canadian society through the development of language and employment skills. IRCC’s 2018–2019 departmental plan outlines some of the core responsibilities and projected goal outcomes for migration to Canada. In relation to settlement programming, IRCC states, “In 2018–2019, the Department will focus on improvements to program delivery through the over 500 service provider organisations (SPOs) funded by IRCC, especially in the areas of language, training, employment services and support to vulnerable newcomers, including visible minority women” (2018, p.12). As illustrated in these commitments, language and employment are the primary concerns for settlement service provisions, and they are often prioritised when funding programs. The department stipulates that it will also “work closely with all provinces and territories to advance a Pan-Canadian Language Strategy to improve coordination of language programming for adult immigrants in areas of employment-related language training that is aligned to local labour market needs” (IRCC, 2018, p.12). The focus on language and employment shapes the priorities of service provider organisations, which often highlight the number of clients who have successfully gained employment through their programs. Although such programs have been important and integral in the lives of GARs, the prioritisation of “successful” integration silences the various complex needs refugees have when settling in a new country.

Marking successful integration through economic value to Canada reproduces neoliberal practices of individualism and capital gain, which often devalue the bodies of those who are unable to work. According to IRCC (2018), three indicators are used to measure the benefit from settlement supports: a) the “percentage of Canadians who support the current level of immigration,” b) the “percentage of settlement clients who improved their official language skills,” and c) the “percentage of settlement clients who acquired knowledge and skills to integrate into the Canadian labour market” (p.14). Language and economic skills are a necessary part of securing livelihoods in Canada; however, the narratives of integration align within the neoliberal practices of economic independence and individualism that do not address systemic forms of inequality within Canada’s immigration system. As Keil (2002) has argued, neoliberalism “exists through the practices and ideologies of variously scaled fragments of ruling classes, who impose their specific projects onto respective territories and spheres of influence”

80 (p.582). The Federal Government has imposed mandates for successful integration based on neoliberal principles of supporting the Canadian economy, thus reducing refugee bodies to a productive labour force. However, as some studies have analysed (see Francis & Hiebert, 2016; Miraftab, 2000; Murdie, 2002, 2010; Teixeira, 2006), housing is one of the main concerns refugees have when settling in Canada. Rather than focusing primarily on the importance of language and employment, this research illustrates the relationship between settlement and the lack of affordable housing as a crucial barrier to settlement in Canada.

3.5 Housing help and Resettlement Assistance Programs explained Resettlement Assistance Program clients are often met at the point of entry (POE)41 by their assigned service provider organisations (SPOs), which ensures that temporary housing accommodations are provided. Temporary accommodations come in two forms: the reception house model and the commercial house model (Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada, 2019). In the reception house model, accommodations are made by the service provider, who either offers housing in the same location where RAP services are provided or in an alternate location that the service provider owns. For example, Matthew House owns and operates ten refugee homes across Canada. These homes’ specific function is to temporarily house refugees while also administering services, which include settlement services, to cater to refugees’ needs. Whereas the commercial house model provides temporary accommodations in local motels, hotels, or rented apartments. For example, many refugees over the past three years were temporarily housed in hotels and motels, most notably the Toronto Plaza Hotel in the west end of Toronto and the Radisson Hotel in Scarborough. Dormitories in colleges, such as Humber College, were also used in the summer of 2018 to temporarily house refugees.42 During a housing orientation,43 the temporary accommodations are explained to RAP clients as a steppingstone to finding long-term permanent housing. Temporary accommodation lasts from one to three weeks, depending on the client’s circumstances. During this process, GARs are asked to complete a

41 The point of entry is the first point of arrival to Canada. The point of entry is usually an international airport or at entry via land borders. SPOs will be made aware of the arrival of specific government-assisted refugees. 42 Through the Shelter, Support and Housing Administration, the City of Toronto has specific contracts with various hotels across Toronto to house refugees and refugee claimants. This agreement was met with a lot of resistance and controversy. 43 Housing orientations provide information on the types of housing available, lease agreements, outline of tenants’ rights and responsibilities, monthly rental payments, credit cheques and the Canadian banking system.

81 housing search form/contract (see Figure 3) that commits them to searching for permanent housing. They are then asked to sign the contract that outlines the role of the housing worker as a support in searching for housing and the responsibilities placed on refugees to search for housing. According to the form and contract, GARs are expected to search for housing and keep the housing worker informed about possible permanent accommodations. The form states: “[B]e available to visit housing during your temporary accommodations, so that we can inform you about your housing options once found and accompany you to see these options as soon as possible” (Government of Canada, 2018b, p.119). Although in theory, searching for long-term permanent housing is an important commitment to make, the realities of finding housing in Toronto and being readily available to attend a viewing are difficult.44 The underlying assumption to these contracts is that refugees are unable to find housing because they have become comfortable with their temporary accommodations and that the failure to find permanent housing is rooted in the lack of effort on the part of refugees to search for housing rather than the structural barriers to accessing adequate and affordable housing in Canada. Understanding the interlocking forms of oppression GARs face in the housing market thus becomes critical to recognise the ways in which the current housing system works and fails vulnerable populations, such as refugees

44 The remaining sections of this chapter outline the specific barriers refugees face in accessing Toronto’s housing market as narrated through the experiences of frontlines staff.

82 Figure 3. Housing search form given to government-assisted refugees who are supported by their service provider organisations. Reprinted from Resettlement Assistance Program (RAP) Service Provider Handbook by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, 2019.

In addition to the programs administered by service providers, RAP clients are entitled to a start- up allowance and a monthly allowance to cover basic necessities and shelter for the first year of settling in Canada (Refugee Sponsorship Training Program, 2018). Each province has a different RAP rate based on its costs of living. The RAP rate also depends on the size of the family. A single adult living in Ontario would typically receive $337 for basic needs, $384 for shelter, and $30 per file for communication, while a large family consisting of a couple and four children would typically receive $486 for basic needs, $831 for shelter, and $30 per file for communication (Refugee Sponsorship Training Program, 2018). There is also the option of applying for an additional $200 per month for shelter allowance, depending on the city and the cost of housing in which people decide to settle (Refugee Sponsorship Training Program, 2018). However, this additional allowance requires a subsequent application process. Thus, a single adult typically receives $751 per month with the option of applying for an additional $200 per month as a shelter allowance. A family of six typically receives $1,347 per month with the

83 option of applying for an additional $200 per month for shelter (Refugee Sponsorship Training Program, 2018). These monthly start-up allowances are guaranteed solely for GARs during their first year of arrival; however, it is expected that GARs will be fully self-sufficient in their thirteen-month. As discussed in later sections of this chapter, these monthly start-up allowances do not reflect the cost of living in Toronto, where it would be nearly impossible to find housing at such rates. The following section focuses on to the intersectional forms of oppression across race, citizenship status, literacy in English, and socio-economic class, that refugees currently face in Toronto’s housing market, as narrated through the experiences of frontline staff, particularly settlement workers and housing counsellors in Toronto.

3.6 Barriers to accessing housing in the city among recent refugees There is no question about whether there is a housing crisis in Toronto; it is quite clear that the private rental housing market has displaced many low-income families and individuals from the city (August, 2014; Hulchanski, 2011; Walks & Bourne, 2006). However, refugees face a particular set of challenges to finding adequate and affordable housing. The following sections engage with frontline staff members from various non-profit and service provider organisations across the city of Toronto who provide settlement and housing support to refugees and low- income peoples. Based on semi-structured interviews with frontline staff, the following sections unveil the specific barriers to housing access among refugees in Toronto, which include: a) vacancy rates and family size, b) lack of affordable housing in Toronto, gentrification and renovictions, c) housing discrimination, and d) intersections of language, employment and access to housing. It is important to note that although these sections are discussed separately, they are not mutually exclusive; rather, they operate as intersecting axes of exclusion that cut across race, class, language proficiency in English and citizenship status.

3.6.1 Vacancy rates and family size One of the major barriers to housing that frontline staff interviewed for this research identified was the sheer lack of available housing options in Toronto. This is especially urgent for larger families, as the vacancy rates for larger multi-bedroom household units are extremely low. Changes to Toronto’s housing stock towards condo-style units that cater to younger professional couples and smaller families has also fostered an environment that structurally excludes refugee

84 families, who tend to be larger than the Canadian average family size, which sits at 2.9 as of 2016 (Statistics Canada, 2019e). Rosen and Walks (2015) state that the “condo-isation of the housing stock has increased greatly over the most recent decade, particularly in the central city where a much greater proportion of new housing built is in condominium tenure than in the suburbs” (p.292). According to Statistics Canada (2013), “non-family households accounted for the highest proportion of households in condominium ownership—representing just half of condominium owners (45.5%)” (p.6). Moreover, Hulchanski (2011) has demonstrated the steady decline in the number of large families living in Toronto between 1971 and 2005. He observed that, in 1971, households with six or more people declined from 10% to 4% by 2005. Family households also decreased from 79% to 65% by 2005 (p.11). The urban fabric of Toronto is marked by a housing landscape that caters to a younger, wealthier class of people with smaller families and households. Such changes have direct impacts on housing availability for refugee families—which tend to be larger than average Canadian households— who wish to remain closer to the downtown core due to convenient access to social services, ethnic enclaves, and important community networks (Murdie, 2003).

The prioritisation of families in immigration laws in Canada is particularly pertinent to refugees. In 2015, 85% of Syrian refugees admitted were couples with children, and the average number of people per household among Syrian refugees was 4.8 (Houle, 2019). The majority of GARs generally admitted to Canada in 2015 were also couples with children, with 63% (Houle, 2019). Although there is a growing need for multi-bedroom family units in Toronto, the vacancy rates and development of such units are at an all-time low. According to Murdie (2003), “Vacancy rates are also lowest for the largest units, the kind of accommodation that is most in demand by relatively large immigrant households” (p.185). Tight rental markets and low vacancy rates have been well documented by government and non-government organisations (Lapointe, 2012). High demand for larger units with low vacancy rates has created conditions in which larger refugee families are excluded from Toronto’s housing market. As illustrated by participant twelve, tight rental markets have created conditions where “this is a landlord’s market and not a renter’s market.” For those primarily working with new refugee families, the low vacancy rates among affordable multi-bedroom family rental units proved to be a specific difficulty, particularly in a context where many traditionally immigrant family neighbourhoods are undergoing processes of

85 gentrification that prioritize condo development. For example, in the context of Regent Park’s revitalisation, the arrangement of condo-development, which includes the building of 5,400 new private market rent condo units, in addition to revitalizing 2,083 social housing units, reflects the prioritisation of building housing units catering to smaller family households (TCHC, 2020). Participants four, six, seven, eight, twelve and thirteen, all mentioned the family size of newly arrived refugees as a barrier to finding secure adequate housing. In reference to Syrian refugees that arrived by 2016, participant four indicated that most of them have a “minimum of three children and up.” Though affordability was one of the major issues in accessing the rental market in Toronto among refugees, frontline staff expressed great frustration with the sheer shortage of available multi-bedroom rental units in Toronto.

From discussions with participants, the lack of vacant multi-bedroom rental units available in Toronto plays a major role in frontline staff’s (in)ability to secure housing for refugees. The overall vacancy rates for Toronto are quite low, sitting at about 1.1% as of 2018 (Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis & Canadian Urban Institute, 2019, p.37). This dearth of units is exacerbated for families, as vacancy rates for a bachelor are at 1.6%, while the vacancy rate for a three-bedroom apartment is 1.0% (CMHC, 2019b).45 According to the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis (2019), Within a rental market as tight as Toronto’s, there is greater potential for price increases when units turn over, which can lead to large discrepancies in rents among different segments of the rental market. Similarly, low vacancy rates also mean that landlords can be highly selective with their tenants, potentially opening the door to housing discrimination. All of this can make the housing search particularly dire for more vulnerable and marginalised groups. (p.37)

A tight rental market fosters housing conditions in which many families compete for the same few available units, and competition is especially heightened for multi-bedroom units in Toronto. In the current rental market, tenants are viewed as easily replaceable, and landlords often prefer increased turnover rates of tenants, as this allows landlords to dramatically increase the rent of a unit. In the context of Ontario, landlords are currently prohibited from increasing rent beyond 2.2% (Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, 2020). However, landlords do not have a cap

45 These vacancy rates are reflective of the primary rental market in Toronto.

86 on the amount of rent they can charge for new tenants.46 With low vacancy rates, lax provincial rental guidelines, and high demand for housing, precarious populations often find themselves at the will of landlords.

When discussing the lack of available housing, several frontline staff attested to the frustrations of not being able to immediately house families; these frustrations were acutely felt among recently arrived refugee families. Participant one identified difficulties in housing large families, which was a norm among refugees. He stated that the vacancy rates are quite low, which often leads to multiple people and families renting in one-bedroom units. Participant eleven highlighted similar barriers faced by refugees by stating that “refugees tend to have big families” and there are limited spaces for families in Toronto. Compounding this barrier with the particular experiences refugee claimants have around status and employment, where claimants must apply for a work permit while awaiting their claim to be reviewed by the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) of Canada, the lack of income and available services based on their status, render them highly vulnerable to landlord exploitation. For example, according to Murdie et al. (2006), “initially, refugee claimants took much longer than sponsored refugees to secure permanent housing. Upon obtaining permanent housing they were more likely to acquire smaller units and to share with non-family members” (p.9). For many refugee claimants, the immediate need of shelter supersedes their rights as tenants and often find themselves in inadequate housing.

For single women with children, the ability to secure employment and find long-term permanent housing becomes even more burdensome as there are limited available services for childcare for refugee claimants. Applying for work permits, searching for housing in a market with little to no vacancy rates for families, while also needing to care for children, proves to be particularly difficult for refugee families headed by a single parent. Participant eleven said that because of these barriers, families will compromise by arranging three or four families to move in together. Sharing similar frustrations on the lack of available housing for low-income families, participant ten, who works within a violence against women (VAW) shelter, discussed the absurdity of the contracts needing to be signed by her clients, which require them to be in consistent search of

46 In 1998, there was a partial removal of rent control, which resulted in the skyrocketing of rent between 1998 and 2002 (Murdie, 2003).

87 housing. The contracts, she refers to throughout the interview, are given to women upon their intake process in the shelter. It outlines particular rules, guidelines, and a client-centred plan developed with their assigned caseworker. However, when holding clients accountable to their commitment to search for housing, she believed the contracts to be ridiculous. She said, “they would be forced to find housing when there was no housing available.” The contracts would often mandate women to look for two to three houses every week, but because there is no housing available, people would leave for the day and come back with no luck. Such searches were conditional upon their stay within the shelter and therefore required women to search in a housing market, where very little housing was available to them. In addition to the sheer lack of available housing for larger families in Toronto, low vacancy rates have created an extremely competitive rental market, where tenants often compromise on certain landlord responsibilities for the sake of securing and maintaining their housing.

For refugee families in particular, the high demand for multi-bedroom units, intensifies the already-precarious positions refugees are in. For example, participant four discussed the ways in which landlords exploit tenants in search of adequate housing. She states, “By law, they [landlords], have to have the apartment cleaned and painted, sprayed if there were any bugs, make sure the fridge works, the stove works etc.” However, because landlords know that there is a tight rental market, particularly around larger rental units, they often tell prospective tenants to “take it or leave it, if you don’t take it, there are others.” Coupling the tight rental market with refugees’ desires to live in apartment buildings that also house other known families, friends and members of their ethnic community, refugees often feel inclined to rent regardless of the laws being broken by the landlord upon signing the lease. In addition to low vacancy rates within the private rental market, the lack of shelter beds, particularly for families seeking shelter, was mentioned as a grave concern by several frontline staff.

One settlement worker—participant eight—described the frustrations of not being able to immediately house families. He described the difficulties of calling landlords and shelters to help accommodate families only to be notified that there was no space available. Though he would often help add families to social housing waiting lists, he found it difficult to tell those families—often sitting in front of him—that there was nothing available at the moment. The

88 transitional housing supplied by some service provider organisations for refugee claimants, only supplies housing for a certain period of time in order to accommodate high numbers of refugee claimants in need of temporary housing. Participant eleven spoke to how the Canadian Borders and Services Agents (CBSA) would often bring refugee claimants directly from the airport to one of the three transitional housing shelters they run. Though they would receive calls prior to their arrival, sometimes people show up at the door without notice. Being at capacity, this housing worker would often have to call central intake to locate available spaces in emergency shelters. If no beds were available in the city, she would sometimes allow people to sleep on the sofa in the office and hope that beds open up the following day. For refugee claimants whose first night in the city requires locating temporary shelter, navigating a new city, can be particularly difficult, especially for those whose first language is neither French or English, lack finances, and have limited knowledge of available resources in Toronto.

The above experiences illustrated by frontline staff demonstrate the reliance on non-profit organisations to administer services, such as temporary housing that should be administered by the state. As previously analysed, increasing implementation of neoliberal policies in Ontario during the 1990s, created conditions that added additional strain onto municipalities and non- profit organisations in servicing low-income populations. In particular, provincial funding to settlement agencies, was cut in half; however, the responsibilities of these organisations did not change. Rather, non-profit organisations were to continue to serve newcomers with fewer resources (Shields, 2003). Thus, frontline staff are being asked to offer housing support in a housing climate, that is particularly difficult to find affordable and adequate housing in general, let alone for refugees, who are faced with intersecting systemic forms of exclusion upon arrival to Canada.

3.6.2 Lack of affordable rental units in Toronto, gentrification, and renovictions Though frontline staff in Toronto identified the lack of available units in the city as a major issue, all staff acknowledged the difficulties of securing housing for clientele who could not afford market rent. For low-income peoples, Toronto’s private rental market is unaffordable and for refugees and refugee claimants, which proved to be a huge barrier to housing access. Participant one discussed the rent-to-income ratio and stated that the amount of money GARs

89 receive versus the increasing rental costs in the city makes the ratio too high. In Toronto, the average market rent for a hostel is $839 per month, while a bachelor apartment averages $1089 per month (City of Toronto, 2019a). If a single adult receives $751 per month from RAP assistance, they would need to make an additional $88 per month to meet the average monthly rent of a hostel bed, while they would have to make an additional $338 per month to afford the average market rent of a bachelor in Toronto. It is important to keep in mind, though, that these “average” rents reflect prices in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), whereas the average asking rental prices in Toronto proper are much higher. As previously mentioned, for refugee families, the availability of larger units is scarce. Moreover, larger units in the GTA are also unaffordable. The average market rent for an apartment unit with five bedrooms is $2,185 per month. If a family of six wanted to rent this unit with a RAP rate of $1,347 per month, they would have to make an additional $838 per month. Although being a recipient of RAP has several advantages, including a letter guaranteeing funding support for housing for their first year upon arrival issued by IRCC, the minimal financial supports and shortage of affordable and secure housing in Toronto reflect a much wider set of problems facing lower-income people seeking housing in Canada.

GARs are guaranteed funding for the first twelve months upon arrival to Canada under the RAP rates; however, the thirteen-month proved to be the most difficult for sponsored refugees. Many settlement workers discussed the need to prepare GARs for life after the first twelve months of their arrival. Sponsors are responsible for securing housing and other needs for the first twelve months of settlement; however, they encourage clients to prepare for the thirteenth month because that is when refugees must be fully self-sufficient with housing, language, and employment. Participant four discussed how much she stressed preparing clients for the thirteenth month, when GARs are no longer guaranteed funding for housing. She said for many of her clients, “the thirteenth month…it was almost like a panic attack,” because people did not know how they were going to afford continuing to pay rent. Therefore, for newly arrived refugees, learning English and searching for employment become two primary concerns when preparing for the thirteen-month after arrival. Despite preparation, finding employment or applying for Ontario Works (OW) and children’s benefits, there is little to no guarantee that enough funding will be secured to rent and live in Toronto’s housing market.

Many other frontline staff interviewed echoed this sentiment on the unaffordability of housing in the city. Participant eleven discussed the ways in which the maximum amount those on OW receive does not meet the demands of the private rental market in Toronto. Given that the maximum amount one can receive from OW for basic needs and rent is $733 per month (Toronto Employment and Social Services, 2018), she expressed concern that this amount is insufficient for families to find homes in Toronto. Another housing worker—participant twelve— physically showed me the rates for OW and asked me how it would be possible to find anyone a place to live in Toronto on $733 per month. For those on the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), the maximum monthly shelter allowance for a single recipient is $497 and a basic needs monthly allowance of $672 (Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services, 2018). For many refugee claimants, social assistance is their primary source of income when first arriving to Canada. The rents are simply not affordable for refugees, who experience a range of barriers and limitations when settling in Toronto, particularly in the current climate, where social services are fiscally under attack.

The lack of affordable housing in the city of Toronto has led to living arrangements that are poor and inadequate. Participant eleven discussed the limitations of having a low income when searching for housing. She discussed finding listings that advertised beds for rent, as the availability of affordable housing units in the city is so scarce. She said that some places now have bunk beds and rent a bed for about $400 per month. Though not ideal, the availability of housing units at the rates of OW is minimal. The demand for shelter has placed many people, particularly refugee claimants, in precarious positions, and renting a bed in a shared room becomes the only viable option. Several other frontline workers identified the lack of affordable housing available in the city. For example, participant nine identified poverty as a barrier to housing access in Toronto. He discussed how a person can be working two jobs and still be living below the poverty line. For those living below the low-income line, he stated “You are fucked.” His candid response illustrates the difficulties in finding affordable housing units in Toronto, even for those who are fully employed. Several other frontline workers identified the lack of affordable housing available in the city. Participant eight articulated his feelings of helplessness when attempting to secure housing for a family and not being able to find

91 something affordable. Given that the waiting list for social housing is long47 and when families are homeless and in immediate need, it is difficult to determine what options are available. When asked if families ever rent units together, he said that of course they did. Families often need to live together in smaller units in order to afford living in the city. However, this sharing of space leads to overcrowding and can potentially lead to evictions made by landlords as it can violate the terms of a lease agreement.48 The continued reliance on an unregulated private rental market to supply housing in Toronto has led to the systemic exclusion of marginalised peoples from the housing ecosystem in Toronto.

