(HOU3) Contemporary Issues in Housing and Homelessness

This session explores the meaning of and contemporary challenges in achieving homeownership. Presentations will consider the relationship between housing, housing development, and neighbourhood communities and explore how various social institutions, such as the criminal justice system, respond to members of society who find themselves without stable housing in Canadian society. Tags: Accueil Et Logement, Communautés, Égalité et Inégalité

Organizers: Annette Tézli, University of Calgary, Mervyn Horgan, University of Guelph; Chair: Katie MacDonald, Athabasca University

Presentations

Sara Rodriguez, Birkbeck, University of London

Wembley Park: Experiences of Community and Belonging

In an era of third-way governance, private housing developers are increasingly tasked with the construction of core social and community services. Contracts between local governments and developers frequently stipulate delivery of key social impact indicators, such as greater employment, health services, educational institutions, and community centres. Amenities previously provided by state agencies are now outsourced to developers. In certain cases, these same developers continue on as managers - directly or indirectly – exercising control over services types and terms of access. Where developers’ interests shape the provision of services, barriers to social engagement can arise, calling into question how and for whom social goods are provided. This presentation will consider the presence and absence of social engagement in the neighbourhood of Wembley Park, London. Wembley Park is the UK’s largest new-build housing development. To date, a single majority landowner is responsible for nearly all key services and amenities in the area, including the sole community centre and the majority of build-to-rent housing. This exploratory research will provide an overview of the Wembley Park redevelopment project and present findings from interviews with local residents and business owners. This research involved traditional, semi-structured interviews and walk-along interviews with residents and service providers. Adopting a Lefebvrian positionality, the aim of this presentation is to identify patterns of amenity and service provision by interrogating systematic and systemic barriers to social engagement, including between insiders (those with access to ‘club goods’) and outsiders (existing community members and non-residents). Whether physical or technological, access conditions put in place during the redevelopment process are shown to at best hinder and at worst prohibit belonging, community organisation, and involvement. Physical as well as social disjunctions exist, whether through resident selection (imposed or self), or through the construction of barriers between the new development and the existing neighbourhood. In turn, by conspicuous absence, developer-directed engagement illuminates the disjunction between the agenda of planners and developers and the nuanced needs of everyday communities. Whilst housing contacts are available on-site, resident-provider communication occurs primarily through mobile app-mediated interactions. Whilst London guidelines require a minimum percentage of low-cost housing, new build developments are not held to account and post-construction audits are not conducted. Furthermore, the Wembley Park research area presents an ideal case study to assess the inclusivity of current affordable homes policy. Situated in a low- to medium-income area, new-build ‘affordable’ housing exceeds local incomes, challenging standard definitions of affordability. Reduced tenure and market tenure homes are fully-mixed, yet social housing is not. Given the above conditions, this presentation will cover much ground, offering insights into both the cultural and policy agendas. As this is a PhD presentation, this work is in progress. Preliminary findings will be provided as well as plans for future analysis. This work is situated within the field of critical housing / critical urban studies, and the sociological elements make it a good fit for the Cultural Sociologies of Housing session. 

Chante Barnwell, York University, Toronto

Unpacking The "Pre-Event" in By-Stander Video of Police Militarization Tactics on Un-Housed Communities.

Exposed amongst the multiple waves of the COVID-19 pandemic was the proliferation of videos depicting the removal of encampments containing unhoused people in large cities across Canada. The Canadian Human Rights Commission defines Homeless encampments as “temporary outdoor campsites on public property or privately-owned land… [which] result from a lack of accessible, affordable housing”(Flynn et al., 2022,p.10). They further attest that Homeless encampments in Canada are not new, and exist at the axis of various policy failures and crises, including “the opioid crisis, racial injustice, police misconduct, and ongoing colonization”(Flynn et al., 2022,p.10). The video documentation of encampment dismantling and removal, taken by various community members and shared in the digital sphere, has called attention to the role video activism plays when acts of violence are unleashed on vulnerable populations by law enforcement bodies who utilize military-centric tactics. Military-centric law enforcement rose amidst domestic unrest and rioting within North America and beyond, where policing bodies became an “extension of intelligence gathering”(Robé, 2016,p. 163).Furthermore, this change provided the space for protests and their participants, to be seen as a direct threat to law enforcement, grouping it into a larger category that includes “terrorism, war, and violent crime”(Robé,2016, p. 163). Further, it has been said that video activism connects the “discursive topoi of counter-surveillance with counter-publics,” ultimately distorting the division between “witnessing and political action”(Simons, 2019, p. 23). Therefore, in my presentation, I will examine the video and social media activism of an organization that advocates for unhoused communities in Toronto, Canada. The video and case study at the center of my presentation captures the pre-event, not the event or the post-event, in the process of an encampment clearing by various state actors in the summer of 2021 at Lamport Stadium Park encampment in Toronto. I chose to explore the significance of video footage that captures the pre-events of police militarization intimidation tactics on vulnerable populations instead of the main event or the post-event because the latter events usually depict the active application of various levels of force by law enforcement and more the after-effects of this violence on vulnerable communities and their allies. I argue that video footage of the pre-event needs to be unpacked within Socio-Legal scopes and plays a critical role in contextualizing and understanding the main event and post-event. Moreover, the juxtaposition of daunting performative gestures of law enforcement against the affective intervention of community members’ publicly ridiculing law enforcement’s actions before contact contributes to a more nuanced analysis of the relationship between militaristic performances, community intervention and digital activism. This triangulation of elements directly speaks to scholar Ben Brucato’s arguments around chanting as a “shaming technique”(Brucato, 2016, p.14) and bystander watching as “an intercession”(Brucato, 2016, p. 2). To conduct my analysis, I utilized methodological approaches adapted from visual and sensory criminology frameworks to flesh out the nuances associated with the pre-event images of encampment clearing in this case study. Visual criminology is said to offer “a new center of analytical, theoretical, and methodological approaches from which to understand the power of the image of crime and punishment beyond the written and numeric”(Rafter and Brown, 2018). Similarly, sensory criminology expands on the notion of criminological analysis, grappling with “the totality of our sensory perception as crime and power routinely materialize in the senses”(McClanahan and South, 2020, p.17). Ultimately, I contend that videos capturing the pre-event of militarized law enforcement tactics on vulnerable communities in the digital sphere become a catalyst of accountability and a public forewarning of asymmetrical power hierarchies in community law enforcement interactions.