Many Faces of Urban and Rural Displacement – Ontario Tenants Organize and Speak Up

The Many Faces of Urban and Rural Displacement Project will take place in 4 distinct communities across Ontario: Kingston and District, Oxford County, Cornwall and District, and the Region of York. Funding was made possible through the Community Based Tenant Initiative (CBTI) with the Community Housing Transformation Centre. We will engage and work alongside tenants with lived experience of precarious housing, collecting the narratives of those who have been impacted in both urban and rural settings and mapping instances of eviction and displacement.

Displacement is the term we use because it captures more than just the act of eviction. Displacement represents the loss of home, community, access to services/family and other natural networks when people are removed from where they have been living. The project was inspired by the groundbreaking work in displacement mapping and community organizing pioneered by the Social Development Centre Waterloo Region in conjunction with the University of Waterloo, both of whom will be consulting with us and partnering on this project.

One of the most consistent issues that staff with the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Association (FMTA), hear through the tenant hotline is displacement outside of the GTA. Yet, not as much work has been done to understand or combat displacement in urban areas outside the GTA or rural areas in Ontario. Our project is ideally positioned to address the gap in awareness and action while also growing tenant and local community capacity to continue necessary organizing work in each of the five areas.

Addressing the Gaps:

• Gaps in Knowledge
  • Gaps in tenant rights information and education
  • Gaps in the Availability of Stories/Data that reflects the extent/types of displacement
• Gaps in Engagement
  • The project will address the lack of tenant organizing and mutual support in the four local communities involved in this project.
• Gaps in Lived Experience Leadership

While our Social Planning Councils (SPCs) are connected to their communities and are involved with any existing groups or organizations serving tenant populations, there is a notable absence of tenant organizing activity in these communities. The project provides us the human resources necessary to: utilize existing connections, reach out to/engage tenants with lived experience and those interested in organizing, sharing their stories and/or being community connectors.

The Data:

Because displacement is largely invisible, acquiring this information/data will be critical to understanding the extent of the issue. By assembling, documenting, analyzing and sharing the lived experiences testimonies/narratives of poverty, racism, housing precarity, discrimination, gentrification and displacement, we will amplify the voices, knowledge and experiences of tenants from marginalized groups across Ontario, in order that their knowledge and experiences can play a central role in informing and shaping housing and rental housing policy and planning as well as the realization of human rights protections for tenants. It is imperative that those making decisions in the housing sector realize the extent of the problem of displacement outside of the bigger centres such as Toronto, the extent of the impact on individuals and families and the cost to communities.

Lived Experience Leadership:

Individuals with lived experience will be central to this work and as such, we will hire community connectors to access stories/narratives that expose the underbelly of the larger crisis of displacement occurring in communities across Ontario. Those most impacted, tenants and renters will have a role in asserting their rights and defining solutions and they will be the focus of the mobilization process, which begins with important conversations in their communities and then evolves to joint advocacy for legislative change. From an impact perspective, tenant engagement and voice in each area will inform and shape local organization and action plans and collectively will inform knowledge mobilization and advocacy for human rights protections for tenants at the provincial level.

Steps in Recruiting Lived Experience Leadership and Stories of Displacement:

1. First investing in engagement, relationship and leadership development with community connectors and tenants with lived experience.
2. Second, documenting lived experiences and treating individual stories not as isolated anecdotes, but as part of wider patterns and processes of displacement, both urban and rural.
3. Third, addressing the gap in knowledge that currently exists of patterns of displacement across communities in Ontario by tapping into the in-depth knowledge that people with lived experiences of poverty and precarity possess about changes within their homes, streets, neighbourhoods, cities and rural areas, which is essential to planning more equitable communities.

Knowledge Mobilization

The information will be shared in the form of stories (publications) and disseminated through our various partner organization’s knowledge mobilization (KMb) pipelines: The Canadian Centre for Housing Rights (CCHR), Social Development Centre Waterloo Region, the University of Waterloo, the Federation of Metro Tenants Association (FMTA) and the University Research Network of Ontario. SPNO and the SPCs involved in this project also regularly use webinar platforms for events so this will be another avenue for information sharing through online events. Knowledge mobilization of the findings is a critical priority for this project as we hope to play a big role, locally and beyond, in influencing future housing policy development.

The Structure and Timeline

The Project Steering Committee, including leads for the four SPCs involved in the project, hired and continue to supervise and support the central project coordinator. Each of the four local SPCs that reflect and are responsible to their local communities have hired their local engagement coordinators who have been actively mobilizing lived experience leaders to become the community connectors. The Central Project Coordinator in partnership with an Academic Advisor from the University of Waterloo is providing training on research methodologies and interview methods and will be pivotal in knowledge mobilization KMb for the project. SDC Waterloo has been instrumental in providing training re: working with people with lived experience, CCHR is providing support with tenant rights training and knowledge mobilization and the Federation of Metro Tenants Association will be assisting with tenant organization modules and support.

Interviews should be completed by early March, followed by analysis of the themes, mapping of the incidences of displacement, a final report and an academic report to be produced by our academic advisor with the University of Waterloo. We submitted all materials and were accepted by the University of Waterloo Ethics Board for this project.

For More Information about the Project please reach out to:

Rose Vandermeer, Central Project Coordinator: rosevandermeer@spno.ca

Yvonne Kelly, Chair, Social Planning Network of Ontario: socialplanningcouncilyr@gmail.com