Due to the lack of affordable housing options, many refugees turn to shelters. However, those working within shelters discussed the lack of available beds. Participant eleven stated that they turn away people on a daily basis and described how they sometimes allow people to sleep on the couch in the common space if there are no available beds. Participant ten, a caseworker within a shelter, described the shelter system as “a prison” rather than a viable housing option for homeless populations. They discussed how the process is more about “regulating and managing people” who were mainly racialised than about securing and finding housing options for them. Participant eight articulated the lack of initiatives to ensure that affordable housing is built as a humanitarian issue, and they believe that refugees were not seen as human; however, recognising peoples’ humanity is an important aspect of ensuring that their livelihoods are sustainable and secure. As discussed in chapter one of this dissertation, Toronto is increasingly tailored to the needs and desires of professional and wealthier classes of people. This process is particularly intensified by condominium developments, the lack of affordable housing, and, subsequently, gentrification.

The prioritisation of condo development in Toronto over the development of affordable housing is not a new phenomenon (see Mahoney, 2001; Rosen & Walks, 2015), but it does have adverse impacts on highly vulnerable populations in Toronto, such as refugees. The average market rent for a one-bedroom condo in Toronto is $1,910 per month, while a two-bedroom is priced at

47 As of 2019, there are 102, 049 total active waiting list applications for social housing in the city of Toronto (City of Toronto, 2019c). 48 There are also negative health impacts on overcrowded housing. However, multiple families living in one unit is sometimes the only available option for those living on low incomes.

92 $2,393 per month (CMHC, 2018b).49 Neoliberal policies and practices regarding housing development in Ontario have created conditions in which landlords prioritise profit over building adequate, affordable housing. Elanor Mahoney (2001) analyses the changes and impacts to Ontario’s housing system under the leadership of a conservative provincial government in the 1990s. Neoliberal policy changes to the housing system in Ontario were said to stimulate the housing market in major cities in Ontario. Though housing was built, the types of housing built did not support renters. For example, At the time the Act was introduced in the Legislature, the Conservatives anticipated that Minto would reinvest $3 million in the rental market. Minto had other plans…Minto is converting a 205-unit rental building to condominium ownership in Etobicoke, investing $2 million in renovations and offering a discounted purchase price to existing tenants. … Other developers have also eyed the condominium market, taking steps to demolish their buildings to construct new condo properties or convert those rental buildings with draft approval for condominium status into ownership properties. (Mahoney, 2001, p.263)

The turn towards neoliberal governance has had an unfavourable impact on long-term renters in particular. Condominium development and the introduction of Airbnb have created housing conditions in which owners can turn a greater profit from renting their spaces as hotel rooms. Figure 4 illustrates conversations among landlords who have prioritised turning a profit over providing long-term, adequate, and affordable housing for tenants.

49 It is important to note that rent has increased for bachelors and one-bedroom condo units in 2019.

Figure 4. Reprinted from Shady Ontario landlords are sharing illegal eviction tips on a coupon website, by Lauren O'Neil, September 2019. Retrieved from https://www.blogto.com/real-estate- toronto/2019/08/shady-ontario-landlords-use-couponing-forum-share-illegal-eviction-tips/ Copyright 2020 by Freshdaily Inc. Note. Photo taken from the Twitter account of Matt Elliot. It is from a forum where landlords share their tips and experiences on how to evict someone through loopholes of the law.

Participant twelve also believed that Airbnb has contributed to reducing the number of available long-term permanent housing for low-income peoples in the city. Increasing reliance on the private rental housing market and the continued prioritisation of condo development in Toronto thus speaks to the growing neoliberalisation of the city, which effectively prices out low-income communities. Such conditions have led to rapid gentrification in some of Toronto’s most ethnically and racially diverse neighbourhoods (see August & Walks, 2008, 2018; August, 2014; Mele, 2019; Slater, 2004).

Some frontline staff cited gentrification as one of the causes of the lack of affordable housing for refugee families in Toronto. Gentrification has been theorised quite extensively by critical urban geographers in relation to the displacement and dispossession of low-income people from their neighbourhoods as a result of high levels of investment and the resulting higher rents (see August, 2018; Cahill, 2007; Rankin and Mazer, 2011; Slater, 2004, 2010). The first chapter of this dissertation discussed the pivotal roles urban geographers play in theorising gentrification in

94 relation to displacement of low-income neighbourhoods in Toronto. Two housing counsellors in this study expressed similar sentiments and discussed the role of gentrification in limiting the number of housing units available for refugees within the city. One housing worker, participant eleven, discussed gentrification happening in Parkdale and how housing for immigrants and newcomers has become less affordable in that neighbourhood. She described how she often sent clients to that neighbourhood in the past to secure housing, but because of gentrification, many are now actively priced out. Another housing counsellor, participant twelve, discussed the particular ways in which gentrification in one of Canada’s largest housing projects, Regent Park, has led to fewer social housing units that accommodate large families. Stipulating that, although social housing is being redeveloped and the number of units remains the same, the size of the units being constructed is smaller than previous ones. She said that they used to have five- bedroom townhouses, but now the townhouses available will only have a maximum of four bedrooms. She believed this new design to be a strategic decision made by a real estate development company (the Daniels company) in collaboration with Toronto Community Housing Corporation to reduce the number of larger-sized units in the household for those living in social housing. When asked why she thought the city would not rebuild social housing units with more bedrooms, she stated that it was because with more rooms, there would be more people congregating in the area. She believed that the revitalisation projects in Regent Park would create necessary maintenance changes to current social housing infrastructure in the city; she also believed that the projects were designed to cater to the middle- to upper-middle-class communities that would reside in the condos near the social housing units. She then addressed how Regent Park traditionally housed immigrants from larger households. She believed that residents of Regent Park had community, and that communities of people of colour are seen as threatening to onlookers, which is why she challenged the mixed-housing narrative that has been used to market the neighbourhood.

In North America, large congregations of people of colour are often criminalised, stigmatised and targeted (see Horgan, 2018). Such forms of stigmatisation are utilised to push forward revitalisation projects. Current processes of gentrification have served as a way of displacing current tenants of Regent Park to replace them with a wealthier population. Figure 5 is an example of the types of condominiums and advertisements for new Regent park housing. The

95 advertisement includes a young couple sitting on a grey couch with both a park and graffiti art positioned in the background. Illustrating the allure of the “urban” environment, while simultaneously enjoying the green space in the neighbourhood, the advertisement reflects the types of housing being built in Regent Park and the clientele they cater to, which is a young professional class that lives independently. The advertisement is one representation of the effects of gentrification on neighbourhoods that have historically housed lower-income and immigrant communities. Participant twelve discussed how tenants in Regent Park’s social housing units were promised housing after the revitalisation projects. She discussed how this strategy was used as a way to push out “unwanted” tenants. For example, tenants who owed rent would not be eligible for new social housing units. Additionally, tenants who were arrested for owning an unlicensed firearm were no longer allowed to return to the units. Only those who were considered “ideal” tenants were promised that they could return to Regent Park. Those most marginalised would be further segregated and pushed to the outskirts. Thus, the revitalisation projects catered to a clientele from whom development companies could profit, which does not include low-income racialised and stigmatised communities.

Due to low vacancy rates, gentrification, and the lack of initiatives taken by all levels of government to provide more family rental housing units, frontline workers are increasingly unable to find housing for their clients. One housing counsellor, participant twelve, discussed the near impossibility of finding housing because it simply does not exist, and as a counsellor, she spends much more time educating people in need of housing and providing tips to maintain housing units. The lack of affordable housing and the poor quality of housing that is available to refugees was also a shock that settlement and housing counsellors had to discuss with their clients. Simply put, many frontline staff found themselves stuck trying to address their clients’ needs while being limited in a market that continually prices out low-income communities. The structural exclusions of low-income peoples in Toronto’s housing system is representative of the neoliberal governance in Toronto, which continues to rely on increasing privatisation of housing supply that is catered to wealthier class of individuals.

Figure 5. Advertisement for a new and developing condominium in Regent Park. Reproduced from River and Fifth Toronto, 2019. Retrieved from http://riverandfifth.com/index.php Copyright 2019, River & Fifth Residence.

Figure 6. Condo construction on River Street and Dundas, Toronto. Photos taken by Mary-Kay Bachour illustrating condominium development at the intersection of River Street and Dundas Street in Toronto, Ontario

3.6.3 Housing discrimination The lack of affordable housing in Toronto is one of the largest barriers all frontline workers interviewed identified among their clientele. Though unaffordable rent impacts all low-income peoples in Toronto, especially those on OW and ODSP, there are specific barriers racialised refugees face that continue to exclude them from Toronto’s private rental market. As previously mentioned, the tight private rental market in Toronto lends itself to higher rates of

97 discrimination, specifically excluding precarious populations such as refugees and refugee claimants. Novac, Darden, Hulchanski, and Seguin (2002) define housing discrimination as follows: Any behaviour, practice, or policy in the public or private sectors that directly, indirectly, or systematically causes harm through inequitable access to or use and enjoyment of housing by members of historically disadvantaged social groups. (p.1)

According to the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC), housing discrimination can take many forms in a range of situations. OHRC states, “the right to be free from discrimination in housing includes not only the right to enter into an agreement and occupy a residential dwelling, but also the right to be free from discrimination in all matters relating to the accommodation” (n.d., para. 2). Some of the common forms of housing discrimination documented by the OHRC include refusal to rent to someone with children or screening people based on the name on the application. Though cases have been fought and won with regard to housing discrimination in Toronto, the lack of scholarly attention to the relationship between neoliberalism and housing discrimination inadvertently excludes research participants and sites that could illuminate a much more complex housing landscape in Toronto (see chapter one for an in depth analysis of the lack of scholarly attention on housing discrimination in Canada). Frontline workers acknowledged that the reason many refugees cannot afford to rent in Toronto is the sheer lack of the funds necessary to afford Toronto’s increasing rental prices. However, housing discrimination or discrimination on the basis of race, status, class and gender, was a primary concern among all staff interviewed.

The types of housing discrimination refugees experience manifest in different ways within Canada’s housing system. One of the consistent ways it operates in the lives of refugees is in a landlord’s request for a guarantor50 and/or Canadian reference. The request for a guarantor is especially difficult for newly arrived refugees who may or may not know anyone in the city or town in which they are being settled.51 Participant four described the difficulties of finding a guarantor but noted the differences in access to a guarantor based on refugee status. For example,

50 In Ontario, landlords are legally allowed to request a guarantor. This is someone who agrees to pay the rent in case the tenant on the lease fails to pay and/or moves out earlier than the agreed upon date within the lease. 51 The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), identifies refugees for sponsorship. Refugees do not get to choose their place of resettlement, but rather this is reviewed by the United Nations Refugee Agency on a case by case basis.

98 she articulated that many of those who were privately sponsored had their sponsors sign as their guarantor, while those seeking asylum52 had the most difficulty finding a guarantor, because they often did not know anyone in the country. Though privately sponsored refugees found it easier to find a willing guarantor, participant four also described the precarious position those sponsored by friends or family members are in, because the sponsors tend to hold financial and social power over them. She said that those privately sponsored tended to generally be more educated and had more wealth than those coming from refugee camps; she also expressed concern over the ways in which family and friends who sponsor them took advantage of those positions. Though requiring a guarantor to access housing in the city proved to be a barrier among refugees, conversations with frontline staff revealed the complex intersections of the classifications of refugee status—based on your sponsorship to Canada—and ability to obtain a guarantor.

Similar to guarantor requirements, many frontline staff identified the need for a Canadian reference as a major barrier to finding adequate housing in the city. In an interview with two frontline staff, participants one and two, both believed that it was much harder for refugee claimants to access the housing market than for GARs, given that the latter are entitled to a letter from IRCC confirming their monthly resettlement assistance income. However, such letters are not available to refugee claimants, as their status is still under review by the IRB of Canada. Refugee claimants, therefore, experience greater forms of systemic discrimination, as the effects of requiring Canadian references have an adverse impact on refugee claimants, who are unable to work in Canada until their case is approved or if they successfully apply for a work permit. Refugee claimants sometimes wait on their work permits in order to continue working while their claim is being assessed. The processing times, however, can leave many people without work for an extended period of time, thus contributing to an additional axis of exclusion. Not only does waiting on a work permit prevent one from developing financial security through employment, but the lack of available work references required by many landlords also acts as a further barrier to securing housing. Refugees, refugee claimants in particular, experience these

52 Refugee claimant and those seeking asylum will be used interchangeably throughout this chapter.

99 interlocking exclusions, all of which, in combination, hinder their access to the private rental market in Toronto.

The lack of credit checks often required for rental units, also proved to be a major barrier to accessing long-term permanent housing among refugees. Participant four specifically identified credit checks as an issue to accessing the private rental market; it is difficult for new arrivals in Canada to build a credit score. Building a credit score in a new country is challenging, particularly when facing a myriad of obstacles, including language and employment barriers. For this reason, some settlement workers interviewed encouraged their clients to immediately work on building their credit, as this was an important tool for securing adequate housing in the city. However, when locating housing is an immediate need, building a credit score becomes an impossible task. Participant eleven held similar frustrations around credit checks required for rental applications. She said, “Those who are newly arrived, where are you going to get credit scores?” Due to levels of precarity around status, income and language barriers, refugees were often put in vulnerable positions, and exposed to landlord discrimination. For example, in the absence of credit scores or reference letters, participant thirteen discussed how some landlords would ask for six months post-dated cheques. Based on the OHRC, such requests would be considered an act of discrimination; yet, some refugees comply due to a lack of knowledge on housing law and/or urgent need for housing. Participant nine believed that a lot of landlords will rent to vulnerable populations, based on the ability to exploit such populations. When I asked frontline staff, “How do you get around this?” most explained the importance of establishing good relationships with the landlords, who would contact service provider organisations when there was a vacancy in the building. Thus, staff within service provider organisations became, in themselves, referees for their clients.

In addition to forming relationships with landlords who were sympathetic to the experiences of refugees in the city, many interviewees recognised the importance of identifying which landlords would discriminate against refugees. During one interview, I asked a housing counsellor, participant eleven, if she had ever experienced instances in which landlords discriminated against clients/tenants, and she responded with a definite “yes.” She went on to tell me about the various instances of discrimination her clients faced, noting in particular the difficulties that women with

100 children and who receive benefits from OW encounter in securing housing in the city. Participant twelve shared similar sentiments, who from her experience stated that those who are on social assistance are “more likely to stay in the home,” and so landlords would prefer not to rent to those they believe will be around the house more. According to participant twelve, landlords prefer tenants who will be out of the unit most of the day. Thus, single women with children receiving social assistance, are consistently faced with intersecting forms of landlord discrimination across social factors of gender, family type and income.

Several frontline staff also revealed explicit racial discrimination operating within Toronto’s private rental market. Participant twelve explained that she often booked appointments for her clients to view rental units. She described how landlords often assumed she was white based on how she spoke over the phone and were quick to book an appointment for viewing an apartment. Once her client attended the viewing, however, landlords stated that the unit had been rented and was now unavailable. Having her own suspicions, this housing worker called the landlord and asked if the unit was still available, and the landlord said that it was. The experiences of people of colour viewing apartments only to be told that the unit has been rented upon arrival is a common experience documented by the Ontario Human Rights Commission (2018). This same housing worker, in particular, believed that it is a common understanding that housing discrimination exists; however, she said that there is nowhere to report such abuses that would lead to effective intervention.

One frontline staff member, participant ten, discussed a similar experience accompanying a client to an apartment viewing. Her client was a young racialised mother with a small child. It was clear upon arrival that the landlord did not want to rent to her and told both the staff and her client that they no longer had time to show them the unit. However, this staff person found it difficult to challenge the housing discrimination the landlord perpetrated. This particular service provider believed that they had no concrete evidence that the landlord was being racist, and that, when relying on the housing market, most of the women she works with are in precarious situations and are at the mercy of landlords. Participant eleven also highlighted the inability to report or prove such instances of discrimination. She said that there are instances where it is clear that it is discrimination, because sometimes you will meet all of the requirements, but you are

101 still not rented the apartment. Almost all frontline staff noted housing discrimination within the private rental market and the lack of accountability or ability to challenge such forms of discrimination.

Intersecting with the insidious ways that landlords discriminate against refugees, some workers also witness their clients experience explicit forms of housing discrimination. One housing worker detailed some of her experiences of fighting with landlords who were particularly racist. She discussed landlords asking her the national origins of the refugees for whom she was attempting to secure housing; other landlords explicitly stated that certain foods could not be cooked in the units being rented. One housing counsellor, participant eleven, expressed similar sentiments, stating that some landlords do not want to rent to this “type of people,” which she understood to refer to people of colour. Another counsellor, participant twelve, expressed concern that many landlords were explicitly discriminatory to people based on age, race, gender, age, and status. In addition to discriminating against refugees and peoples of certain national origins (see chapter one), many landlords refused to rent to people on OW or the ODSP. Within the social service industry, to many frontline staff, particularly among those who have experienced racial discrimination themselves, it is clear that many landlords hold stereotypes of groups of people.

Discriminating against people based on their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, employment, and class is against the law; however, many settlement staff and housing workers expressed concern for the lack of time and resources refugees have available to challenge landlords who discriminate. Scholarship on the settlement of refugees in major cities have more recently illustrated the various forms of exclusion experienced by refugees in search of housing (see Murdie, 2005; Novac & Darden, 2002; Ryan and Woodill, 2000). The insights from frontline workers in this study showcase similar forms of housing barriers faced by refugees, with a particular emphasis on how Toronto’s housing crisis is currently impacting the levels of housing discrimination faced by refugees. Additionally, the research findings unpack some of the limitations of resisting such forms of discrimination within a housing landscape that systemically privileges landlords.

102 3.6.4 Language, employment, and access to housing Language was identified as one of the largest barriers to integrating more generally into “Canadian” society, but it was consistently cited as an obstacle to securing and maintaining adequate housing in Toronto. The relationship between one’s fluency in English and ability to secure housing is underexplored within housing studies in geography (see chapter one for an in- depth literature review of housing studies in geography). However, frontline staff shed light on some of the difficulties refugees face when attempting to learn English in Canada. According to a report developed for IRCC (2018), “Many GARs arrive in Canada unable to speak either English or French” (p. 47). Programs such as the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC), are funded by IRCC to lessen the difficulties of integrating into Canadian society. Though such programs are helpful for learning English to prepare for the citizenship exam, they do not help with the immediate need for housing. Interviews with frontline staff revealed the intersections of language, employment and housing access. Frontline staff commonly mentioned that landlords often took advantage of peoples’ inability to fluently speak, read, and write in English. For GARs who are just beginning to learn English, reading and signing a lease without the help of a translator leaves them vulnerable to exploitation by landlords.

When housing is an immediate need, refugees often encounter language barriers that make it difficult to find and secure affordable housing in Toronto. Settlement organisations and the frontline staff who work in them are highly aware of the difficulties their clients face due to their lack of English skills. In a report released by the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI), three individual vulnerabilities were identified as barriers to housing: a) being “unaware of local housing system, rules, regulations, limitations;” b) “limited language and communication skills;” and c) “fear of accessing services due to undocumented status” (2015, p.20). Such vulnerabilities operate simultaneously in refugees’ search for housing in Toronto. Some of the frontline staff interviewed identified the ways in which refugees are taken advantage of based on limited language and communication skills, as well as the fear of being deported. Participant four stated that refugees are a vulnerable population and that landlords take advantage of this precarity. This participant noted how landlords often raised the rent once more refugees began renting units in their buildings. She stated that “rent for a two-bedroom apartment in a nearby building was $1,150 per month, but when landlords learned that the demand for

103 housing in the building was high among refugees,53 they increased it to $1,500 or more a month.” Additionally, the same settlement worker discussed how some landlords increased the rent above the provincial guidelines, but because refugees are unaware of certain housing regulations, the rental increases would be left unchallenged. Though staff working within settlement organisations often hold a housing orientation or provide resources on their websites to help refugees understand their rights as tenants (see Figure 7), landlords often continue to rely on refugees’ general lack of access to knowledge about how the housing market works when first arriving in Canada.

For refugees, there are added stresses of not knowing their rights and responsibilities as tenants in addition to the language barriers between them and landlords. Participant four discussed the challenges of calling the tenant’s hotline or the city, where the automated response options are in English or French, which makes it challenging for refugees who are starting to learn the language to call such services. She said some of her clients would call these numbers but would not know how to follow the instructions of the automated response due to language barriers. Participants six, seven and thirteen discussed their roles in filling out applications for their clients, because some of them are not literate. Signing leases and filling out an application form for housing, thus become added barriers to accessing the already constrained and competitive housing market in Toronto. For those who do not have status, there is a secondary barrier to accessing social services and programs for fear of being detained. The available avenues for tenants to challenge housing injustice in Toronto are scarce, and this lack of availability is particularly difficult for newly arrived refugees, who are beginning to learn and navigate Canada’s housing system.

53 Particular buildings would be recommended by friends, family or have pre-existing relationships with frontline staff who would often refer their clients. Landlords would often take advantage of the lack of tenant’s rights knowledge.

104

Figure 7. Simplified summary of rights and responsibilities of a tenant posted on OCASI’s website. Reproduced from What are my rights as a tenant?, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, 2019, retrieved from https://settlement.org/ontario/housing/rent-a-home/tenant- rights-and-responsibilities/what-are-my-rights-as-a-tenant/ Copyright 2020, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants.

Although the formal roles of service providers within their organisations were delimited, many found themselves advising their clients on housing issues that fell beyond the scope of their job descriptions. For example, housing organisations often provide resources to help with signing a lease. However, those who were not officially housing counsellors often found themselves providing housing advice to clients. Two settlement workers, participants six and seven, discussed the importance of advising their clients not to sign a lease until they had someone translate it or they fully understood what they were signing. Other frontline staff also highlighted knowing what was in the lease prior to signing. For example, participant four who worked closely with Syrian refugees used the lease documents provided by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (see Figure 8) as a way to help clients learn English, while also equipping them with rights-based knowledge. However, because vacancy rates were low and the need for affordable housing high, clients often nonetheless signed leases and agreed to terms without knowing what was acceptable or legal. Additionally, participant four specifically described

105 refugees’ fear of being deported if they challenged their landlords. She regularly found herself reminding many of her clients that they had permanent residency and would not be deported. Despite the workshops and housing help, frontline staff continually heard of stories of housing exploitation.

Participant six, who repeatedly had to advocate on behalf of her clients, detailed the experience of one who was asked to replace a fridge and oven by the superintendents, who blamed the tenants for breaking these appliances. Though she ran an English reading program for GARs that had nothing to do with housing, she advised her clients that it is the landlord’s responsibility to replace appliances and to maintain the unit. Participant four also often found themselves advocating on behalf of their clients’ rights as tenants. When asked how landlords take advantage of newcomers and refugees in particular, participant four told the following story to help illustrate how refugees are abused in the area of housing: “I had a gentleman from Syria.” she said, “He’s in a wheelchair. The building had a revolving door, and that door stopped working. So, he would go and tell the building manager that I need the door to open. I can’t open and go in. So, he tells him we’ll fix it” She continued sharing with me that it was difficult for this man to get off the bus in the winter and get to his building, where the accessibility door no longer worked. Even with someone holding the door, his wheelchair was not electrical and required someone to push him through the door. Although the building manager agreed to fix the door, weeks went by, and nothing was done. Her client often shared these difficulties with her, and so she finally called the building manager. She said: So, I called three or four times and was given the run-around. So, then I called the city and they told me tell them that it is mandatory they have to replace it and if they don’t, we will have to come and they will be charged a lot of money. So, I called them back and in a nice assertive voice, I said if you don’t fix it, I’m going to have to call the city and within a week, the building manager got it fixed.

It required this settlement workers’ extraordinary intervention—and her threatening the landlord—to see that the client’s basic right to an accessible entrance was granted. This story reflects the intersectional forms of oppression experienced by refugees within the private rental market. Due to her client’s precarious position as a refugee and someone living with a physical disability, the building manager consistently dismissed the tenant’s concerns. The situation required persistent efforts on the part of the settlement staff who, herself had to find resources

106 and call on advice from the city, to mobilise the manager to demand the door be fixed. This situation is particularly difficult when language is an added barrier.

Participant four also mentioned the fear that refugees have when faced with housing injustices. She stated, “They don’t know that you can reach out and do it. They are scared.” She noted that refugees were often afraid that, if they did not obey what the landlords wanted, they would be sent back home, even though it would be against the law to have them repatriated. She frequently found herself trying to strengthen her clients’ confidence, telling them that they have a right to speak up and refuse to pay an increase in rent beyond the provincial limit. She also believed that landlords were often more receptive to people in positions of authority and took advantage of instances of powerlessness among refugees. She frequently referred clients to the landlord and tenant board or housing help centres so that they could clarify the rights and responsibilities of tenants and landlords. However, landlord and tenant board hearings are held in either French or English, and interpreters are not provided for any other languages. An interpreter can be brought to a hearing; however, this service must be sought out and paid for by individuals or affiliated organisations. Another settlement worker, participant eight, attested to the lack of avenues to fight discrimination. She believed that there was no real place to go in order to fight housing discrimination in the city. Moreover, it takes significant time to fight these cases, and not everyone has the will to do so. Participant eight said, “We give them information, we try to put them on a path, but if you want something, you have to fight for it, you know. It’s not that easy.” Indeed, while there are orientations and housing workers who can advise clients on the avenues to take when experiencing an issue with a landlord, refugees are often less assertive about their rights than they might be otherwise.

107

Figure 8. Screenshot of signing a lease document.Reproduced from Housing Information for newcomers to Canada by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Retrieved from https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/buying/newcomers-housing-information Copyright 2020, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Note. Participant four gave me hard copies of these documents because she uses them to help her clients know their rights, while also translating into English for language development purposes.

As previously mentioned, housing in the city is not affordable for the majority of low-income peoples. However, for refugees who are still in the process of learning English, seeking and securing employment are major barriers to securing affordable rental units in Toronto. One interviewee, participant four, encouraged her clients to learn English in the first few months of arrival because she believed this skill to be an essential part of ensuring future work. Participant twelve also stressed importance on learning English to help with assimilating into Canada. For Syrian refugees in particular, some non-profit organisations offered contact with companies owned by Arabic-speaking people. Often, jobs would be secured for new Arabic-speaking immigrants through contacts. In addition, specific programs were created to help develop marketable skills. Participants six and seven outlined the programs developed to provide newcomers with food-handling certificates. Women often attended these programs hoping for a secure a job in the service industry. As participants six and seven noted, many GAR women did not hold jobs and/or were sometimes not literate in their native tongue, which is why programs specifically designed for women were important. Though such conversations revealed interesting

108 dynamics of family structures, the lack of economic employment and security had an adverse impact on refugees’ abilities to secure adequate employment and, subsequently, housing.

A few frontline staff noted the panic GARs faced in their thirteenth month, when they no longer received resettlement assistance payments and the jobs they had could not pay for rent. She described the importance of preparing clients for the housing market from day one, when she told clients how important it was to find a job. She also outlined the barriers to employment that GARs face—including the fact that employers typically require new hires to already have Canadian experience, something that newcomers by definition lack. She said, “The sad part in Canada is, whether or not you have Canadian experience. First of all, they ask if you have Canadian experience. Well, how am I going to have Canadian experience when I am a newcomer from Syria.” She continued by highlighting the generosity of companies that particularly emphasised reaching out to newcomers during the pledge to accept refugees from Syria. However, despite working to ensure that clients were given jobs, refugees continue to face income insecurity, which has a direct impact on their ability to secure housing. For example, OCASI’s (2015) report revealed five systemic issues that impacted one’s ability to secure employment: a) “credentials recognition,” b) “cost of education/training,” c) “workplace discrimination,” d) “legally not permitted to work,” and e) “OW payments do not meet basic needs” (p.20). Such intersecting barriers to employment faced by refugees in Canada result in challenges to securing shelter in a hostile private rental market.

As previously mentioned, housing in Toronto is unaffordable for anyone on OW; however, for many refugees, the lack of available jobs for them due to systemic barriers renders finding housing in the city much more difficult. Additionally, many landlords will ask for proof of employment or an employment reference letter—letters that would be difficult or impossible to attain when first arriving to Canada. For those who do not have permanent residency, those barriers are exacerbated, leaving the option of going to a shelter, living with other families/friends, or on the street. When discussing barriers to housing with frontline staff, the intersections between language, employment, and housing were quite glaring. Studies exploring such intersections should be further explored in collaboration with organisations that work

109 directly with refugee populations in Toronto as they have the potential to inform policies that intersect with resettlement and housing initiatives.

3.7 Discussion This study examines frontline staff’s views on the challenges refugees and low-income populations encounter in regard to accessing the private rental market in Toronto. The results illustrate that among frontline staff who work with highly vulnerable populations, such as refugees and refugee claimants, there are intersecting forms of oppression based on race, class, language and status, that impact a person’s ability to access the private rental market in Toronto. Such findings demonstrate relevance to practices, policies and current scholarship on housing and service provision for refugees in Canada. Conversations with frontline staff employed in shelters and non-profit organisations that deliver settlement and housing help, exhibit the consequences of neoliberal housing policy changes that have a direct impact on refugees’ access to Toronto’s housing system. Consistent with research on housing affordability and inequality (see Bourne & Walks, 2006; Chen, Myles, & Picot, 2012; Hulchanski, 2011), the findings reveal deepening housing inequalities on the basis of income, particularly for those on social assistance, which includes OW, ODSP, and other social assistance programs. Based on these findings, many low-income refugees make use of such programs upon their arrival to Canada as barriers to employment limit the forms of income refugees are able to acquire in their first year of arrival.

These findings thus contribute to literature on housing inequality in Toronto by extending its analysis to include the intersections of race, language, class and status to housing access. They also add new lenses to theorising of intersectionality. Housing inequality does not solely represent the lack of housing affordability among low-income peoples but includes a wide set of interlocking barriers. This study incorporates an analysis of the ways in which landlord discrimination on the basis of income race, and status, coupled with barriers to employment and language, act as compounding barriers, which contribute to the exclusion of refugees settling in Toronto and/or further marginalizing refugees whose precarious status and positions are exploited by a landlord’s market. Moreover, this study underscores the limited avenues available to refugees and refugee claimants in challenging the various forms of housing discrimination experienced. Although there are resources available to refugees to help navigate Toronto’s

110 housing landscape, which include housing help centres, housing orientations, housing counsellors and documents available online, accessing such services upon arriving to Toronto proved to be challenging based on barriers to language and knowledge of available services. From conversations with staff, most of the networks formed were decentralised and informal, which meant that the responsibilities of finding such services and information fell onto caseworkers, settlement workers and housing workers. Unpacking the barriers to accessing housing services in relation to housing access among refugees, therefore, is central to understanding the multifaceted ways in which refugees experience housing inequality in Toronto.

3.8 Limitations of study The findings within this study are based on a limited number of frontline staff who were willing to volunteer their time for interviews. Though central to this study, their viewpoints and experiences do not necessarily reflect all staff and volunteers working on the frontlines within non-profit organisations. However, many of their experiences illustrate systemic forms of exclusion the clients they serve experience when attempting to settle and live in Toronto. Additionally, this study focuses solely on organisations in Toronto, and does not encompass the particular challenges and experiences faced by service providers operating in the Greater Toronto Area, as many refugees are now settling on the outskirts of Toronto due to housing affordability issues. However, interviews with frontline staff revealed an array of structural barriers contributing to housing inequality in Toronto. Though the number of frontline staff were limited to thirteen, this study points to further studies and research to map out service provision and housing access among refugees in Canada. Additionally, this study is limited to the viewpoints of frontline staff, who can also hold particular sets of biases, when articulating barriers faced by their clients. Therefore, future research on this topic would benefit from interviews with recipients accessing housing and settlement services in Toronto.

3.9 Conclusions and future research The conversations with frontline staff have brought to the surface several issues facing refugees when attempting to secure housing. This chapter demonstrates the importance of engaging with frontline staff who constantly navigate social service provision in relation to the needs of

111 refugees. Based on discussions with frontline staff, this analysis reveals some of the barriers that refugees face in accessing housing in Toronto. Refugees are not only met with various barriers to housing, including high rental prices and low vacancy rates, particularly for larger units, but they are often faced with stigma, housing discrimination, and fears of being deported. These barriers often translate to forms of exclusion, whether this relates to having no other option but to search for housing outside the city or being turned down by landlords who refuse to rent to people on OW. Although this research reveals the nuanced ways in which housing exclusion operates in the lives of recent refugees, further studies are needed to address the intersecting forms of oppression across race, gender, class, religion and sexuality.

This research engaged with frontline staff; however, future research needs to engage with populations who are excluded from the housing market. Additionally, mental health and addiction were not discussed to the extent necessary when addressing the types of housing needed in the city. Further research should engage with larger groups of refugees across different ethnicities to understand the varied ways in which housing discrimination is experienced. I believe that collaborative research with settlement organisations and other non-profit organisations will be fruitful for future, long-term work. Understanding the forms of resilience and resistance refugees and vulnerable communities express is also essential to understanding the importance of grassroots organising and individual acts of resistance. Attention to these networks and acts of resistance would also help scholars understand how people practice their ability to continue to live and work in Toronto.

112 4 Chapter 3: Navigating the terrains of the state: The importance of informal networks among social service providers in Toronto

Abstract This research investigates the limitations faced by frontline staff in administering settlement and housing services in Toronto. In confronting such limitations, this research highlights the solutions and strategies employed by frontline staff to secure important resources for refugees, particularly in the context of housing and settlement support. Centralising the perspectives of frontline staff, this research contributes to the scant literature identifying the important roles service providers play in securing resources and services for newly arrived refugees in Canada. This study is unique in that it illustrates the connections between settlement services and housing services through the vantagepoints of frontline staff mediating between government policies and procedures, a private rental market, and the intersecting needs of their clients.

Key words: frontline staff, service provision, housing support, intersectionality

4.1 Introduction The roles and responsibilities of service providers are pivotal to the resettlement of newcomers to Canada (Ashton, Pettigrew, & Galatsanou, 2016). However, as previous studies have analysed, there are particular constraints and limitations imposed onto service providers, regulating their capacities to holistically support their clients (see McGrath, S., & McGrath, I., 2013; Mukhtar et al., 2016; Shields, 2003). Largely understudied is the role of frontline staff in refugees’ housing access. For organisations administering settlement services, frontline staff provide a wide range of programs and one-on-one help to their clients including filling out government forms (e.g., work permit applications, Ontario Works forms, Child Tax Benefit forms), counselling services, referring clients to specialised service organisations and providing access to a wide range of resources available to refugees. For those working on housing in particular, housing counsellors are responsible for providing housing education and guiding their clients to secure long-term permanent housing. In the context of settlement and housing provision, frontline staff are faced with a myriad of factors, both financial and political, that render it difficult to effectively administer settlement and housing services for refugees. Working within the limitations of fluctuating and inconsistent sources of funding in addition to a housing market that has become increasingly hostile towards refugees and refugee claimants, frontline staff must navigate the

113 terrains of the state and the private market, to secure and support the particular intersecting needs of their clientele.

The focus of this chapter identifies and unpacks the limitations frontline staff face in administering settlement and housing services, and the creative solutions they employ to confront such limitations for their clients. This study thus asks two important questions. Firstly, what limitations do frontline staff face when administering settlement and housing services? Secondly, what strategies do frontline staff employ to facilitate refugee housing access in Toronto? Based on semi-structured interviews with thirteen frontline staff across nine non-profit organisations in Toronto, this research analyses the limitations of service provision through the perspectives of frontline staff themselves. Additionally, this research explores and unveils the creative ways in which frontline staff navigate policy, programs and services to help meet the needs of refugees attempting to settle and live in Toronto. Engaging with the assessments and experiences of frontline staff, this research offers future policy and program recommendations on settlement and housing provision.

4.2 Theoretical framework There is a growing body of scholarship that has largely reflected the systemic barriers inhibiting refugees’ access to housing, which frequently intersect with barriers to language, income and employment (see Murdie, 2003, 2008, 2010; Murdie & Logan, 2016; Teixeira, 2008). More recent studies have showcased the role service providers play in helping newcomers resettle in Canada (Daswani, Bunce & Cummings, 2011; Khanlou, Haque, Sheehan & Jones, 2014; Salami, Salma & Hegadoren, 2019; Shaw & Funk, 2019). In particular, these studies engage with barriers newcomers encounter when accessing health services. For example, Khanlou et al. (2014) collected data from twenty-seven service providers in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), to examine their views on “challenges encountered by immigrant mothers of children with disabilities in accessing social support” (p.1840). Similarly, Salami et al. (2019) conducted in- depth interviews with 53 service providers across nine organisations to examine their views on access to mental health services among immigrants and refugees in Alberta. Both studies reveal similar barriers to accessing services in Canada, which include language and cultural barriers, lack of finances, transportation costs, insufficient time to attend free workshops due to working

114 hours, and lack of knowledge on what services are available to them. Salami et al. (2019) also identified decentralised service provision as a possible constraint to referring clients to services. They state, “some providers were also not aware of all the services and resources that are available for families of children with disabilities” (Salami et al., 2019, p.1843). The reliance on the knowledge of services available among service providers is integral to referring their clients to available resources across the city. Though many formal networks are available among service providers, which include joint workshops and collective efforts among organisations (see for example the Ontario Coalition of Agencies Serving Immigrants), informal networks are fundamental to finding and administering immediate services to newcomers in Canada. However, informal personal and professional networks are often under-examined and undertheorised among academics and policymakers alike.

Feminist theorists, in particular, and in contrast to more mainstream parallel scholarship, have consistently highlighted the significance of the informal sphere as a critical sight of analysis. For example, Nagar et al. (2002), argue that informal spheres “operate in households and communities; in daily practices of caring, consumption, and religion; and in networks of alternative politics where women’s contributions to globalization are located” (p.260). Drawing from feminist interventions that locate the informal sphere as an important site of analysis, this study emphasises the significance of informal networks in securing and delivering settlement and housing assistance to refugees in Toronto. Illustrating the prominence of both formal and informal networks, through the vantage point of frontline staff, this study draws on Yidan Zhu’s (2016) feminist analysis of hybrid settlement services. Zhu (2016) argues: Immigration settlement service is hybrid. The so-called formal and informal settlement practices and services are interchangeable and mutually affect each other. The boundary between formal and informal service is very blurred. In addition, the recognition of formal and informal settlement service contains power relations between the state, settlement agencies, and immigrants. (p.147)

In a similar fashion, this study explores the multifaceted ways in which formal and informal networks are employed by frontline staff and the clients they serve, in order to challenge the constraints imposed onto them by the state and the market. In so doing, I locate power within alternative informal methods of securing housing in the city of Toronto that challenge the systemic exclusions of refugees attempting to live and work in the city.

115 4.3 Research Methods This study draws on semi-structured interviews with thirteen (n=13) frontline staff across nine organisations operating in Toronto. Frontline staff interviewed for this research range from settlement workers in non-profit organisations, caseworkers in shelters, and housing counsellors in shelters and non-profits. Adhering to the ethical commitment that informs this study, each frontline staff is referred to by a participant number; see Tables 1, 2 and 3 for a description of each participant and their general roles and responsibilities in the organisation. In addition to semi-structured interviews, this study offers a policy analysis of service provision and the impacts of such policies on the capacities of frontline staff to deliver services to their clients.

The methodological focus on frontline staff stems from the gaps in literature that seldom engage with the ways in which service providers ameliorate the complications refugees face when navigating the social, political and economic landscapes of Canada. As noted by Khanlou et al. (2014), “few studies have examined service providers’ perspective on the challenges encountered by immigrant mothers of children with disabilities in accessing social support” (p.1840). Likewise, this study identifies the lack of engagement with frontline staff’s perspectives on the complications refugees face in settling and securing housing in Toronto. According to chapter two of this research, frontline staff are uniquely positioned to identify the barriers refugees face upon arriving to Canada. This chapter expands on such discussions to include the creative solutions in which some frontline staff advance in order to help secure the wellbeing of their clients, particularly in the context of housing access in Toronto.

4.3.1 Research Participants Some of the participants interviewed for this study identified their own personal experiences as the starting point for which they got involved in the non-profit sector. The positionalities of some of the frontline workers and the personal stories they shared, had an impact on the dedication, time and ability to form connections with their clients. Additionally, drawing on feminist methodologies of self-reflexivity, this section showcases the importance of positionality and

116 experiential knowledge in informing the solutions, pathways and recommendations put forward by frontline staff for this study.54

When asked during the semi-structured interviews why they decided to get into this field of work, some of the staff answered with their own personal experiences. For example, participant eleven revealed that she came here nineteen years ago as a refugee and so she knew first-hand what it felt like to be new to a country. She then decided to go to school and was placed at the refugee shelter she currently works from. She eventually secured a permanent job there, where she acts as a housing worker and program coordinator for a women’s program. Similarly, participants four, five, and thirteen briefly shared their own hardships arriving to Canada as newcomers. Participant four, who is of Syrian background, said: When I came to Canada, there weren’t many organisations like these to help newcomers. So, I really had a hard time, what do I do, where to get a house, how do I sign? I was 16 in a half. It was a hard experience for me. I went to high school here and went to university. Afterwards, I had to find a job and I wanted to help newcomers so that they won’t go through what I went through.

Her desire to provide the supports that she did not receive when she was younger, was the impetus for the work she does as a settlement worker. A similar sentiment was shared by participant thirteen, who also identified as Syrian. She indicated that when she first came to Canada, she did not find the help she wanted. She said she had to volunteer and network in order to find a job in Canada. It is for this reason she stressed the importance of personal and professional connections in her line of work.

Participant eight also discussed the desire to provide services to clients in ways she did not receive as a newcomer. She stated: The fact that I was a newcomer and I suffered a lot when I was a newcomer and to try to find um like try to guide people with love and appreciation that they are human beings, that they come to this country, that is a country of opportunities, and you know to maybe to…My point is, mine personally, is I love people and I love to deal with people and I like to see when people improve here or there. This for me is my biggest satisfaction. It is

54 I engaged in self-reflexivity throughout the research process. My interactions with most of the frontline staff interviewed also revealed my positionality and connection to this research. One interviewee in particular challenged me to practice my “broken” Arabic. One other interview evoked a sense of nostalgia as I was surrounded by people speaking Arabic. Commuting and being present within several of these spaces revealed various barriers, intersections and feelings that are worth exploring for future research purposes.

117 very stressful, because it is not only taking care of people. You don’t understand when we have to do the statistics and we have to put information of the clients and what we do with the clients. But yeah, I love my job.

Her statement reveals her desires to help clients based on the hardships she experienced as a newcomer to Canada, but also illustrates the tensions, gaps and stresses she faces while working within a non-profit organisation. She loves her job and helping people, but she also needs to meet the mandates of the organisation, which requires conducting reports on the clients she serves. Participant ten also illustrated her initial desires to help others but pointed to the tensions and limitations within the shelter system in Canada. She believed she first entered the job with “good intentions,” but slowly realised that it was more about “controlling populations than it was about building empowered women.” The responses by frontline staff in helping their clients settle and secure housing in Toronto, reveal both the limitations met by frontline staff and the creative solutions they develop to advocate on their clients’ behalf.

4.4 Part I: Working within the confines of the state: The experiences of frontline workers Federal and provincial government websites both offer access to searching for settlement agencies as an avenue of support when first arriving to Canada.55 Settlement agencies deliver a variety of services to newcomers in Canada. These services include housing support, registering children in school, facilitating access to various language and employment services, healthcare support, and finding an interpreter or translator (Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services, 2019). Though not directly administered by the state, settlement agencies receive a mix of funding by the federal, provincial and municipal governments to carry out particular programs and services. Additionally, majority of these organisations receive funding from private funders, such as the United Way. The valorisation of available settlement services to newcomers fits within Canada’s multicultural discursive narrative, which erases the particular barriers faced by refugees when arriving to Canada. Chapter two of this research illustrates the disjuncture between immigration policy and barriers faced by refugees accessing Toronto’s housing market. This section examines the difficulties of providing services to government-assisted refugees

55 Please refer to the introduction for the website utilised to conduct a search on agencies providing settlement services in Toronto.

118 (GARs) and refugee claimants, particularly in the context of housing and settlement support, through the first-hand accounts of frontline staff in Toronto. The findings of the data collected showcase the structural limitations faced by frontline workers administering settlement and housing support services. Based on the analysis of interviews conducted, this study identifies several structural limitations, which include a) program-specific competitive funding, b) lack of resources, time and energy, and c) reliance on the private housing market to support clients.

4.4.1 Program-specific competitive funding Although each agency offers different programs in various languages depending on the needs of the community, those funded by Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), administer resettlement assistance programs (RAPs) whose purpose “is to provide direct financial support and fund the provision of immediate and essential services to eligible recipients” (Government of Canada, 2017c, Section 2.1). Service provider organisations (SPOs) are recipients of this funding and are required to administer the program to eligible refugees and newcomers. The government may also “fund projects, workshops, or conferences which aim to improve the delivery of RAP services” (Government of Canada, 2017c, Section 3). Although such services, including the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program, have been beneficial for newcomers integrating into Canadian society, studies showcasing the devolution of service provisions in the 1990s, highlight the rigid boundaries of a competitive funding model among non-profits. Such policy changes have increased pressures on frontline staff who oversee such services and programs.

For example, Mukhtar et al. (2016) discuss the role of neoliberalism in restructuring social welfare policies, with a particular focus on immigrant settlement agencies (ISAs). They explore the policy of Settlement Renewal instated in November 1995, which had a lasting impact on the distribution of funds to non-profit organisations serving immigrants and refugees. Mukhtar et al. (2016) argue: Previously, non-profit ISAs were provided core funding for self-designed settlement programs from government funders, their mandates were self-determined, and they engaged in a variety of advocacy initiatives for newcomers. The Settlement Renewal Policy replaced core funding with competitive purchase-of-service contract funding to finance federally defined settlement programs. (p.391)

119

Thus, non-profit organisations administering settlement services now had to compete and apply for funding on an annual basis with other non-profit organisations. Additionally, the program- specific mandates and new accountability measures, limited the abilities of non-profit organisations to tailor the programs to the changing needs of their clients. According to Mukhtar et al. (2016) “they [ISAs] were stripped of their control over the development of settlement programming, methods of service delivery, and their ability to effectively advocate for newcomers” (p.391). Funding thus impacts non-profit organisations in that it fuels competition among non-profits, adds an additional task of annual applications for funding based on a proven track-record of administering specific federally mandated programs, and the lack of guarantee may lead to a heavy reliance on volunteer-led programming that is often inconsistent.

One settlement worker—participant five—described the problematic conditions that funders place on the programs provided. When asked if funders target particular programs, she replied: Yeah, yeah, no, the funding targets very different programs. You know funders, they focus on permanent residents, protected persons, GARs, and that’s it. Immigration doesn’t want us to serve refugee claimants or citizens or people without status.

Other funding initiatives might be reserved for refugee claimants or those without status, but the primary concern of the federal government are GARs. Although particular programs are only available to GARs many of these organisations cater to a wide range of individuals, who are also the staff’s responsibility. The stress placed on staff in organisations that are mandated to perform a range of responsibilities to appease both funders and their clients proves stressful and difficult. Additionally, programs can be cut based on the funders’ decisions, which is challenging for staff as they must continually learn and adapt to funding changes. Participant five expressed her frustration with funding stating: The funding is a nightmare, you know. You have a nice program that is running and the funders cut it. So you know it’s like once you have worked so much, to be on something and now the funders cut it because nobody wants it, so we get stuck or we have been sent to another program that we are not experts on it, you know.

Her critique of the current funding model for non-profit organisations in Canada, reveals the limitations of providing efficient programs and services to a wide range of clientele with diverse needs and experiences. Additionally, she talks about the importance of constantly changing

120 positions and roles to fill the gaps in the shortage of services and programs. The lack of expertise in the field or program being delivered puts additional stress on frontline staff who are consistently needing to adapt to funding modifications.

4.4.2 Lack of resources, time and energy While waiting to speak with staff at most of these organisations, I noticed a constant influx of drop-in clients. The offices, though small, were consistently busy. One interviewee in particular, participant twelve, had to reschedule our meeting, because she had to leave the office after receiving an emergency call from one of her clients. When we did have a chance to meet and talk, several clients were waiting to speak with her outside her office door. One client dropped in to ask her about his housing application. During several other interviews, we were interrupted multiple times by drop-in clients, phone calls and emergent requests. The influx of clients and the lack of resources and support within non-profit organisations add additional pressures onto frontline staff. Participant twelve discussed why she turned down the proposal to work specifically with refugees after the federal directive to accept 25,000 refugees by the end of 2016 was made. She expressed her frustration that there is already a crisis happening and the government is not providing additional resources to help support these organisations. She believed that adding additional roles and responsibilities without solving the pre-existing issues of housing shortages put an extra strain on the housing crisis. These organisations thus must meet the growing demands of increasing numbers of clients requiring social support, without an increase in financial governmental support. The lack of resources allocated to such organisations, puts increasing pressure on frontline staff themselves. Participant five shared similar concerns but focused more so on the number of clients she is expected to see on a monthly basis. She said: On a monthly basis I have to report minimum 100 appointments. So now you understand why so stressing, this job is very stressing. So minimum 100 appointments and I have to have minimum 30 people new.

She went on to tell me that 30 of those new clients had to be permanent residents and could not be citizens or refugee claimants. The reason being is that federal settlement programming is directed to GARs who are given landed status upon arrival to Canada and are to be the main beneficiaries of RAPs. In order to compete for this funding, organisations providing settlement services, must continually demonstrate their efficacy in service provision. It is for this reason,

121 that larger settlement agencies tend to receive consistent funding over smaller, more community- based ones.

In addition to retaining little government support, some participants discussed the difficulties they face in managing staff perceptions versus perceptions of clients, specifically when it came to housing. For example, participant one spoke to the difficulties in managing what is available to people in Toronto’s housing system and the expectations of their clients. For refugees, in particular, participant one discussed the importance of housing orientations that provide refugees with information on Canada’s housing system and what the available options are in Toronto. Navigating such expectations added an additional layer of responsibilities onto housing counsellors in particular. Participant ten mentioned “there is one housing counsellor working within the shelter and that the housing worker is burned out, because there is such a high waiting list for social housing units and low vacancy rates that many options are quickly exhausted.” Thus, frontline staff are expected to act as intermediaries between the Federal and Provincial governments and the complex needs of their clients. However, as demonstrated in chapter two of this dissertation, the neoliberal turn has created conditions in which low-income communities, and refugees in particular, are excluded from the private rental market. Thus, as illustrated by participant ten, service provision, becomes more about managing and controlling populations rather than about addressing the underlying issues of poverty and racism.

4.4.3 Reliance on the private housing market to support clients The majority of the frontline staff interviewed discussed the complications of navigating the private rental market while attempting to meet the necessities and requirements of their clients. Though refugees sponsored by the government receive an orientation prior to their arrival, some frontline staff expressed concerns around managing refugees’ perceptions of what to expect upon arriving in Canada with the realities of Toronto’s current housing market. As discussed in chapter two of this dissertation, upon arrival, most GARs are met by their service provider; given temporary residence in non-profit hostels, hotels, and/or college dormitories; and are reminded that they are responsible for finding housing with the guidance and help of a housing counsellor. However, as participant one, a housing counsellor in one of Canada’s largest settlement organisations, states “expectations don’t match the reality.” Participant one discussed the

122 difficulties of reconciling his clients’ desire to want to settle close to downtown Toronto and the sheer lack of affordable housing units in those areas. One of the ways in which frontline staff reconcile such desires is by housing families together. Participants one and two discussed the relationships formed within temporary housing accommodations or in previous refugee camps prior to landing. Based on such close bonds, participant one often tried to place families in the same building. When asked if this was possible, he said that for the most part, “yes.” However, the most difficult part of his job was finding housing in areas that refugees preferred. Most refugees preferred being close to downtown Toronto, as many services and programs were located there. This difficulty was shared by fellow housing counsellors.

For example, participant eleven, a housing worker who specialises in securing housing for women and their children, discussed the impossibility of finding affordable housing in Toronto, despite the location of transitional housing and services available to refugees near downtown Toronto. She stated that she often has to send people outside of Toronto, including to Hamilton and London, Ontario, as it is still possible in those regions to find a one-bedroom apartment for approximately $850 per month. Most relatively affordable housing is found on the outskirts of Toronto, where access to resources and services is limited, and where people would face long, difficult commutes to jobs, amenities, or programs located within Toronto’s city limits. The lack of services and organisations in areas outside of Toronto has been a central concern for academics and policymakers who have acknowledged the need for services to be offered beyond the central areas of major urban regions. A recent study on the experiences of settlement services in metropolitan Vancouver conducted by Zuberi, Ivemark, and Ptashnick (2018) suggests that more attention needs to be paid to the increasing number of immigrants settling in the suburbs. In particular, they argue, “one of the main challenges for suburban newcomers was that they were more likely than urban newcomers to experience problems with the quality of employment search assistance from settlement service agencies” (p. 451). Likewise, settlement services and agencies were historically developed in the cores of major Canadian cities, which is a primary reason that refugees wish to remain within the city limits. However, due to the lack of available affordable rental units in Toronto, refugees can no longer settle near programs that were specifically developed in such areas.

123 As chapter two has shown in great depth, one of the major confrontations frontline staff undergo was ensuring that they could meet their clients’ housing needs. Settlement and housing counsellors are responsible for assisting clients fill out forms for social housing, while also facilitating housing searches in the private rental market. However, as participant eleven notes, the supply of social housing in Toronto is extremely low. There is a heavy reliance on the private rental market to supply housing for refugees. For frontline workers, as well, this leads to feelings of helplessness; confronted with barriers when completing bureaucratic forms to acquire state help and straddling institutional limits with clients’ emotions can feel like an impossible task. Participant twelve described feeling useless because of the impossibility of finding adequate housing for her clients, though she added that she is reassured by clients who appreciate her honesty. Because of this, she believed her role was more about education than finding housing. Two frontline staff, participants nine and ten, discussed the ways in which the shelter is a temporary fix to a much larger systemic problem.

Most of the frontline staff discussed the presence of housing discrimination yet found few avenues to report such acts. Participant five noted that there are avenues to fight racism and discrimination, but those avenues require significant time, money, and resources and a will to fight. Most of these frontline staff had years of experience working within the non-profit sector, and though they all demonstrated a passion to address and challenge the systemic downfalls of the housing system in Toronto, they were also met with a sense of hopelessness. Despite such feelings of hopelessness and frustration, it was clear that most of these frontline staff were critical in advocating for their clients, and that they imagined a more equitable and sustainable Toronto.

4.5 Part II: Solutions, avenues, and pathways proposed by frontline staff 4.5.1 Social and political networks Although there is a strong critique and many valid criticisms of the ways in which neoliberalism has downloaded the responsibilities of the federal and provincial governments onto various non- profit organisations across the city (Mukhtar et al., 2016; Shields, 2003), the social and political networks forged within these spaces have been essential to the livelihoods and housing access of refugees. During an interview, participant five asked if I knew anyone that worked in a violence

124 against women shelter, as she was having a hard time finding a place for one of her clients. Participant four also shared with me a list of people who she knew worked closely with Syrian refugees in particular. The consistent need to forge informal networks as service providers stems from the lack of centralised resources and services available to refugees. However, through professional and social connections, informal networks operate as strong links and pathways to securing housing and employment in Toronto. Drawing on Zhu’s (2016) analysis of hybrid settlement, where settlement services are analysed through the lens of formal and informal settlement practices, this following section unpacks important formal and informal networks established among both frontline staff and between refugees in the areas of housing, employment and health.

4.5.1.1 Housing After conversing about many of the barriers to conducting settlement work and housing support, I often asked interviewees what they do when it seems almost impossible to find housing for people. Although they all believed that there needs to be more affordable housing obtainable as a long-term solution, many also considered the importance of social and community networks in helping sustain peoples’ livelihoods. One of the major roles and responsibilities of settlement workers is to direct clients to other avenues of support beyond the services they directly provide. Many frontline staff described the importance of keeping contacts with other non-profit organisations and service providers to ensure that the immediate needs of refugees were met. Settlement services typically have resources and networks that they can reach out to when they are unable to meet clients’ needs themselves. For example, settlement staff cannot always offer advice on housing, and they often refer clients to housing help centres in the area for greater support. Though many staff whose expertise is not in housing provided referrals to clients experiencing issues with their landlords, they also offered advice based on their own experiences and the experiences other clients have had with their housing situations.

Specifically, for housing counsellors, maintaining informal relationships with landlords was critical for securing housing for refugees and those on social assistance. One organisation had summer students working on a mapping of the buildings that were accepting of refugees. Keeping track of pre-existing relationships with landlords was observed to be a common practice

125 in organisations. According to participant one, it was important to continue to maintain ties with landlords who had previously rented to refugees referred by their organisation. He stated that it was crucial to compile a list of landlords with whom they had secured a positive relationship over the past ten years. He believed this consolidate list helped refugees circumvent landlords who held negative stereotypes about refugees, and it also helped tenants and landlords work through any conflicts that arose. Moreover, he confided that maintaining such contacts also helped to ensure that once there was a vacant unit, housing workers and settlement agencies would be contacted first. Participant twelve also expressed a similar sentiment. She specified that she had to ensure that any potential tenants she sent would also be, what she called, “ideal tenants,” because it would forge greater positive connections with landlords. If an issue arose between a landlord and the referred tenant, housing counsellors often acted as mediators to ensure that the informal relationships fostered would not be lost. Keeping track of pre-existing relationships with landlords—good or bad—plays an important role in ensuring that their clientele is housed. Moreover, according to some frontline staff, refugees often provided social support and built community networks as a form of collective solidarity.

Information sharing among refugees proved important for sustaining their livelihoods and housing access in a new country. This finding is borne out by one study, which found that “heavy reliance on ethno-specific social networks offer new immigrants many advantages in the early part of settlement, especially in their housing search” (Teixeira, 2017, p.352). Similarly, Zine’s (2009) study that focuses on Latin American and Muslim participants outlines the importance of informal networks for housing help. She states, “They [mosques] also operate as informal centres for the dissemination of various kinds of information related to housing, education, and employment” (p.33). Girish Daswani, Susannah Bunce and Maggie Cummings’ (2011) collaborative research project also accentuates the symbolic and cultural importance of social networks among newcomers in Kingston-Galloway/Orton Park, Scarborough. Similarly, in the context of housing, most frontline staff articulated the importance of social networks and community, as tools employed by refugees to determine where they decide to live and how they attain knowledge as their rights as tenants. Thus, the practices of settlement among refugees operate within settlement services and programs but are also embodied through the everyday practices and moments of resistance and solidarity practiced among refugees.

126

Based on interviews with frontline staff, refugees often rely on conversations with family, friends, and community networks to determine their first place of residence. They often pay close attention to each other’s input, and many prefer to remain living close to people they met in refugee camps abroad or to family members. According to participant four, friends, or family often encourage newer refugees to move into a particular building with them. The allure of being closer to friends and family often brought refugees to a particular neighbourhood in Toronto. Participant four talked about how some clients would refer friends and family from Montreal, Nova Scotia and one client who came from Los Angeles, to help with resettlement. Participants one and two outlined the bonds and friendships made within on-site transitional housing and the importance of keeping families together when deciding where to move. One housing counsellor—participant one—said that if it was possible, he tried to house families in the same apartment building so that they could maintain contact with each other rather than feeling isolated in a new country. Participant twelve also encouraged communal living as a way to challenge low vacancy rates and unaffordable rent in Toronto. Participant eight also discussed the ways in which two families sometimes rent one apartment together as a family house despite the limited space available. Maintaining ties and ensuring that families remain together was an important concern for settlement staff, who recognised the importance of community for newcomers in Canada.

In addition to providing advice and maintaining pre-existing ties among family and friends within apartment buildings, such networks and connections were especially important for sharing information and learning one’s rights as tenants. Based on participant four’s experience, when one person sought advice from a settlement worker on the injustices or abuses, they faced from landlords, or if they heard that others had similar experiences, they shared their knowledge on that issue with family and friends. The knowledge of rights, for example with respect to legal obligations of landlords to maintain rental units, was passed orally through connections and social networks and proved to be particularly helpful for refugees experiencing similar situations. Participant four also expressed similar observations and discussed how refugees shared information by word of mouth about particular subsidies, programs, or social services for which they might be eligible. The social networks formed in a host country have proven to be beneficial

127 to refugees who are new to navigating the housing system in Canada. However, as observed by participant twelve, the redevelopment projects have contributed to the breakdown of community living, specifically in Regent Park.

Participant twelve described the importance of forging relationships within the neighbourhood that often revolved around community members rallying together if there was an injustice. For her, those living in Regent Park were connected through a shared postal code. She mentioned the issue of police violence in the neighbourhood and how, with community support, people were able to rally and demand justice for those experiencing racial profiling. When it came to Regent Park, she believed that being a part of the neighbourhood transcended differences across race and ethnicity, because the entire neighbourhood was stigmatised. She then noted that severing ties within the community was often a consequence of redevelopment projects that upheld the narrative of mixed-income neighbourhoods. She believed that the community of Regent Park was not what it was before the redevelopment projects. Rather, she argued that the marketing of Regent Park as an inclusive environment with mixed-income housing was a façade and displaced many low-income people who would no longer be able to return. She further expressed nostalgia for the Regent Park that was predicated on unity among community members and lamented the fact that that processes of gentrification have disrupted such social networks. Informal networks were important sites of analysis when securing affordable housing and challenging various forms of social injustice, predicated on housing, among communities. Such networks were also important for securing employment and health resources for refugees in Toronto.

4.5.1.2 Employment In terms of employment, seeking jobs through personal and professional networks for their clients served as an important tool employed by frontline staff to help refugees settle in Canada. According to Goel and Lang (2019), “Social networks have long been viewed as reservoirs of information that help match job seekers with vacancies” (p.355). For the majority of settlement staff interviewed for this study, maintaining ties with businesses and employers proved helpful for their clients. Participant four detailed a moment when she secured a job for someone who had migrated from Aleppo. He told her how grateful he was for the job she had found for him and asked her how he could repay her. She told him that she did not want anything except that he

128 extends his support when another person needed a job and she called on him. She went on to tell me that he had secured many jobs for more refugees coming from Syria and provided a significant support for various fundraising events, including securing food supplies and catering free of charge. Such relationships were crucial for refugees seeking employment and was a common practice articulated by various settlement staff.

As mentioned previously, finding employment is difficult at the best of times, and particularly when people are settling into a new environment, where Canadian experience is privileged over work experience in one’s home country. As participant four put it, “the obstacles were taken away with partnerships with big businesses.” However, such partnerships were forged mainly through initiatives taken by frontline staff who advanced their own personal and professional networks for the purposes of seeking job vacancies for their clients. For example, participant four established ties with particular companies and organisations that would provide training and employment to Syrian refugees in particular. She talked about “how amazing it was to see large companies accept hundreds of refugees to ensure that they would have employment, particularly for their thirteenth month, after which they would no longer receive resettlement assistance funds.” Participant five also recounted the commitment she needed to ensure that her client would be able to work and stay in Canada. She said: In 2014, I started serving a client. The process is this. You apply for refugee status. If you have to wait and wait and wait. You have to apply for a work permit, so you have your social insurance number, you can go to work blah blah blah. You can pass one, two, three, four, five years without the [IRB] hearing. Okay. Suddenly, you go to the hearing and the government can tell you goodbye or the government can tell you welcome to Canada. So, once they accept them here, they have to apply for the permanent resident, so it is not only welcome to Canada. So they have to wait two more years.

For three years, this staff helped her client apply for refugee status and three work permits and eventually committed herself to ensuring that he would be successfully accepted as a permanent resident in Canada. She detailed how much time and effort she put into this case and expressed concern for the difficulties in paying application fees, while also needing work permits to be able to work. Although IRCC uses statistics from organisations to demonstrate how well refugees have integrated into Canadian society through gainful employment, those responsible for securing employment have often been communities and networks that provide care and support for each other’s livelihoods. Official institutional reports may suggest that a certain number of

129 refugees contribute economically to Canadian society, but these numbers obscure the dedication and support from community members who ensure that refugees maintain their ability to live and work in the city, especially when gainful employment has life implications on the ability to afford housing in Toronto.

4.5.1.3 Health As previously mentioned, the programs funded by IRCC often focus on language and employment skills development. However, for programs that lack funding and resources, but are deemed important by frontline staff, there becomes a reliance on the initiatives of some frontline staff and the volunteers that support them. Though settlement staff provide help with filing for the Ontario Health Insurance Program (OHIP) and navigating Canada’s healthcare system, a lot of the complex health needs of immigrants and refugees are met through informal networks. For example, forming contacts with Arabic-speaking doctors and pharmacists was another important tool that helped prepare the ground for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s pledge to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada. Prior to the arrival of Syrian refugees, participant four identified and coordinated Arabic-speaking doctors and pharmacists to help secure health care that was accessible to refugees. Forming such bonds with healthcare providers was integral to creating a network that eased refugees’ transitions into Canada. All of these efforts and activities demonstrate how crucial community networks can be for refugee resettlement.

Volunteer-led initiatives around health and well-being proved to be an important fabric of non- profit organisations. For example, participant four once worked with a non-profit that brought children from orphanages in Palestine to Canada for surgeries. This entire project was run by volunteers who were dedicated to the project and performed the work of identifying and contacting Canadian doctors, who agreed to waive their fees to perform the surgeries. These networks also helped when holding fundraisers and events to publicise the name of certain organisations, and in raising money to secure funding for programs and events that were not funded by IRCC. These efforts also helped ensure that additional programs were developed beyond those IRCC prioritised. Participant thirteen, a settlement worker who also worked specifically with Syrian refugees, discussed a program that emerged from conversations with clients about cooking and healing through cooking. The Newcomer Kitchen program, which was

130 established in 2016 and operated under the supervision of IRCC, allowed women to address and assess some of their particular needs around housing, settlement, and emotional support. Subverting the individual modes of service provision, groups of women from various countries cooked and engaged in group therapy—and they were also able to take the food home to their families. This program also allowed women to practice their English-speaking skills while forming bonds with other women who had experienced various forms of trauma. This initiative, however, began with volunteer leadership. The Depanneur website states: In a small gesture of hospitality, The Depanneur, a tiny culinary event venue in Toronto, invited a few newcomer women to come use their kitchen to prepare and share a meal. The prospect of a field trip and a familiar, home-cooked meal offered a welcome break from the tedium of the hotels. This small act, initiated by a few volunteers using donated ingredients, quickly blossomed into a joyful and delicious weekly gathering. To sustain the initiative, the group began to prepare extra meals to sell to offset costs. The revenue paid for the ingredients and the kitchen space, and the surplus was divided among the cooks. (Depanneur, 2017, para. 3)

The program was eventually funded by IRCC, as it brought significant press and praise for the Trudeau government in the wake of his pledge to accept Syrian refugees. Although there are many limitations to how the state pushes the responsibility of supplying housing onto non-profits with limited resources and funding, discussions with interviewees illuminated the importance of social networks in shaping service provision.

The bonds and networks that emerge within settlement agencies or in temporary accommodations are important for refugees. They help communities navigate the barriers and obstacles that newcomers, particularly refugees, need to overcome in order to create and sustain livelihoods as they attempt to settle into a new country. Although many settlement agencies and non-profit organisations are understaffed, underfunded, and lack resources, the connections and networks of information sharing among staff proved to be integral to securing jobs and resources for refugees. Frontline staff were motivated to offer such support through their own life experiences. Some of the settlement workers I interviewed discussed their personal dedication to the work as being rooted in their own stories of migration. As previously articulated, their backgrounds informed the types of networks, questions, and advocacy they engaged within their institutional setting. For those who worked with Syrian refugees, life experiences and language skills proved particularly important to their work. Despite the dedication and passion among

131 many staff members, many systemic issues tied to housing injustice remain. It is for this reason that I turn to some of the systemic solutions frontline staff have advanced.

4.5.2 State responsibility and the call for more affordable and public housing “What do you envision as the solution to the housing crisis in Toronto?” I posed this or a variation of this question to all those I interviewed. For the majority of participants, the answers were quite simple: There needs to be more affordable housing in the city. The waiting lists for subsidised housing are simply too high, and the living conditions of Toronto Community Housing are not sufficient. Six participants highlighted the political importance of state intervention in housing. Four attested to the importance of government rent controls. One participant critiqued the idea of affordable housing being based on the average private market rent rather than on a standardised rent based on the needs of working-class people. Three participants addressed the underlying issues of poverty resulting from a minimum wage that is inadequate and that fails to keep up with the rising rental costs in the city. One participant advocated for “the minimum wage to be increased” based on the needs of clients, while another appreciated the increase to the minimum wage to $14 per hour—a change that happened in 2018 and that has been challenged by the current Ford administration. One frontline staff stated, “There are a lot of people here that work for the minimum salary and it’s so hard to feed the kids.” Another housing counsellor simply stated that “the government needs to build more affordable housing in Toronto.” Based on her experience of clients being illegally evicted from their homes, one interviewee also discussed the importance of regulating evictions. She believes that this issue is both a city issue and an issue for IRCC. Another interviewee also suggested that “landlords should be more accommodating and understanding of refugees’ needs.” One participant identified the need for a line to specifically report housing discrimination. While another participant spoke specifically of the dehumanising process refugees undergo when attempting to find housing in the city. This person highlighted the importance of seeing people as humans, and how doing so would allow people to treat refugees with dignity and respect.

Though there were a variety of responses, all of the suggestions frontline staff advanced displayed a recognition of the need for state intervention in securing peoples’ material capacity to live in Toronto and afford housing. Based on these staff members’ experiences, a housing

132 crisis severely impacts those who require the services of the city but are unable to afford living there. One frontline staff member noted that promises have been made to create more affordable housing, but these promises have not been kept. Another frontline worker reiterated that despite the recognition that more housing is needed, “it is impossible to find housing for people when it is simply unavailable.” She also believed in rent control and discussed how much easier it was to help clients look for affordable housing using listings of rent control in particular neighbourhoods. As discussed in chapter two of this dissertation, the continued trend towards neoliberal governance has slowed or cut the important long-term social policies that ensure access to more affordable housing. The current Ford government has added to the list of cuts to social spending, which will continue to make it more difficult to afford housing in major cities across Ontario, most notably in Toronto. For example, Ford’s Bill 108 has been met with resistance among city council members who believe that the bill will not encourage more affordable housing but rather allow for greater control of the housing market for developers (Pelley, CBC News, 2019). Although the bill has been described as a way to fast-track building affordable housing, at its core, it privileges the privatisation of the housing market; such a move not only perpetuates housing discrimination against racialised refugees, single parents, and those on social assistance, but it also ensures that the housing market will continually centre the experiences of those who currently can afford to live in the city. There is a clear dismissal of the needs of racialised refugees in accessing the housing market, as a large proportion of refugees are being priced out of Toronto.

In addition, little attention is paid to the need to build more public housing in major Canadian cities. As Teixeira (2017) states, “[T]he withdrawal of federal and provincial funding to develop social housing in the 1990s resulted in Canada currently having the smallest non-market housing sector of any major Western nation, except for the United States” (p.352). In 2017, the total active waiting list for Toronto Community Housing was 92,058 applicants, and the number of applicants actively on the waiting list increased to 100,515 in 2018 (City of Toronto, 2019c). Almost all service workers discussed the absurd waiting times to obtain Toronto Community Housing. Some also demonstrated frustration with the fact that one could fast-track an application if one could prove that they had a terminal illness with a life expectancy of less than two years. The idea that housing would be available if one were terminally ill, on the basis that

133 the unit would only be required until its occupant died, was a point of frustration for one housing counsellor who challenged the markings of disposability on peoples’ bodies. In addition to the long wait times for social housing in Toronto, one settlement worker questioned the conditions of the units and felt the need to warn her clients who wanted to apply for social housing in Toronto. She informed them about the different infestations of the buildings, which included everything from bed bugs to cockroaches. The shortage of available public housing combined with the lack of its maintenance demonstrates the low priority the state gave to low-income communities to maintain their right to live in the city.

Two participants working within shelters discussed the importance of a more client-centred approach to the shelter system. Participants nine and ten both identified shelters as a “temporary fix” or a band aid solution to homelessness. Similarly, they also shed light on the ways in which the shelter system is run without the input of those who are temporarily housed there. Participant ten reflected on the consequences of clients who opposed or resisted some of the imposed rules and regulations of shelters. She said, “following the rules and regulations is more of a liability issue rather than about helping clients.” Though she understands the importance of guidelines to run by within the shelter system, there was very limited room for clients and frontline staff to challenge the pre-existing structure of the everyday running of the shelter system. She said that some of the common complaints made by clients included no autonomy, when they complain about something, no one follows up with them, complaints about frequent calls made to Children’s Aid Services (CAS). Participant ten also noted that if you are in a position where you are hearing the needs of the clients, while also needing to report to the manager; you can slightly bend the rules and get in trouble or you can abide by rules that are not necessarily in the best interest of your client. Such institutional limitations add more stress onto the frontline staff who are committed to supporting their clients. Participant nine also talked about the importance of giving those living in the shelter more autonomy, which they believed would make places feel more like home rather than something that felt sterile. He believed that people come in with so many skills and they are not utilised for liability reasons, which contributes to the process of dehumanisation. He considered that by letting some of the skills shine, it makes people feel fully human and that those skills should be integrated into the shelter model. Thus, both participants nine and ten allude to differences between shelter and making a home. Making home thus

134 requires an engagement with active agencies among those seeking shelter in temporary housing accommodations.

The federal, provincial, and municipal governments are clearly aware of the lack of available affordable housing in the city; the speed at which this issue is addressed, however, speaks to low priority for refugees’ immediate needs. The housing strategies currently promoted by the city of Toronto do not address intersecting needs that clearly operate in the lives of refugees when accessing the housing market (see chapter two). Instead, current strategies continue to prioritise the private rental market, which discriminates against those with precarious positions and status. The suggestions interviewees advanced brought to surface the roles, or lack thereof, of the federal and provincial governments in ensuring that more social housing units are built. The need for more affordable housing and social housing in particular, speaks to the requests made by frontline staff, who suggest more government involvement in housing supply and regulations in the city of Toronto.

4.6 Discussion This research identifies the structural limitations faced by frontline staff in administering settlement and housing services in Toronto. Based on participants’ accounts, it is clear that staff are limited by both the amount of funding and the conditions imposed by the funders on the types of programs to be administered. Additionally, lack of funding has added additional stress onto frontline workers who must fulfil a wide range of responsibilities to remain accountable to their clients, their managers, and the funders. For those who worked specifically on securing long-term housing for their clients, many housing counsellors must also navigate the private rental market, while attempted to meet the needs of their organisation and the clients they serve.

Though many frontline staff were frustrated by such limitations, many found creative avenues and pathways to ensure that clients received appropriate services. Informal social networks proved to be one of the major avenues taken by frontline staff to help secure resources for their clients. Such networks were particularly pervasive in the areas of health, employment and housing. Despite a reliance on such informal networks, almost all frontline staff discussed the importance of more government involvement in providing more affordable housing in Toronto.

135 In addition to more social housing units, frontline staff also called for stricter rent controls and better avenues to report housing discrimination, particularly for refugees who would oftentimes require translators to be able to call a tenant’s hotline. Such accounts also extend literature on the housing crisis by identifying frontline staff as important actors in managing a housing crisis and their intersections across language, status and income. This study thus offers important practical interventions into how social service provision is administered, but also the necessities of building more affordable and social housing in Toronto.

4.7 Conclusions This study advances scholarship by illuminating the key role of these service providers, a largely overlooked category of actors who navigate the terrains of the state, demonstrate the importance of informal networks among social service providers in Toronto and try to negotiate and meet the needs of refugees in Toronto. The qualitative approach to this study allows for fruitful and rich analysis based on the direct experiences of frontline staff and their accounts. By centralising the experiences of those working on the front lines, this research offers critical insights into the limitations of service provision and the difficult positions frontline staff find themselves in when mediating between policies, practices and the needs of their clients. Discussions on the limitations of administering services has the potential to ignite changes in policies and programs to incorporate the intersectional needs of newly arrived refugees.

It is important to note that the number of staff interviewed does not necessarily encompass all views of frontline workers. Many other organisations and staff were contacted for this study, but only a select few were willing and able to provide interviews. Future studies would benefit from a larger selection of frontline staff, particularly housing workers, to engage with a wide set of views, experiences and opinions on the housing crisis in Toronto. Thus, while this research analyses important structural limitations to social service provision and the creative ways in which some staff confront such limitations, further studies would benefit from collaborations with a wider array of non-profit organisations that are at the frontlines of managing the housing crisis. Doing so will foster potential research projects and initiatives centred on the active agencies of staff who witness and attempt to manage a housing crisis that continues to deepen inequality based on income, status and race.

136 5 Chapter 4: Activist realities and the re-imagining of home: Moving towards a housing justice framework in Toronto

Abstract This chapter unpacks the role community and grassroots organisations play in facilitating and demanding housing access among marginalised peoples, communities and neighbourhoods in Toronto. Drawing on antiracist feminisms and feminist geographies, this chapter explores the various ways in which peoples, who are often narrated as passive victims and/or recipients of state services, lay claim to their rights as tenants in neighbourhoods that are increasingly experiencing processes of gentrification. The purpose of this chapter is to identify the tensions and gaps in current housing policies and initiatives taken by the City of Toronto that are made apparent by community and grassroots organisations advocating for housing justice in Canada. Additionally, this chapter explores the significance of envisioning an urban environment based on the demands, imaginaries and experiences of marginalised communities living and renting in Toronto.

Key words: antiracist feminisms, housing justice, grassroots organising, political agency

Again and again as I travel around I am stunned by how many citizens in our nation feel lost, feel bereft of a sense of direction, feel as though they cannot see where our journeys lead, that they cannot know where they are going. Many folks feel no sense of place. What they know, what they have, is a sense of crisis, of impending doom—bell hooks, Belonging: A culture of place

5.1 Introduction On June 13, 2019, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) organised a rally at 230 Sherbourne Street, followed by a march to City Hall, to call on the City of Toronto to expropriate land on Sherbourne and Dundas for the purposes of building more affordable housing in Toronto’s downtown east side. Twenty-seven organisations came together to petition the City of Toronto to purchase the land on Sherbourne with the goal of ensuring that affordable housing be built in the neighbourhood rather than condos. In the signed letter addressed to Toronto Mayor, John Tory, and members of the Affordable Housing Committee in June of 2018, they state: We are concerned agencies, advocates, and community groups that provide individual services and supports to poor and homeless people in the downtown east. As you are well aware, the city is in the midst of a housing and shelter crisis in the downtown east, this crisis is further exacerbated by an alarming intensification of gentrification, a process displacing community members from the neighbourhood through the loss of affordable

137 housing in the area, the closure of rooming houses, an overall lack of subsidised and supportive housing, and ever inadequate social assistance. (OCAP, 2018a, p.1)

With the collaboration of the twenty-seven community groups, the call to purchase land on Sherbourne and Dundas played a vital role in challenging the continued condo development in the area. Tired of seeing land used for the benefit of large developers, community members and allies pushed the City to take direct action. However, this act of resistance was not the first time the surrounding neighbourhoods in the downtown east demanded housing justice in their communities. The attack on this low-income neighbourhood is not a new phenomenon; resistance and resilience have a long history in the residences surrounding Sherbourne and Dundas. According to OCAP: The corner of Dundas and Sherbourne remains one of the most important part[s] of our neighbourhood. All Saints Anglican Church, which has served as a community centre since 1970, sits on the south-east corner. However, the valuable land located in and around Dundas and Sherbourne area is now being targeted by speculators and developers who are hoping to cash in. A property located on Sherbourne St. just south of Dundas Street East, just across from All Saints Church, is now being offered for sale to developers for a potential 23-story condo development. On the site sits a large abandoned Victorian house, which had operated as a rooming house since 1914, and which has now sat empty for more than a decade. Two other houses adjacent to 230 Sherbourne, which also operated as rooming houses for decades, were demolished several years ago by the owners, and now only an empty lot remains. (2018a, para. 8)

The trend of demolishing rooming homes to make way for condo development across the city has re-emerged (see Slater, 2004). Communities once again find themselves fighting to ensure that they are provided with adequate and affordable housing in their neighbourhoods. It was only a few decades ago that Drina Joubert was found frozen to death in an abandoned truck at the rear of 230 Sherbourne St (OCAP, 2018b). The death sparked local resistance within the community, which advocated for social housing, particularly for single tenants. The protests and calls were successful and “resulted in the subsequent building of 3,000 units of social housing for single adults, including 61 units at Dundas and Sherbourne behind All Saints Church” (OCAP, 2018b, para. 9). The spaces for marginalised communities in the area were cultivated through the efforts of community members and advocates, and this trend of resiliency and collective resistance is re- emerging in the neighbourhood.

138 After a year of advocacy and resistance, OCAP, in partnership with the Open Architecture Collaborative Toronto (OCATo), proposed a development plan to City Council to build affordable housing units with the integration of community spaces into buildings that are integral for low-income neighbourhoods, such as the downtown east side (OCAP, 2019). The development proposal, which they presented to City Council on July 3, 2019, planned to build between “150 to over 260 units of publicly-owned rent-geared-to-income units to house poor and homeless people at 214-230 Sherbourne Street, a series of vacant properties steps from the southwest intersection of Dundas and Sherbourne” (OCAP, 2019, para. 3). Feedback sessions were held in Regent Park and the Sherbourne and Dundas area, where “nearly 100 people offer[ed] feedback on four aspects of the development proposal: overall building form, ground floor programs, public space qualities, and domestic space qualities” (OCAP, 2019a, para. 3). OCAP and OCATo’s goal is to prevent the normalised culture of rapid condo development within Toronto and to provide housing for those who need it most. As shown in Figure 9, the proposal integrates communal spaces within the architecture of the building itself. Such imaginings of space are one way of transcending the boundaries in which housing is produced and managed within the city of Toronto. Although there is still a lack of movement on the part of the City, the continued advocacy, support, and resistance by community organisations in the neighbourhood demonstrate the significance of taking and making power when it comes to

139 claiming one’s right to remain and live in the city.

Figure 9. CBC (2019) Anti-poverty group wants vacant downtown properties turned into affordable housing. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/sherbourne- affordable-housing-toronto-1.5198883.

The resistance efforts initiated by OCAP and other local community organisations exemplify the significance of challenging victimising and stigmatising narratives of low-income peoples who are displaced through processes of gentrification in the city. Although critical scholars have played fundamental roles analysing the housing crisis in relation to income inequality (see August & Walks, 2018; Hulchanski, 2011; Slater, 2010), the political and social movements that have emerged within the city with regards to housing are also powerful avenues to explore to understand the political stakes at issue in this crisis. According to chapter three of this dissertation, service providers play an integral role in securing housing for low-income peoples, such as refugees, in Toronto. However, dominant narratives concerning social service provision often describe marginalised communities as recipients of state “charity”. Such mass narratives have frequently been directed at refugees and immigrants, particularly during times of crisis. According to Alison Mountz (2011) “times of crisis give way to spaces of exception. In these spaces of exception, the refugee remains powerless in the camp, always in relation to state, embodied as guard and gatekeeper” (p.386). Though Mountz articulates these spaces of

140 exception in relation to borders and detainment, the discursive production of the refugee as powerless, is reproduced through various encounters and interactions with the state. In the context of a housing crisis, refugees as a homogenised group, become scripted through the shelter and housing services funded by the Canadian government. Those receiving social welfare services are rebuked for relying on the state for essential services, such as housing and basic necessities. Such narratives reflect inequalities on the basis of race, class, status and gender, which effectively contribute to the erasures of marginalised peoples’ political agencies. Within this chapter, I argue that situating the political agencies of marginalised communities experiencing housing inequality, offers significant analytical insights into the housing crisis in Canada.

This study identifies the importance of community organisations, social movements and neighbourhood power in facilitating housing access for marginalised peoples in Toronto. There are three questions that frame this chapter. Firstly, who are the organisations campaigning around housing justice in Toronto? Secondly, how does an incorporation and analysis of political agency, resistance and rights shape conceptualisations of housing justice in Toronto? Lastly, how do housing grassroots organisations and advocates re-imagine housing and home in Toronto? By engaging with these three questions, this chapter seeks to identify and unpack the significance of the different ways in which community and grassroots organisations have imagined a more affordable and equitable Toronto for marginalised communities, including low-income and racialised refugees, in search of adequate housing in Toronto. This chapter reviews primary sources of current municipal housing policies in relation to grassroots initiatives addressing the social and political impact of the housing crisis on marginalised communities in Toronto. Drawing on antiracist feminisms, feminist geographies, and radical planning frameworks, this chapter centres spaces of resistances and practices of place-making among communities continually fighting for their right to remain in Toronto.

5.2 Theoretical framework: anti-racist feminisms, resistance, and place-making Resistance and political agency are central to understanding the ways in which communities imagine their place in society and how they envision a future based on their lived experiences. Among feminist theorists, a focus on political agency and resistance, have also informed the idea

141 of place-making in the field of geography. For example, Massey (1991) has highlighted geometries of power in place-making, as she recognises social relations within places and spaces that should not be considered homogenous and bounded. Silvey (2004) has highlighted the role feminist geographers have played in critically understanding space and place. Referencing Nagar’s work on South Asian immigrants in Tanzania, she states, “Nagar rejects conceptions of place that are tied to socio-spatial fixity, yet continues to examine geographical specificity” (2004, p. 497). By challenging the idea that places are fixed and bounded to particular identities, feminist geographers have contributed to a critical understanding of place that is embedded in power relations across race, gender, class, religion, sexuality and status.

Such analyses draw on intersectionality as a particular tool employed to address the junctions of identity, based on unequal relations of power. According to Collins and Bilge (2016) “different people find themselves encountering different treatment regarding which rules apply to them and how those rules will be implemented” (Collins & Bilge, 2016, p.9), while the cultural domain of power “[help] manufacture messages that playing fields are level, that all competitions are fair, and that any resulting patterns of winners and losers have been fairly accomplished” (Collins & Bilge, 2016, p.11). Drawing on intersectionality, feminist geographers have unpacked unequal relations of power that are neither fixed nor apolitical within a geographical locality. Place thus becomes a site of struggle, but also a site of transformation. Expanding on the existing literature on housing, home and belonging, this chapter challenges hegemonic assumptions of what home ought to be within planning policies versus how people define, conceptualise, and practise spaces of home through grassroots organising in Toronto.

Home and the physical structure of house and shelter are often conflated among housing policy makers. As demonstrated in chapter one of this dissertation, there is a great deal of scholarship focused on housing inequality and uneven geographies within Canada’s housing landscape (see August & Walks, 2018; Hackworth & Mah, 2011; Hulchanski, 2011; Walks, 2006). Such scholarship has been pivotal for radical urban planners who highlight the importance of transformative planning practices that stem from the vantage points of inhabitants of cities (see Jacobs, 2018; Stein, 2019). As pointed out in chapter one of this study, urban geographers, such as Hackworth and Mah (2011) contend that there is some value of using municipal policies for

142 the purposes of advocating for affordable housing. However, the focus on housing inequality and housing affordability seldom engages with the ways in which home is imagined and practiced by marginalised peoples.

Feminist geographers have rectified this gap in scholarship by unveiling the importance of distinguishing between housing and home. As stated by Blunt and Varley (2004), “Situated within a range of complex meanings, emotions, experiences, and relationships, geographies of home are important in both material and symbolic terms, and on scales from the domestic to the global” (p.4). Similarly, Jupp, Bowlby, Franklin and Hall (2019) reveal the complex relationships between housing and home by proposing “home both as a material site of everyday lives and as a way of opening up a set of issues and intersections of subjectivities and lived experiences and of wider circuits and regimes of power” (p.5). The process of building a home not only concerns providing shelter; it is about fundamentally engaging with the ways in which people envision their spaces of living. Reducing home to an economic understanding of it silences the ways communities and individuals have resisted and created places of home within the city. According to Masuda, Franks, Kobayashi and Wideman (2020), urban theory “has shifted the field towards more grounded and integrative approaches that prioritize subaltern urban politics” (p.231). Masuda et al. (2020) focus on invisibilised histories of Japanese Canadian dispossession and resistance in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in conversation with current community members to blur “the lines between forces of wartime persecution, ongoing colonization, and contemporary gentrification” (p.230-231). With this focus, the authors generate important interlocking conversations on race, indigeneity, dispossession and grassroots praxis in Vancouver. This chapter draws on critical praxis scholarship to highlight the roles of grassroots organisations in challenging and shaping housing, home and community in the city. Claiming rights to live in the city through community organisations, grassroots organising, and individual forms of resistance, I argue, represents a disruption of the housing policies that are imagined primarily through an economic and neoliberal lens that prioritises profit over the livelihoods of oppressed peoples.

Antiracist feminists, such as Chandra Taplade Mohanty and Biddy Martin (1986), have also engaged with the politics of home, community, and identity that challenge static and

143 homogenous conceptions of home. In an essay entitled, “What’s home got to do with it?” Mohanty and Martin (1986) are interested in “the configuration of home, identity, and community; more specifically, in the power and appeal of ‘home’ as a concept and a desire, its occurrence as metaphor in feminist writings, and its challenging presence in the rhetoric of the New Right” (p. 85). The affective inscriptions of home have shaped discursive processes of othering that reproduce exclusionary practices (Sara Ahmed, 1999). Challenging dominant conceptions of home thus became a political tool among feminists. Mohanty and Martin have stated, “Both leftists and feminists have realised the importance of not handing over notions of home and community to the right” (1986, p.85). Understanding peoples’ situated identities in relation to place-making is a critical instrument to challenge dominant impositions of what peoples’ homes should be and who the home belongs to. In a similar fashion, this chapter seeks to disrupt the common dependency on government officials in determining how “home” and “community” should be defined among low-income neighbourhoods. The reliance on definitions offered by the state through federal, provincial, and municipal governments silences the definitions, resistance, and imaginings of home made by groups, peoples, communities, and neighbourhoods who bear the brunt of the housing crisis in Toronto. When peoples, groups, and communities unite to demand housing as imagined through peoples’ lived experiences, a disruption to the conflation of housing and home are made. The contributions made by feminist geographers, antiracist and transnational feminists in exploring the politics of home provide critical frameworks for conceptually understanding the relationships between housing access, resistance and peoples’ agencies in defining and creating homes, neighbourhoods and communities.

As social and political agents, the demand for housing is not simply about reducing rental prices, but about questioning the politics of exclusion and recognising people as multidimensional and agentic in determining where they can live and how they build communities with the people around them. The following sections engage with the various ways that community organisations and housing advocates have imagined place. I argue that a housing justice framework speaks to the calls made by antiracist feminists to interrogate the power relations of place-making in the context of the housing crisis. Home, therefore, no longer simply concerns housing affordability and adequate housing, as narrowly and vaguely defined by provincial and local governments but

144 relates to intersecting forms of oppression operating within the housing crisis and the places and spaces of resistance that reimagine a more equitable Toronto.

5.3 Research methods The focus of this research is on community and grassroots organisations demanding equitable housing access in Toronto. Similar to chapter two, which identified frontline staff as integral actors to managing the lack of government accountability of the housing crisis, this study identifies community and grassroots organisations as important actors for maintaining tenants’ rights to live in the city of Toronto. This research offers a policy analysis in conversation with online testimonials and content released by community and grassroots organisations in Toronto. By highlighting the counternarratives on housing affordability presented by members of community and grassroots organisations, this research illustrates the gaps and absences of marginalised voices in housing policies in Toronto. The first section of this research reviews existing program initiatives, such as the Housing Now initiative and the Regent Park revitalisation project, administered by the City of Toronto, to address the lack of affordable housing in the city. Identifying the gaps and tensions within these policy initiatives, this research explores the (re)actions taken by community and grassroots organisations to address the continued displacement of low-income peoples in Toronto. Their responses to housing affordability initiatives thus becomes an important site of analysis to understanding the practices of housing (in)justice in Toronto.

This research identifies three critical community organisations who have garnered attention from the City of Toronto over the last few years, which include, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), the Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now (ACORN), and Parkdale Organize!.56 This research reviews mandates, reports, events and letters released by these three organisations, which were chosen based on their success in mobilising tenants in Toronto and through my own observations and interactions during different moments of my own political

56 Though this chapter focuses on grassroots organising, it is important to note that such community organisations are also met with their own sets of social dynamics and inequalities. However, this chapter does not engage with the internal dynamics of each organisation, but rather initiates a discussion on praxis and housing justice in the city of Toronto.

145 activism, such as attendance at previous May 1st movement events.57 The final section of this research analyses the use of rent strikes by Parkdale Organize! as a case study to investigate the ways in which communities and neighbourhoods stake claim to their rights to remain within the city. Weaving together a conversation between municipal attempts to address housing affordability and the demands of grassroots organising, this study unveils the importance of community and grassroots movements in practicing housing justice in Toronto.

5.4 Part I: Housing affordability and adequate housing: Definitions and community critiques This section outlines some of the important definitions used by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and the City of Toronto in assessing housing affordability and adequate housing. In addition to these institutionalised definitions, this section outlines some of the major criticisms of housing definitions as presented by community organisations, networks, and activists in Toronto. In particular, I focus on the ways in which housing affordability and adequate housing are defined by urban policy makers and the limitations of such definitions to discuss housing justice in the city of Toronto. The questions of who writes policy and under what conditions adequate and affordable housing are defined are central to understanding the power relations in policy making and housing access in the city.

Although there is a national definition of housing affordability in Canada, the ways in which provincial and municipal governments practice housing affordability do not address those who are at the core of the severe housing need.58 According to the CMHC, “In Canada, housing is considered affordable if it costs less than 30% of a household’s before tax-income” (CMHC, 2019a, para. 3). However, housing policies and initiatives are at the will of provincial and municipal governments, which have created their own definitions of housing affordability. In the context of the GTA, affordable housing is considered to be housing that is at or below the average market rent (AMR) (ACORN, 2018). The AMR for a bachelor apartment in the GTA is

57 The May 1st movement is an annual march borne out of working-class organising in 1886 in Chicago. About 300,000 workers across the United States of America walked out of their business. 58 Core housing need is defined by Statistics Canada (2017c) as falling below at least one of the adequacies, affordability or suitability standards. Those in core housing need would need to spend 30% or more of the total before-tax household income.

146 $1,089 per month, a one-bedroom is $1,270 per month, and a two-bedroom is $1,492 per month, not including utilities (City of Toronto, 2019a). Anything at or below the average market rent is considered affordable housing by the City of Toronto. Most current affordable housing initiatives of the City of Toronto view affordable housing as 80% of the AMR; therefore, $871 per month for a bachelor, $1,016 per month for a one-bedroom, and $1,194 per month for a two-bedroom would be considered affordable housing units in the GTA. These rates, which, again, are based on the private rental market, are then used as baselines for developing many local government strategies for affordable housing. This definition has been critiqued by community organisations in Toronto, most notably ACORN Canada.

The establishment of organisations such as ACORN reflects the growing resistance to Toronto’s reliance on the private rental market in determining who can afford to live in Toronto. ACORN is considered an independent national organisation operating across various Canadian cities, and it consists of 130,000 members within 24 neighbourhood chapters (ACORN, 2012). The organisation is dedicated to building community resilience through collective action, as its national website states: ACORN has a deep history of working in low- and moderate-income communities. Our presence in these communities has enabled us to connect community members — low and moderate income consumers — who are most in need, but often hardest to reach, with information about their rights, financial literacy education, tax and benefit services, and leadership development training. By working collectively, we support communities to articulate priorities for addressing their financial needs and accessing fair financial services. (ACORN, 2012, para. 3)

Low- and moderate-income consumers are thus prioritised within the campaigns developed by ACORN’s membership. Many of their members are tenants in neighbourhoods of Toronto who are rent burdened and face housing insecurity, and the critiques ACORN has developed are largely informed by the everyday lived experiences of its membership in Toronto. The challenges to housing affordability as regulated by the private rental market are thus situated in the experiences of those who are unable to afford the rising rental market prices in Canada.

For example, one of ACORN’s major criticisms concerns how problematic the current government’s ways of defining housing affordability are. According to ACORN:

147 AMR is not based on ability to pay, therefore does not meet the needs of many households who struggle to find affordable rent. By basing the definition of affordability on AMR, affordable housing solutions that are supposed to benefit low- and moderate-income renters are inadequate. To afford a two-bedroom unit at 99% AMR, a household would need to earn over $50,000 in annual income, well above the two-person low-income measure of $36,000. Yet, this unit would meet the City’s current definition of affordable housing. (ACORN Canada, 2018, p.2)

In order to avoid being rent burdened, which means not having to spend more than 30% of one’s annual income on rent, a person would have to make above $50,000 a year for a two-bedroom apartment. Although developing housing at or slightly below AMR would reduce the rental burden for some, the AMR does not serve people living at or below the poverty line. For example, a single adult receiving OW only makes about $343 per month for basic needs and $390 per month for a shelter allowance—totalling a monthly income of $733 per month (Toronto Employment and Social Services, 2018). OW for a single adult has a yearly salary of $8,796—a number nowhere near the yearly amount needed to remain in Toronto’s housing market. Although minimum wage in Ontario has increased to $14 per hour, it is still insufficient to compete in Toronto’s housing market. A person on minimum wage would make about $25,200 a year before taxes. As a single adult, this yearly amount would put someone above the poverty line, but as a single parent with one dependent, it would be nearly impossible to find a two- bedroom apartment in Toronto. Basing housing affordability on Toronto’s AMR thus prioritises low-middle income earners’ access to the rental housing market rather than engaging with definitions of affordability that would be relevant to those most impacted by the housing crisis, including newly arrived refugees, people on OW and/or ODSP, those living below the poverty line, those who are chronically homeless, and/or single parents.

In addition to this criticism, ACORN argues that the AMR does not adequately reflect the average asking rent (ASR) in Toronto. In a report issued by the City of Toronto, the Shelter, Support, and Housing Administration and City Planning hired a consultant who researched the ASR prices in Toronto based on 4,895 listings on public rental-listing boards in September 2017 (Tenant Issues Committee, City of Toronto, 2018, p.5). Based on the findings, the average asking rent was 1.5 times higher than the CMHC average rent. Although the AMR for a one bedroom in Toronto in 2017 was $1,137, the ASR was $1,614, which was calculated as a 42% difference in

148 pricing (Tenant Issues Committee, City of Toronto, 2018, p.5, p.5). The discrepancy was larger at 68% when it came to the ASR for a two-bedroom apartment, which was $2,252, compared to the recorded CMHC AMR rate of $1,341 (Tenant Issues Committee, City of Toronto, 2018, p.5). The AMR, as calculated by the CMHC, determines the baseline for affordable housing in Toronto; however, it is an inaccurate representation of the asking rental prices in the city. The ways in which housing affordability is determined within the city lend themselves to the reproduction of social relations that continue to price out and exclude people based on income.

Additionally, in a report created by ACORN-Toronto on the best practices of inclusionary zoning, ACORN criticised the use of market rent as a threshold for determining affordable housing. ACORN (2019) states, “The use of market rents as a measure of affordability means that increasing rent levels make the average rent higher, and in the process, raises the ‘affordable’ rent level, even if incomes do not rise, and fewer people are actually able to afford that level of rent” (p.11). Their criticisms reflect the concerns of tenants and community members who experience the lived realities of how and for whom affordability housing is created. These criticisms and challenges emerge from community engagement and accountability measures instituted by ACORN. In addition to criticizing the definition of housing affordability, ACORN has highlighted the importance of renovating pre-existing housing units without permitting rental increases that inevitably lead to evictions.

The continued deterioration in the quality of housing, combined with loose definitions of adequate housing, has created not just a housing crisis but a health crisis that adversely impacts low-income people.59 The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness (2019) defines adequate housing as “housing that is reported by residents as not requiring any major repairs. Housing that is inadequate may have excessive mould, inadequate heating or water supply, significant damage, etc.” (para. 4). A report produced by Dixon Hall Neighbourhood Services (2019) outlines some of the top characteristics of good housing according to residents. The top three characteristics were cleanliness, building safety, and affordability. Often, when dealing with a

59 It is important to note that stories of inadequate housing during the COVID-19 pandemic and mandatory stay-at home policies have become more pertinent to exploring the housing crisis through the vantagepoints of those who are precariously housed and unpacking its relationship to health.

149 housing crisis, there is a tendency to prioritise housing people immediately rather than ensuring that people are housed adequately. Although emergency shelter spaces are important, particularly during extreme weather conditions, longitudinal studies have shown that unsuitable and inadequate housing has adverse impacts on peoples’ health and overall quality of life. For example, the well-known conditions of many of the Toronto Housing Corporation housing units, which are infested with rats, bed bugs, and cockroaches, are considered poor housing conditions. Highlighting the Poverty by Postal Code 2 report, the City of Toronto stated: approximately 80% of tenants are unable to control the temperature in their unit, and 50% reported that their unit was sometimes or always too hot in the summer. Other factors identified that had potential negative health impacts were the frequent occurrence of mould or mildew, excess cold, dampness or heat, and pests such as cockroaches and bed bugs and vermin in the building, reported by 50% of the tenants. (Toronto Public Health, 2016, p.26)

In addition to housing conditions needing major repairs, the pace at which renovations are made, if indeed any are, is exceedingly slow. Due to lack of maintenance and repairs, tenants are left to their own devices to repair important household supplies. Although it is the responsibility of landlords to ensure that rental units are maintained, the lack of investment in peoples’ homes to ensure that an adequate standard of living meant that maintenance fell to the wayside.

Rather than maintaining and renovating affordable housing units to ensure the livelihoods of low-income populations residing in high-rise buildings, repairs and maintenance have been used to revitalise neighbourhoods, resulting in mass evictions and the displacement of low-income peoples from Toronto (see August, 2016). The Federation of Metro Tenants Association (FMTA)—one of the oldest tenant federations in Canada that provides services to help advocate for better rights for tenants in Canada—has used the term “renoviction” to describe how landlords have used maintenance and repairs to generate greater profit from their rental units. According to the FMTA, renovictions refer to “a situation where a landlord evicts a tenant under the guise of needing to complete major renovations requiring the tenants to move out, and then re-list the apartment for more than the original rent” (Federation of Metro Tenants Association, 2018, para. 1). Stories of tenants facing false promises of returning to their rental unit after renovations have become quite rampant in Toronto. According to a report released by the Advocacy for Tenants Toronto (2019), “there is a growth in no-fault evictions based on the claim of a landlord (or their immediate family members) planning to move into the unit they are

150 renting to a tenant (L2 + N12 application) or the landlord needing the tenant to vacate the rental unit for major renovations … also known as a renoviction” (p.19). This growth in no-fault evictions is especially dire for long-term tenants who are elderly, as the provincial legislation prohibits landlords from raising the rent by a certain percentage every year.60 Tenants’ demands for adequate housing end up working against low-income neighbourhoods, as renovations have led to mass evictions due to rental increases well above the rental guidelines and/or tenants are not informed when the renovations are complete. Thus, tenants often face a double-edged sword when demanding consistent maintenance of their units and/or buildings, as repairs often lead to increased rental prices that contribute to their own displacement.

Funding new affordable housing units is important, but it is also essential to investigate the types of housing that are made affordable in the city as well as their current conditions. Rooming homes are considered one of the most affordable types of housing in the city; however, studies have also shown that tenants in rooming homes experience adverse health impacts. For example, a study of 295 adult rooming-house residents in 1998, found that rooming-house residents suffered from higher prevalence of 10 of 13 chronic conditions compared to the general Canadian population and a higher prevalence of 6 of 13 chronic conditions compared to the Canadian low-income population, suggesting that their worse health could not be attributed solely to the lower income of rooming house residents. (Toronto Public Health, 2016, p.26)

Rooming homes are the most affordable units for refugees, but they are also inadequate forms of housing. Adequate housing is not the same as providing affordable housing; it also concerns the types of housing available and their condition. The United Nations has described the importance of understanding housing as more than just four walls and a roof. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, adequate housing is a right, and the definition of adequate housing goes beyond simple shelter. Adequate housing should consist of security of tenure, availability of services, affordability, habitability, and accessibility, location and cultural adequacy (United Nations, Right to Adequate Housing, 2014). This definition takes a human rights approach to understanding housing justice internationally. Although the fight for adequate and affordable housing in Toronto continues, the parameters in which communities can

60 The current rent increase guideline for 2019 is 1.8%. The current provincial government will increase this guideline to 2.2% in 2020. A trajectory very much in line with Doug Ford’s current policy changes.

151 demand housing that is affordable and adequate continue to be limited by the private rental market. For this reason, housing organisations and networks in the city advocate for more state involvement in producing housing that is affordable, accessible, adequate, and informed by some of the most marginalised communities attempting to find housing in Toronto.

One of the most prominent networks that has prioritised the needs of people who are homeless in the city is the Shelter and Housing Justice Network (SHJN), which was formed in December of 2018 and consists of housing advocates from across the city. The five major demands of the network are as follows: a) “that the City of Toronto declare a state of emergency over the opioid crisis, which is also affecting those who are homeless”; b) “that the city open the Sprung Instant Structures [temporary shelters], not only to create more spaces but, in particular, to help women and members of the LGBT community”; c) “that the city open 1,000 more shelter beds in 2019 to ease overcrowding”; d) “that the city commit to opening 100,000 rent-geared-to-income housing units over the next five years”; and e) “that all levels of government commit to investing one per cent more of their existing budgets in tackling housing and homelessness” (CBC news, December 2018). The SHJN network is less concerned with the development of “affordable housing” that is based on assumptions about “the average market rent” in the city; rather, the concern is to address increasing homelessness in the city through government investment.

SHJN’s frontline staff are informed by and have a deep understanding of the growing issues of homelessness in the city and of the significance of federal, provincial, and local interventions and collaborations to address this issue specifically. Prioritising the need for more shelters and social housing units, this network of advocates challenges dominant understandings of housing justice in Toronto, which continues to prioritise building private-rental affordable housing for moderate income groups. The direct call to open more city shelter beds and more rent-geared-to-income units reflects SHJN’s priorities. The aim is to invest more in public land rather than producing more affordable housing in the private sector, which is how the City of Toronto has often responded to growing concerns of housing affordability. Socialising land thus serves as an important tool for groups who are in need of shelter in Toronto. It is also through this process of creating more publicly funded shelter units that we can truly engage in public decisions around housing and home. Stein (2019) states, “as long as buildings are bought and sold in a private

152 market, there can be no truly democratic control over the city” (p.170). Although Stein speaks from a specifically urban planning perspective, the need for socialised land that is democratically controlled addresses the growing resistance efforts across the world that demand greater access to shelter and resources that should be distributed equally. Grassroots and non-profit organisations that are in constant communication with those who do not have access to adequate housing in the city have been central to exposing the absence of the voices of communities experiencing homelessness in Toronto.

Dixon Hall Neighbourhood Services (DHNS) is a community-based organisation that aims to “create lasting solutions to end poverty, social injustices, and isolation in Toronto” (Dixon Hall Neighbourhood Services, 2017). They offer a wide range of services, ranging from advocacy campaigns to housing services and programs. DHNS also engages in public research that focuses on community engagement. In a report entitled Calling Home: Homelessness in Our City: Innovative Solutions to Homelessness Study developed by Dixon Hall with funding support from the Government of Canada and Freedom Mobile, they utilised a community-based research approach to develop suggestions for future housing policies in Toronto. Outlining their methodologies, they state: This study used a community-based research (CBR) approach. CBR “involves active participation of stakeholders, those whose lives are affected by the issue being studied, in all phases of research for the purpose of producing useful results to make positive changes” (Nelson, 1998). It strives to be action oriented and to encourage community self- determination (Ochocka & Janzen, 2014). Through this study, research participants were empowered to share their stories. (Dixon Hall Neighbourhood Services, 2018, p.4)

Engaging with the experiences of frontline staff and participants in the organisations chosen, this report demonstrates the significance of conducting community-based research that informs policy. Often, community organisations are excluded in the decision-making process in areas that will have the most impact on vulnerable communities; rather, community input operates under the guise of public community meetings that do not necessarily carry much weight in the planning process. Stein (2019) has made a similar argument, stating, “For decades, municipalities have regularly hosted participatory planning sessions where residents are invited to play with maps of their neighbourhood and tell planners where they want things like bus stops and libraries to go” (p.190). Although community consultations are important to the planning

153 process, the act of holding such public meetings gives the illusion that neighbourhoods inform planning policies, when in actuality they do not. The DHNS reveals the differing ways that adequate and affordable housing are defined when community-engaged research informs housing policy.

The report initiated by DHNS highlights the importance of community-engaged research that encourages community self-determination. The report proposes two suggestions that highlight the importance of community building: a) “build strategic community relationships to assure collaborative community-based shelter and Housing initiatives” and b) “make evidence-based research and program decisions in collaboration with People with Lived Experience. Commit to making Community Based Research central to all decision-making processes” (Dixon Hall Neighbourhood Services, 2019, p.51). Leading their own community-based research project, the group’s report released in 2019 outlined some of the major barriers to keeping housing, which include finances, conflict with roommates, building safety, location, an unclean and mouldy environment, unfair landlords, and family breakdown. The prioritisation of community-led research challenges the positivist notion of conducting research through census data and government statistics, which can limit the range of experiences and narratives that can be central to shaping the housing system in Canada. Rather than relying solely on the City of Toronto’s conceptualisations of what homes and housing should look like for peoples experiencing housing precarity, the report was informed by the barriers, struggles, challenges, and solutions of those who are excluding from the planning process there. Community organisations and networks such as ACORN, the SHJN network, and Dixon Hall Neighbourhood Centre attest to the need to redefine adequate and affordable housing based on community-engaged research. The following section outlines some of the ways in which the definitions of affordable housing based on the private rental market have an adverse impact on some of the most marginalised communities facing housing insecurity in Toronto.

5.5 Part II: Housing initiatives in Toronto There have been a wide range of initiatives to address issues of homelessness and affordable housing in Ontario and in Toronto more specifically. Although federal and provincial governments provide monetary funding to perform housing programs and services, “community-

154 based agencies provide most housing and supports, and almost all of their housing is part of these programs” (Suttor, 2016, p.1). Community organisations’ administration of housing supports reflects the shifts in Canada’s housing system. Since the 2000s, the dominant model of providing housing help has been “private-sector rental apartments with subsidised rents and flexible supports” (Suttor, 2016, p.2). Prior to subsidised rents in the private-sector rental market, in the 1980s and 1990s, the main focus was providing supportive social housing units. Although Greg Suttor has acknowledged the importance of the shift from the public sector to the private sector for supplying housing for people living with mental health concerns, he recognises that it also, reflects Ontario’s market and policy context moving closer to the U.S. experience with less new social housing, fewer openings (less turnover) in that sector, higher market-rental vacancies, tighter fiscal limits on housing programs, market-oriented federal and provincial policy, and chronic homelessness prompting pragmatic local responses using available private-rental supply. (2016, p.3)

As shown in greater detail in chapters two and three of this study, local governments, non-profits and community organisations have filled the gaps in providing temporary shelter for those who have been priced out of Toronto’s housing market. This section grapples with some of the initiatives put forward by the City of Toronto to address the shortage of affordable housing.

The Housing Now Initiative, in collaboration with CreateTO, is one of the main initiatives administered by the City of Toronto to develop affordable housing. It is part of a larger Housing TO 2020-2030 Action Plan that attempts to address the housing crisis in Toronto specifically, and it is one of the major projects currently underway within the city. The initiative seeks to utilise city-owned land to produce more affordable housing units that are near transit. The intention of the program is to “create a mix of affordable rental, market rental, and ownership housing options to serve Toronto residents” (Housing Now, n.d., p.1). The proposal suggests building 10,000 new units, only 30% of which will be considered affordable. Currently, ten neighbourhoods will be effected by this new initiative: a) 3741 Bloor St. West and 925 Kipling Ave., b) 3326 Bloor St. W and 1226 Islington Ave., c) 1250 Eglington Ave. West, d) 50 Wilson Heights, e) 3933 Keele St., f) 140 Merton St., g) 251 Esther Shiner, h) 770 Don Mills Road, i) 705 Warden Ave., and j) 777 Victoria Park Ave. These locations are owned by the city but will be leased to developers, who will be responsible for maintaining the buildings. Additionally, the

155 units designated as affordable must remain affordable for 99 years. The initiative has been advertised as a short-term, but quick, solution to the lack of affordable housing in the city of Toronto; however, several shortcomings of the proposal do not reflect the needs of low-income communities, which tend to consist of newly arrived refugees.

The critiques offered by community organisations, such as ACORN-Toronto, on the definition of affordable housing extend to policy initiatives that are based on the average market rent. The reliance on these rates prioritises the needs of a relatively well-off, albeit often precarious, segment of the population, and it ignores the needs of those most likely to be priced out of the rental market. Again, what is considered affordable is based on 80% of the private rental market, which in three to four years, when some of these units will be ready for occupancy, may be well above today’s current average market rent. The Housing Now initiative is also advertised as “affordable for households earning between approximately $21,000 and $52,000 per year” (CreateTO, 2020), which effectively prices out those who are newcomers, on ODSP, or on OW.61

Moreover, the private-public relationship established within the Housing Now initiative continues to prioritise the development of private rental market housing, which will be sold (70%) at a competitive market rate in the area. Although the city will rent out the land, the buildings will be managed by private companies, which will also not address the various forms of exclusion that tenants can face in the private rental market, including housing discrimination.62 Despite being advertised as mixed-income housing, the discrepancy in where affordable housing units are built speaks to the stigma placed on working-class communities and neighbourhoods, as well as the class divisions and housing segregation apparent within the city. For example, the site in Ward 3 Etobicoke-Lakeshore proposes developing 2,300 units, with only 771 units to be considered affordable, while Ward 20 Scarborough Southwest will have 450 new units, with 225 to be considered affordable. Ward 30 is guaranteed to have 33% affordable housing units, while Ward 20 will have 50% affordable housing units. The percentages of affordable housing units correlate with pre-existing class visions within the city. Moreover, the incorporation of

61 The rates of OW and ODSP are examined in greater detail in chapter two of this study. 62 Refer to chapters one and two for an in-depth analysis of housing discrimination in Toronto.

156 community voices within the planning process of the initiative has been limited to community consultations, which have been critiqued by urban geographers.

The idea of community consultations within the planning process has been one of the main forms of establishing democratic practices among urban planners. However, public consultations are often limited to small changes to the proposal rather than having input on their foundation. Thus, the practice of democracy within these meetings is less than democratic. According to Stein (2019), public stewardship should be an essential principle to establishing a housing justice framework in cities. He states that public stewardship means making space a public good, which entails democratising planning so that workers and residents have the ultimate say over changes to the built environment, preservation or demolition of existing structures, provisions of space to different users, and modes of moving through the city. It means not just participating in a process organised by and for the propertied class, but seizing control of the means of spatial production. (Stein, 2019, p.170)

Community members raised similar criticisms at one of the community consultations regarding the proposed Housing Now sites, where I was in attendance. Although planners took note of the concerns of those present, there was little clarity as to whether suggestions would be implemented in the design proposal. Rather, the meeting acted more as a presentation of what was already established, as well as providing an opportunity for people to express their concerns. Those who buy and develop the land essentially determine the density and number of affordable units available. Radical planners have argued that this planning process is counterintuitive to a truly democratic city. Stein (2019) has stated, “the people who produce space through everyday labour and practice—and not just those with the money to buy a piece of land and property— should control its form and function: the city must belong to those who build it, not those who buy it” (p.170). Currently, the City of Toronto continues to undertake projects that present an image of mixed-income planning and prioritising the needs of low-income tenants; the revitalisation projects underway in many of Toronto’s social housing neighbourhoods are one manifestation of such narratives.

157 One noteworthy example is the revitalisation of Regent Park in east downtown Toronto, which has been marketed as an investment in better housing for communities in the neighbourhood. The Toronto Community Housing Corporation (2020) states: The Regent Park revitalisation showcases TCHC’s approach to city building. Working Together with the city of Toronto, Regent Park tenants, their neighbours, our private sector development partners, and community partners, we are transforming aging housing infrastructure into a successful, mixed-income, mixed-use neighbourhood, with rental buildings, market condominium buildings, town homes, commercial spaces, community facilities, active parks, and open spaces. (para.2)

The project, which has already begun, intends to build 2,083 replacement rent-geared-to-income units, 448 affordable rental units, and 5,400 new market condominium units. Converted into percentages, upon completion of the revitalisation project, Regent Park will consist of 26% rent- geared-to-income units, less than 6% affordable rental units, and 68% new market condominium units (TCHC, 2020). Thus, the initiative taken to repair social housing units continues to prioritise the development of new market condominium units. The mixed-income neighbourhood narrative is used to justify the building of new condos, the stark contrast of income inequality is embedded within the physical maintenance of the buildings. Figure 10 visually showcases the level of inequality within mixed-income neighbourhoods, where an older high-rise apartment building sits parallel to a recent condo development at River Street and Dundas.

Though policy narratives of revitalisation are nested in discourses of benevolence and neighbourhood improvement for low-income tenants, scholars and activists have pointed to the fallacies of such narratives. August (2016) highlights how such policies are rooted in “condescending and problematic assumptions” and states that “critics see mixed-income revitalisation as a neoliberal project associated with dismantling the welfare state, and promoting privatisation, market-driven policy, and state-facilitated gentrification” (p.26). Her research with tenants in Regent Park unpacks the varied responses to revitalisation among tenants, while also presenting context to the lack of organised resistance in Regent Park. In particular, August demonstrates the ways in which community consultations were mobilised by the city to stifle dissent. August argues that “consultation may not have shaped revitalisation, but the branding of revitalisation as consultative and tenant-driven has likely worked to prevent opposition” (2016, p.29). Those she interviewed who were critical of revitalisation projects revealed their

158 displeasure with the consultations as they felt that they were being inundated with information rather than truly being asked of their opinions and thoughts. August’s (2016) research uncovers the ways in which land and property and rights intersect, while unveiling how such intersections are imbued in relations of power. For tenants housed within the social housing units in Regent Park, feelings of powerlessness were rooted in the material realities of being tenants rather than property owners. Thus, the revitalisation projects were decided mainly through an economic lens and were not attuned to the issues that concerned long term tenants of Regent Park.

Figure 10. Condo construction juxtaposing a high-rise apartment building on River Street and Dundas, Toronto. Photo taken by Mary-Kay Bachour illustrating condominium development at the intersection of River Street and Dundas Street in Toronto, Ontario

By engaging with input from residents living in neighbourhoods where landlords rarely perform regular maintenance repairs, discussions premised on tenant’s imaginaries of home become central to planning a more accessible Toronto. Rather than relying on vague definitions of adequate and suitable housing, a housing justice framework incorporates the varied experiences of interlocking forms of oppression that shape how one experiences the housing crisis in Toronto. Intersections of race, gender, status, citizenship, and language must necessarily be investigated by housing policy makers who actively shape the spaces in Toronto’s

159 neighbourhoods. However, as the previous examples of the revitalisation of Regent Park and the Housing Now initiatives underway in the city show, urban planning has become more about managing land for development rather than engaging with those that live and work in the city. Stein (2019) has stated, “Urban planners are above all land use managers, yet their power is subordinate to landowners—not just the individuals who own land and houses, but the organised power of real estate capital, in both its concentrated (billionaire developers) and diffuse (exclusionary homeowner associations) forms” (p.165). In the case of the Housing Now initiative and revitalisation projects, planners attempt to maximise the use of city-owned land for the purposes of creating more housing, while also managing the priorities of developers, whose main motive in leasing the land is to generate profit.

Working within a housing system that relies on the privatisation of land thus makes it difficult to develop spaces where people have the agency to determine where they want to live in Toronto. As shown in chapter three of this dissertation, those marginalised by housing policies often find themselves seeking support from community and non-profit organisations, who also manage a hostile private rental market system in Toronto. But what happens when tenants collectively organise? How does collective organising challenge dominant conceptions of housing and home in Toronto? The next section pays particular attention to the changing housing landscape in Parkdale, a traditionally working-class and immigrant neighbourhood in Toronto, and tactics employed by Parkdale Organize! to claim tenants’ rights to remain and live in Parkdale.

5.6 Part III: What is happening in Parkdale? Tenants building neighbourhood power The rich histories of resistance, gentrification, migration, and displacement in the Parkdale neighbourhood63 have intrigued many urban theorists and geographers in Canada. Parkdale has a population of approximately 21, 849 people, where 86.6% are considered renter households of which 8.6% are new immigrants (City of Toronto, 2018a). The unique character and location of Parkdale has been theorised extensively among various scholars. Tom Slater, Carolyn Witzman, Robert Murdie, Griffin Epstein, Katharine Rankin, and Katie Mazer have all engaged with the space of Parkdale using different theoretical and methodological frameworks. Tom Slater and

63 Reference to the Parkdale neighbourhood is premised on the parameters of South Parkdale, which include areas extending from Dufferin and the Gardiner Expressway between Queen Street and CNR.

160 Carolyn Witzman’s (2006) “Village ghetto land: Myth, social conditions, and housing policy in Parkdale, Toronto, 1879–2000” discusses Parkdale’s changing social conditions as they relate to policy alterations that impact housing and development in Toronto. The documentation of this history is imperative for understanding social relations of place that are directly influenced by policy development and changes. Epstein’s (2018) article takes an ethnographic approach in tandem with interviews conducted in Parkdale to address the changing social relations of gentrification there, with a call to centre race and gender as important sites of analyses. Others, including Logan and Murdie (2016), centre the experiences of newcomers in Parkdale and their struggles to access affordable housing in Toronto. Mazer and Rankin (2011), two critical geographers, engage with the “everyday life of gentrifying neighbourhoods” by centring the ways that tenants, particularly rooming-house tenants, claim their right to them. Such academic scholarship has offered counter-narratives to economic reductionist understanding of gentrification that seldom engage with intricacies of exclusion and inclusion as they cut across race, class, gender, religion, sexuality.

Moreover, in recent years Parkdale has garnered a great deal of media attention for the organising efforts of tenants residing in the neighbourhood under the banner of Parkdale Organize!. Though various studies have highlighted the processes of gentrification Parkdale has undergone, few studies have engaged with the collective organising and mobilising efforts of current tenants. Organising efforts by Parkdale Organize! are paramount for the continued confrontations with landlords to stop the consequences of gentrification, which include the displacement of low-income and immigrant communities living in Parkdale. This section engages with the ways in which members of Parkdale Organize! have challenged evictions and gentrification in their neighbourhood to extends conversations of gentrification and displacement to include the political and social agencies of tenants demanding their claims to their neighbourhood in Parkdale.

Crucial community organising work undertaken in Parkdale underscores the prominence of understanding theory from the ground up for urban futures. Parkdale Organize! is a mass organisation consisting of working-class people moving towards building “neighbourhood power in Parkdale” (Parkdale Organize!, 2018). Their statement of principles recognises the

161 significance of building power through collective organising. On their website, they state: “We want to build working class organisations independent of politicians and social service providers” (Parkdale Organize!, 2018). The organisation itself consists of working-class tenants of Parkdale and their allies. Centring the voices of tenants most adversely impacted by Toronto’s rising rental prices is what makes Parkdale Organize! integral to maintaining the legacies of the Parkdale neighbourhood. Although Parkdale does have a range of social service organisations, Parkdale Organize! operates as a tenant-centred organisation, challenging the top-down service provision model that is often met with many limitations. Feminists have a long history of understanding the importance of the local, private, and informal spheres, where the majority of women operate and participate (Nagar et al., 2002). The same principle is applied to organising at the grassroots level. Those organising on the frontlines speak to the various ways in which housing injustice operates within their lives.

The Parkdale Organize! publication demonstrates the importance of locating power among tenants. In the first issue, published in June of 2015, they state: Parkdale is more than the stores and businesses between Dufferin and Roncesvalles, Queen and King. It’s us, the people that live in the buildings up and down Jameson, Triller, Dowling, Dunn, Westlodge, Dufferin, Spencer, and Tyndall. (Parkdale Organize! June 2015, p.1)

Most issues of the publication have an interview with a tenant and organiser. The interviews include discussions on issues with landlords in Parkdale, deportations, and inadequate housing conditions. The issues and actions arise from the collective efforts of those living in the neighbourhood, which stands in stark contrast to service provision organisations, which often take on a top-down approach to addressing housing issues. They state: Rent increases, evictions, disrepair, deportations, service cuts, school closures, and bad jobs are what we should organise against. Our neighbours and our neighbourhood is what we are organising for. We organise together, fight together, and win together—or we— struggle alone and lose alone. It’s that simple. (Parkdale Organize! June 2015, p.1)

The newsletters produced by Parkdale Organize! reveal the varied responses and acts of solidarity based on the foundations of building neighbourhood power. These issues range from solidarity with food service workers, some of which are residents of these buildings, challenging cuts to education and supporting teachers working in schools in the Parkdale neighbourhood, to

162 pushing against unexpected house visits by landlords. The multifaceted ways in which housing injustice is enacted extends beyond solely the available infrastructure of shelter but is rooted in the interpersonal lives and social relations of tenants residing in neighbourhoods such as Parkdale.

Though Parkdale Organize! employs various tactics to build neighbourhood power, they are most well-known for successful rent strikes. For example, on April 28, 2015, the organising tenants of 188 Jameson were able to challenge the 10% rent increase proposed by Akelius.64 As a collective, tenants of Parkdale took Akelius to the landlord and tenant board, where it “conceded to a 4.5%” increase over the years (1.2% in 2014, 1.6% in 2015, and 1.7% in 2016)” (Parkdale Organize!, 2015, p.1). They also had Akelius agree “not to bring applications for the above guidelines increase in the next two years and agreed to allow tenants up to six months to pay back any rent they owe due to the increase” (Parkdale Organize!, 2015, p.1). Such successes and organising efforts among tenants in the Parkdale neighbourhood have ignited a wave of tenant mobilisations that are holding landlords accountable. For example, May 1st of 2017, saw the birth of MetCap65 rent strikes in Parkdale. Another rent strike was initiated and won in March of 2018 by tenants in a building owned by Nuspor investments. More recently, tenants have organised dropping off notices of repair directly to landlord’s offices and personal homes. For example, residents of 2 Laxton visited their landlord, Gojko Kuzmanovic, at his residence on Royal York to demand repairs. Similarly, tenants in 295 Dufferin street confronted representatives at Starlight Investments to demand that repairs were made immediately and that they drop the above rental guideline application form (Parkdale Organize!, 2019). The need to organise collectively and build neighbourhood power stems from the lack of sufficient avenues available for tenants to take when filing for grievances. According to the Parkdale Organize! newsletter, “A couple of tenants tried complaining to the City and the Board but it didn’t work,” said Steven, an organizer and tenant of fourteen years. “We have to organize the building and pressure the landlord directly. This isn’t about me or any one tenant, it’s about all of us, the whole building.” (September 2019, p.1)

64 Akelius owns many properties in major cities across North America and Europe, including New York, Boston, Toronto, Paris, London, Berlin, Copenhagen and Stockholm. 65 MetCap owns various apartment buildings across provinces in Canada, including British Columbia, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec.

163 Parkdale Organize! offers important perspectives to conceptualising the housing crisis in Toronto. Through the outlooks of activists and organisers, the housing crisis, becomes a question of power. Currently, in a market where property and land equate power and wealth, landlords are able to display acts of power over their tenants. However, Parkdale Organize! reveals the potentiality of neighbourhood power through tenant-centred organising. Political agency thus offers an important counter-narrative to housing inequality; rather centring political agency reveals the potential for housing justice curated by the experiences, ideas and imaginations of tenants. Throughout the newsletter publications, the experiences of tenants in Parkdale, how they describe and shape their neighbourhood, and how they have organised in their neighbourhoods are visible.

The example of Parkdale Organize! is relevant to my development of a grounded approach to housing justice in two ways. Specifically, the example serves to bridge the gap between theory and practice and pay tribute to collectives who have played integral roles in shaping narratives around space, place, and the right to affordable and adequate housing in the city. By relating the stories of Parkdale Organize! to hooks’ (1994) conceptualisations of space, shelter, and the making of home, the difference between methods that simply place tenants, refugees, newcomers, and people of colour as victims of external and powerful forces rather than makers of power, which is what Parkdale Organize! represents, become clear. When rent strikes occur, power is being made, not only through such collective action, but also by challenging the ways in which power is distributed through landlord and tenant relations. One of the ways that Parkdale Organize! makes power is by operating outside of the pre-existing forms of enacting change within the city. Whereas many frontline staff felt a sense of helplessness when securing housing for tenants (see chapter three), grassroots organisers actively played a role in taking power from landlords through rent strikes and the delivering of maintenance notices directly to their landlords. Collective action and collective resistance are thus important sites of analysis in understanding the ways in which place-making is messy, embedded in power relations, and transformative.

164 5.7 Part IV: Discussions of intersectionality in community organising Current community organisations, including OCAP, ACORN, and Parkdale Organize! have frequently highlighted the importance of class when addressing the housing crisis in Toronto. Although the campaigns are immediate and urgent for the city, intersections of race, status, language, and gender remain somewhat absent. Organisations such as ACORN and Parkdale Organize! mobilise on issues directly impacting immigrants and refugees. For example, ACORN launched a campaign in 2010 addressing the exuberant fees placed on money transfers often made by immigrants and migrant workers sending money back home. Parkdale Organize! has also acknowledge the barriers newcomers face when it comes to housing affordability in Parkdale. Despite an engagement with campaigns directly impacting immigrant communities, income and class remain unifying markers of identity within the organisations. Though important, organisations focused on the particular experiences of racialised working-class communities demonstrate the prominence of collective power predicated on challenging the intersections of housing inequality and racial inequality.

Few grassroots organisations have addressed such concerns. For example, on February 26th, The Caribbean Solidarity Network put on an event entitled: “Building Community to Fight Gentrification”66 which talked specifically about race, space and belonging as it relates to encroaching gentrification on neighbourhoods, such as Lawrence Heights, Regent Park and Jane and Finch in Toronto. Engaging with the importance of building community power through securing physical spaces for racialised communities targeted by gentrification, representatives of community organisations spoke to their experiences of securing land and resources needed to protect working-class racialised communities. Honouring and speaking to the ways in which Black communities have built spaces in Toronto, such as Eglinton West, panellists pushed forward the urgencies of urban planning through the vantagepoints of racialised communities. Such conversations and spaces for community building are integral for not only addressing the lived experiences of low-income peoples, but the specific attacks on racialised communities who are experiencing intersecting forms of oppression on the basis of race, class, gender, status and religion.

66 Important to note that I did not attend the event. However, a video of the event was made publicly available.

165

Understanding the importance of social relations across race and class, I believe, reveals further possibilities for an urban future that centres the experience of racialised subjectivities. Katherine Mckittrick (2011) explicitly engages with a black sense of place by focusing on the “ways in which racial violences (concrete and epistemic actions and structural patterns intended to harm, kill, or coerce a particular grouping of people) shape, but do not wholly define, black worlds” (p.947). Mckittrick’s call to challenge the “bifurcated racial categories (black=dispossessed, white=freedom), but also to insist that our racial pasts can uncover a collective history of encounter—a difficult interrelatedness—that promises an ethical analytics of race based not on suffering, but on human life” (p.948) is a way of understanding the interrelatedness of power and struggle, particularly in the context of plantations. How, then, can we understand urban futures, when histories of encounters, power, and resistance are placed at the forefront of our analyses? What entanglements can help open up understandings of peoples’ sense of place, particularly as they relate to housing and race in Toronto? When tenants claim their right to the city, what practices are available to challenge settler-colonialism or the specifically anti-Black racism operating within the housing crisis? Though this chapter explored housing justice through the mobilisations of low-income tenants, such intersectional questions of housing justice have yet to be thoroughly explored within this dissertation.

5.8 Concluding thoughts I began this chapter with a quote from bell hooks (2009) who contends that “many folks feel no sense of place” (p.1). This chapter highlights peoples’ resistance and resilience by illustrating how people work towards building that sense of place in a context that is hostile towards low- income marginalised communities. This research identified the critical roles community and grassroots organisations play in opposing government policies and practices contributing to the displacement and dislocation of low-income residents in Toronto. Illustrating the tensions and gaps of municipal housing policies adopted to address Toronto’s current housing crisis, this chapter offers a nuanced analysis of urban planning, community organising, and the political agencies of tenants in neighbourhoods incurring rapid processes of gentrification. OCAP’s proposal for a new city-owned building showcased the importance of community involvement in imagining affordable and adequate housing in Toronto. Additionally, engagement with the

166 critiques of adequate and affordable housing made by ACORN revealed the dependency on the private rental market for determining what is considered affordable in Toronto. Lastly, this chapter highlighted the ways in which Parkdale Organize! mobilised neighbourhood power to claim their rights to remain in Parkdale. Juxtaposing dominant narratives with sets of oppositional politics held by community organisations, reveals the systemic flaws in addressing Toronto’s housing crisis.

Academics play an important role in fostering collaborations with community and grassroots movements who employ tactics outside of state boundaries to ensure that tenants practice their right to continue to live in Toronto. Largely underexplored in housing scholarship are the sites of resistance and transformation initiated by organisers and collectives. As mentioned in the introduction of this dissertation, critical praxis is a crucial component to understanding and engaging with the housing crisis as it is experienced by vulnerable populations, such as refugees. The emergence of antiracist feminism in particular is tied to the lived realities, experiences and knowledge of those working on the frontlines, organising on the frontlines and theorising on the frontlines. This chapter explores the practices of housing justice through collective efforts in Toronto. However, many questions remain, which include the politics of intersectionality within a housing justice framework. Though I begin asking such questions in an increasingly hostile housing context, future studies and collaborations with community and grassroots organisations can reveal intersectional praxis of housing justice in Canada.

167 6 Conclusions, Discussions and Future Research

I was referred to a shelter in Toronto by another Congolese man. I stayed there for one and a half weeks, disoriented. I didn’t know where to go, how or what to do? I asked for help, and someone suggested phoning Sojourn House. They were full...The next night, I had to sleep on a chair at the shelter. (Jacques, 2000 as cited in Woodill and Ryan, 2000, p.10)

The above narrative illustrates the multiple hurdles refugees undergo to secure shelter upon arrival in Canada. As a refugee who eventually sought support and shelter from the Romero House Community,67 Jacques identified the difficulties in not knowing who and where to turn to for shelter when first arriving in Canada. His experience also exemplifies the importance of social networks for refugees, and the reliance on non-profit organisations, such as Sojourn House and the Romero House, to provide shelter services for vulnerable populations. Although this experience is an individualised one, it is a common one among refugees and refugee claimants in search of shelter and housing support in Toronto. This study identified and investigated such complexities of settling and securing housing among refugees through the perspectives of frontline staff working within service provider organisations across Toronto. In this study, I examined the following research questions: How have service providers addressed the housing and settlement needs of refugees in the context of Canada’s housing crisis? How are race, class and status tied into the politics of housing and settlement service provision in Toronto? In answering these questions, my research revealed the underexplored intersectional politics of the housing crisis and its ramifications on service providers and the refugee clientele they support. Chapter two showcased the systemic barriers to housing access among refugees through the experiences of settlement and housing support staff who assist clients with navigating Canada’s housing system upon arrival. Chapter three revealed the intersectional praxis of settlement and housing support offered by frontline staff. In order to navigate the private rental housing market for their clients, frontline staff had to pay attention to the exclusionary practices of landlords based on race and class, the different levels of access to support based on your immigration status, and the systemic barriers to housing support based on fluency in English and French. Chapter four of this dissertation illustrated the importance of centring marginalized voices in shaping access to affordable and access to housing in Toronto by highlighting the roles community and grassroots organisations undertake in challenging the continued displacement of

67 A community organisation that provides housing services to refugee claimants in Canada.

168 low-income, predominantly immigrant, communities in Toronto. This project revealed the differently experienced consequences of the housing crisis as they cross-cut race, class and citizenship status along with the ways in which communities resist, renegotiate and challenge Canada’s current housing system.

As illustrated throughout this research, the consequences of the housing crisis are not evenly experienced. Such uneven dynamics are a result of political, economic and social changes to Canada’s housing system. Since the 1990s, the downloading of housing responsibilities onto provincial and municipal governments, has resulted in the halting of new social housing units in Toronto. Legislative changes to housing have also encouraged a reliance on the private homeownership market—a market nominally accessed by low-income peoples. These changes have resulted in polarising neighbourhoods on the basis of income (Hulchanski, 2011). Increasing income inequality has translated into housing inequality and urban geographers have been central in visually mapping out such class dynamics. However, my research contends that housing inequality and housing access are also crosscut by social factors of race, status and citizenship. This research illustrated the convergence of the refugee crisis and the housing crisis in Toronto by paying particular attention to the ways in which refugees attempt to settle in Canada. Additionally, this study identified the disjuncture between housing and immigration policies and practices by engaging with the roles frontline staff play in facilitating housing access among vulnerable populations, such as refugees, in Toronto. It revealed the institutional limits of service providers on relying on the private housing market to secure shelter and long-term permanent rental housing for their clients. Moreover, this research locates frontline staff as intermediaries between the federal and provincial governments, the private rental market, and the needs of a diverse clientele. In doing so, it exposed the difficulties in navigating the housing and service provision landscape in Toronto in a context where the housing crisis and refugee crisis converge.

With more than 25.9 million documented refugees in the world (UNHCR, 2019), the challenges in searching for a home and access to housing have become commonplace. In the context of Canada, the increase in numbers of refugees and refugee claimants in tandem with a lack of funding and investment in affordable and social housing have created conditions in which access

169 to shelter is limited for vulnerable populations such as refugees. Additionally, the fiscal cuts to non-profit organisations serving immigrants and refugees in the 1990s (see Shields, 2003) has resulted in an overreliance on limited resources and services available to attend to the complex needs of refugees when first arriving in Canada. Situating this research within the current political-economic context, this study sheds light on the intersectional politics of settlement and housing provision for refugees in Toronto by unpacking the various barriers refugees must overcome to secure housing in Toronto.

Identifying and recognising the roles that non-profit organisations play in administering settlement and housing services to refugees, this research illustrated the complexities, which included lack of available resources and knowledge on housing access upon first arriving to Canada, financial limitations, (in)access to services based on refugee status, family structures, lack of employment opportunities, the need for Canadian references and language barriers, that impact the ability for vulnerable populations, such as government assisted refugees and refugee claimants, in securing shelter and building a home in Toronto. Through the use of semi- structured interviews and participant observations with frontline staff working in service provider organisations coupled with analyses of Canadian immigration and housing policies and procedures, this study found that access to Toronto’s private rental housing market is undercut by social relations of race, class and citizenship status. Chapter two in particular revealed the specific barriers identified by frontline workers to secure long-term permanent rental housing for refugees in Toronto. These barriers included low vacancy rates, lack of affordable rental housing, gentrification and renovictions, housing discrimination, and intersections of language, employment and access to housing. Identifying such barriers revealed the intersectional politics of housing access and housing inequality faced by refugees in Toronto.

Additionally, this study highlighted the institutional limitations settlement and housing staff face in their efforts to address the intersectional concerns of refugees. As illustrated in chapter three of this study, these limitations included specific competitive funding models, lack of resources, time and energy, and a reliance on the private rental market for housing. Such systemic barriers to administering effective housing support and settlement services oftentimes prevented frontline staff from helping program recipients secure more long-term permanent housing in Toronto.

170 Despite such barriers, this study found that frontline staff mobilised their personal and professional networks in the areas of health, employment and housing to secure important resources for program recipients. However, the air of hopelessness articulated by some frontline staff is representative of the larger structural barriers of working within state-funded non-profit organisations. For this reason, chapter four drew on and highlighted the critical roles community and grassroot organisations and housing advocates play in (re)imagining what affordable and adequate housing should look like in Toronto. Unpacking the relationships between non-profit organisations, government policies, programs and procedures, and the material capacities of refugees to settle and secure housing in Toronto, this study extended analyses of the housing crisis to include an intersectional politics of housing access and service provision tied to categories of race, class and citizenship status. It did so by illustrating the perspectives of frontline staff who listen to the barriers and needs their clientele face when attempting to find housing in Toronto. This study articulated what frontline staff view as systemic barriers to housing access in Toronto, which included housing discrimination, lack of affordable housing, lack of larger rental units in Toronto, gentrification, and the relationship between employment, language and housing access. Additionally, frontline staff were attuned to the differential experiences faced by their clients based on citizenship status, particularly between government assisted refugees and refugee claimants, race and ethnicity, sources of income and family structures and sizes. Understanding these nuances and differences, frontline staff employed the practice of intersectionality to meet the diverse needs of their clients.

6.1 Research limitations and reflections The focus on the perspectives of frontline staff for the purposes of this study is met with a variety of limitations. Firstly, the perceptions of frontline staff interviewed for this project do not represent the perspectives of all frontline staff in Toronto. Views and perspectives vary based on their positionalities. Although several organisations were contacted for this study, the select few staff who responded were deeply invested in the lives of the people they support through their jobs. This level of investment and commitment may not be the case for all settlement and housing workers. Secondly, studies on relationships between management and frontline staff are beneficial to unpacking the connections between funders and programs offered. Although some frontline staff did speak to funding changes and requirements, the vantagepoints of management

171 and administrative staff within these organisations can potentially unveil more complex relations between state funding and organisational capacities to serve refugees and refugee claimants. Interviews with a mix of managerial and frontline staff may also disclose some of the tensions between employees based on differing perspectives, roles and responsibilities within these organisations. Furthermore, there is a lack of scholarship examining the assessments of program recipients rather than service providers. According to Shaw and Funk (2019),

Attention to the unique experiences of program recipients, such as duration of time since resettlement or displacement, and description of how programs are adapted across cultures should remain a central component of conducting reporting service-related research. Few studies were conducted with children or youth, and only one brief description of a project with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender refugees was identified. (p. 857)

Identifying and examining the experiences of program recipients has the potential to reveal intersecting barriers to service provision on the basis of race, ethnicity, class, status, gender, sexuality, age, and religion. The barriers to housing were identified and analysed through the standpoints of frontline staff who act as mediators between the state, the market and their clients. Though important, testimonials and perspectives of housing access among refugees and refugee claimants can provide more detailed and nuanced accounts of navigating Toronto’s housing system grounded in their own lived experiences.

Lastly, further studies are needed to address social relations across gender, age, ability and sexuality, which have received scant scholarly attention. As Shaw and Funk (2019) note, “attention to children and youth, older persons, people with disabilities, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex persons, as well as minorities and indigenous people is increasing with efforts to assess needs and construct inclusive services and policies” (p.857). Some authors have also noted the particular lack of studies on women refugee claimants who have experienced physical and sexual violence (Tastsoglou et al., 2014). Attention to intersecting relations of power that cut across an array of identities disrupts images of the refugee as a homogenous category. Such intersectional analyses are integral for policy and program recommendations on housing and service provision for refugees in Canada.

172 6.2 Contributions to literature This research extends scholarship on housing inequality and access to include the intersections of race, class and citizenship status. It makes three important theoretical and methodological contributions to understanding and analysing Canada’s housing crisis within the subfield of housing studies in geography. Firstly, the methodological focus on the meso-scale, which I understand to include intermediate institutions such as service provider organisations, offered great insights into the roles non-profits play in securing affordable housing for refugees. Chapters two and three in particular bridged studies on settlement services with housing service provisions for refugees in Canada. The last decade has seen a surge in literature on settlement services as they relate to integration among immigrants in Canada. As Shuguang Wang and Marie Truelove (2003) have noted,

There is relatively little research in this area in Canada other than a few case studies of existing immigrant serving agencies (Bai, 1992; Owusu, 2000) or studies of the implications of downloading responsibilities to local municipalities by higher levels of government (Frisken & Wallace 2002). In particular, little has been done to evaluate the spatial relations between newcomer settlement patterns and provision of services. (p.581)

Since this criticism, there has been some development in studies tracing the disparity in social service provision in relation to the settlement of immigrants in Canada. In particular, Lucia Lo, Lu Wang, Shuguang Wang and Yinhuan Yuan’s (2007), “Immigrant settlement services in the Toronto CMA: A GIS-Assisted Analysis of Supply and Demand” offer an in-depth mapping of settlement service provision in Toronto in relation to immigrant settlement patterns. Focusing on immigrants from El Salvador, Iran, Jamaica, Mainland China, Pakistan, Russia, Somalia, and Sri Lanka, the authors conclude that there exists a “spatial mismatch between the supply of and demand for settlement services in Toronto CMA” (p.ii).Other studies have focused on the impacts of funding on settlement services (see McGrath & McGrath, 2013; Mukhtar et al., 2016). Despite such recent scholarly developments, few studies have centralised the intersections between the housing market and the role settlement agencies play in securing housing for refugees in particular, which is what this study identifies and explores.

The unique focus on service provision and housing access, contributes to both intersectional studies and housing studies. This study recognises the roles frontline staff play in administering

173 housing and settlement support to refugees in Toronto. The specific roles frontline staff play as intermediaries, ensure that they keep up to date with policy and program requirements and changes. Their jobs also require them to interact with vulnerable populations on a daily basis either through one-on-one support or through the administration of workshops and programs. Although previous studies have pointed to the barriers refugees face in accessing affordable housing in major Canadian cities (see chapter one for a complete literature review), this project specifically demonstrated the difficulties frontline staff face when attempting to straddle the lines between federal and provincial policies, a hostile housing rental market, and the complex needs of their clients. By focusing on the experiences of frontline staff in providing services to refugees, this research revealed some of the important challenges—such as housing discrimination, language barriers, unemployment, and lack of knowledge around housing tenure and availability—refugees face when settling in a major Canadian city. It also revealed the limitations faced by staff working within non-profit organisations in administering services that should be administered by the state. In these situations, frontline staff are inevitably positioned between the state and their clients, where they must adhere to particular funding program guidelines while also grappling with the difficulties and barriers their clients face when settling and securing housing in Canada.

This study identifies and contributes a methodological approach to housing research in geography by bringing to the fore frontline staff as a key category of analysis seldom featured as central to studies on Canada’s housing system. Specifically, because non-profit organisations and their staff constantly engage with the experiences of refugees and also provide them transitional housing, my analysis of their work and experiences helped illuminate some of the salient institutional limitations of social service provision—the inability to secure immediate housing, the lack of funding for programs, high levels of stress—and of the housing market. Furthermore, by interviewing settlement and housing counsellors working in Toronto, this research brought to the surface a multi-scalar analysis of the housing crisis in Canada that necessitated the use of an intersectional lens to understand housing inequality in major Canadian cities. Through conversations with frontline staff, it became clear that frontline workers grappled with refugees’ housing needs as shaped by the intersections of race, class and status.

174 In addition to the focus on the meso-scale as a methodological contribution, I identify the methodological commitment to critical praxis as my second contribution to housing studies literature. Invoking critical praxis within this research, this study revealed the ways in which the political agencies of tenants in Toronto have sparked debates, ideas and (re)imaginings of an affordable Toronto. Activists and frontline workers are rarely seen as knowledge producers. Centring the voices of frontline staff and engaging with content and political campaigns shaped by community and grassroots organisations tackling housing inequality, contributes to epistemological and methodological commitments to critical praxis in geography. Such commitments were largely informed by feminist geographers and intersectional feminists, which call on more participatory and collaborative research methods. As Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall (2013) have noted, “while intersectionality has been the subject of disciplinary travel, it is far from being only an academic project. Both in its earlier articulations and in its subsequent travels, praxis has been a key site of intersectional critique and intervention” (p. 786). My engagement with campaigns and documents produced by organisations such as ACORN, OCAP and Parkdale Organize! extend conversations of political agencies to include organisations mobilising around housing justice in Canada.

Lastly, this research contributes to the varied projects and discussions on intersectionality in geography. In particular, I extend conversations on intersectionality to include intersections of race, income, citizenship status and language in relation to housing access. According to Cho, Crenshaw and McCall (2013), “Intersectionality’s insistence on examining the dynamics of difference and sameness has played a major role in facilitating consideration of gender, race and other axes of power in a wide range of political discussions and academic disciplines, including new developments in fields such as geography and organizational studies” (p.787). For some feminist geographers, intersectionality is a useful analytical tool to understanding spatial formations crosscut by race, class and gender. According to Sharlene Mollett and Caroline Faria (2018), “Intersectionality is a spatial concept. This fact is confirmed not only by the powerful and instructive way feminist geographers employ intersectionality, but because the ubiquity of spatial metaphors embedded in Black Feminist Thought make it pointless to deny” (p.570). This project contributes to intersectional projects in geography by extending conversations on housing access to include the intersections of race, citizenship status and language. I draw on antiracist

175 feminist scholars, such as bell hooks, Kimberlé Crenshaw and Patricia Hill Collins, to analyse the settlement and housing experiences of refugees in Toronto. Centring refugees as a category of analysis, this project reveals the nuanced ways in which housing inequality is reproduced across multiple scales and identities. Refugees navigate a complex array of institutions and practices regulated by federal, provincial and municipal policies in Toronto. Analysing such interactions through the viewpoints of frontline staff, this project reveals the multiple layers of exclusion—embedded within Canada’s housing system—on the basis of income, race, family size and type, status and language. Unpacking such barriers faced by refugees also adds new lenses to theorising of intersectionality.

This research builds upon intersectionality frameworks in order to conceptually understand different facets and consequences of Canada’s housing crisis faced by precarious populations, such as refugees. This dissertation contributes new thinking on intersectionality by including discussions on citizenship status, language and family types, and enriches housing scholarship with feminist, anti-racist and intersectional theorising. Similarly to Buckley (2019) who attempts to “confront the conceptual tensions between feminist intersectional scholarship on labor and the home and political economy scholarship on residential real estate within urban and economic geography” (p.212), this study extends antiracist feminist scholarship with political economy approaches to housing studies in Canada by focusing on the intersections of race, class, language and citizenship status in Toronto’s rental housing market. Chapter one identified core housing studies literature and extended conversations of housing access and housing inequality to studies focused on the intersections of race, status, citizenship and belonging (Fawaz et al., 2018; hooks, 2009; Lo, 2015). Engaging in a dialogical conversation on housing access in the context of a housing crisis, this chapter revealed the possibilities of an antiracist feminist framework on practices of housing justice. Chapter one offered the theoretical foundations for the following chapters, which highlighted the intersections of race, class, language and citizenship status in settlement and housing provision in Toronto. Employing intersectionality throughout the remaining chapters of this study allowed me to analytically understand the uneven applications of housing and settlement policies and programs for refugees.

176 Intersectionality as an analytical tool was used throughout this study to explore housing access, housing inequality and housing exclusion as they are tied to categories of race, class and citizenship status. Chapter two employed intersectionality as a frame of analysis to examine the barriers faced by refugees in accessing rental housing. This chapter revealed the differences in access to housing based on your income, financial dependence on social assistance, your family size, fluency in English, your race, and your citizenship status. Chapter three identified intersectionality as praxis through the creative solutions employed by frontline staff. For those working on the frontlines, intersectionality is a necessary tool to address some of the interlocking barriers their clients encounter. This chapter revealed the ways in which frontline staff, as institutional actors, “use intersectional frameworks in their daily lives” (Collins and Bilge, 2011, p.32). Largely informed by intersectional analysis, chapters two and three revealed the complex intersections of settlement and housing services and uneven ramifications to housing access across race, class, language and citizenship status.

Although I predominantly focused on systemic barriers to housing and service provision, this study also drew on antiracist feminist contributions to engaging with resistance and political agency among marginalised peoples. The contributions of antiracist feminist scholars on home and belonging (hooks, 2009) discussed within chapter one underscore the importance of political agencies and peoples’ demand for housing rights and access in Toronto. This study identified grassroots and community organisations as central to reimagining how space is produced within the city of Toronto. Focusing on resistance efforts and challenges to Toronto’s current housing policies revealed the limitations of current policies and programs through the perspectives of tenants and housing advocates. This study engaged with how organisations such as OCAP, ACORN and Parkdale Organize! imagined affordable and adequate housing for low-income peoples in Toronto and presented possibilities for housing justice models informed by lived experiences of tenants. Additionally, chapter four ends with questions about intersectional praxis within housing justice initiatives as illustrated by an event held by the Caribbean Solidarity Network in Toronto. Identifying and engaging with marginalised peoples demands for housing revealed the multi-layered ways in which communities imagine and demand a home in Toronto.

177 As an antiracist feminist scholar, this research was largely informed by my academic and political commitments to unpacking interlocking structures of power. I am aware that as I conclude this study, the ramifications of the housing crisis continue to intensify for those who are racialised, detained, precariously housed, facing chronic homelessness, facing domestic violence in the home, and are globally and locally displaced. This research is an attempt to begin conversations on intersectionality and housing access in Canada, while also encouraging political commitments to organisations, communities and peoples practicing housing justice models on the ground. My hope is that future collaborative efforts on housing justice will inform generative and profound scholarship on housing access and intersectionality.

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187 hooks, b. (2009). Belonging a culture of place. New York: Routledge. Retrieved from http://myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/login?url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780203 888018

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188 Studies in Political Economy, 56, 169-191. Retrieved from http://myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/login?url=https://search-proquest- com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/docview/38615725?accountid=14771

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197 London: Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage. Retrieved from http://myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/login?url=https://methods.sagepub.com/book/feminist -methodology?utm_source=ss360&utm_medium=discovery-provider Razack, S. (2002). Race, space, and the law: Unmapping a white settler society. Toronto: Between the Lines. River and fifth Toronto. (2020). Retrieved from http://www.riverandfifth.com/

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205 8 Appendices 8.1 Appendix A: Interview Guide

The interview will only begin after the informed consent process. Once the informed consent is signed, the interview can proceed. The following is a list of questions to help structure the interview. However, follow up questions may arise organically and will be specific to the type of organization in which the participant works with. This is just a guide to refer back to.

1. How long have you worked/volunteered/been a part of this organization? a) What have been the major changes during your time here? b) Has membership increased, decreased or remained the same since you’ve been here? c) Has funding changed since you been here? If so, in what ways?

2. Who utilizes your services? a) Does your organization keep track of the demographics served? b) Are there different needs according to demographics? c) Does it change depending on changes in the laws?

3. In your opinion, what are some of the major organizational challenges to helping those find access to homes in Toronto? Explain

4. What would you say is your biggest personal challenge when trying to find people affordable housing in the city of Toronto?

5. Do you ever feel personally connected with any of the struggles some of your clients may be going through?

6. What brought you into this line of work/organizing?

7. Who, in your opinion, is most affected by rising rental prices in Toronto?

8. Do you have any experience helping clients apply for public housing? If yes, what has that experience been like?

9. What trends, if any, do you notice in the city of Toronto?

10. In your opinion, what have been some of the biggest challenges your clients face when it comes to finding affordable housing in Toronto?

11. What solutions, if any, do you think are needed to address the housing crisis in Toronto?

12. Is there a particular story you think is relevant for this project that you would like to share with me?

206 8.2 Appendix B: Preliminary List of Potential Organizations in the City 1. Aboriginal Housing Support Center 2. Aboriginal Legal Services Toronto 3. Anduhyaun 4. Gabriel Dumont Non Profit Housing 5. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada 6. John Howards Society of Toronto 7. Na-Me-Res- Native Men's Residence 8. Native Canadian Centre of Toronto 9. Native Child & Family Services 10. Native Women's Resources Centre 11. Nekenaan Second Stage Housing 12. New Frontiers Aboriginal Residential Corp. 13. Nishnawbe Homes Inc. 14. Project Going Home 15. Sistering 16. Wigwamen Inc.

17. Centre for Immigrant and Community Services 18. Centre for Information and Community Services of Ontario 19. Centre for Information and Community Services of 20. Ontario 21. COSTI Immigrant Services 22. Culture Link (Harbord Collegiate Institute) 23. Culture Link 24. Flemingdon Neighbourhood Services 25. Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre 26. Kababayan Community Service Centre Inc. 27. Polycultural Immigrant and Community Services 28. Newcomer Women's Services Toronto 29. North York Community House 30. Scadding Court Community Centre 31. Settlement Assistance and Family Support Services 32. Silent Voice Canada 33. Tesoc Multicultural Settlement Services 34. The Arab Community Centre of Toronto 35. The Cross-Cultural Community Services Association

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