Addressing Evictions and displacement through innovative methods and data
Organisation Violaine Jolivet (UdeM-Géographie – Collectif de recherche et d’ACtion sur l’Habitat CRACH)
These sessions will present the work of members of two Montreal-based housing and tenants’ rights research collectives: The Collectif de recherche et d'action sur l'habitat (CRACH) and Parc-Extension AntiEviction Mapping Project (PEAMP), which are conducting several collaborative research projects resulting from exchanges between community-based housing rights practitioners, housing activists and Montreal-based researchers. The panel seeks to interrogate the notions of eviction, displacement or gentrification-induced displacement at different scales by showing the role of global economic processes and public policies in dismantling of local communities. It is also a panel that aims to confront different types of methodologies for analyzing displacement, from community-based research methods to press surveys and quantitative analysis. These sessions will also be an opportunity to present some of the academic findings that have emerged from the collectives’ initiatives in Montreal and to engage with other geographical contexts.
Session 1 – Addressing Evictions and displacement through innovative methods and data
Responsable Chloé Reiser (Postdoctorante/ CRACH)
1) “I’m selling” and abuse of own-use: understanding the moments and mechanics of the displacement of Canadian renters
St-Hilaire, Cloé; Mayhew, Brennan; and Kerrigan, Danielle; Chellew, Cara; Adair, Matthew; Wachsmuth, David
Building on the work and dataset of Wacshmuth et al. (2023), this paper proposes to providefurther depth on one key moment (sale of a rental unit) and the use of one key tool (‘own-use’clause) in landlord-driven displacement of Canadian tenants. We found own-use and sale to bethe two most common reasons for eviction (being reported by 44% and 40% of our interviewees,respectively). Accordingly, the moment of sale and the landlord invocation of ‘own-use’ to evict would benefit from greater scrutiny in part to enable resistance and reduce overall opportunities for tenant displacement. Evictions (typically narrowly examined as the formal court process), have increasingly been thefocus of housing scholarship. Inherently a process of displacement, evictions have been linked to detrimental impacts for individuals and communities and, during the Covid-19 pandemic, higher mortality (Leifheit et al., 2021). Despite this, there is still a lack of data beyond formal court processes (Zell and McCullough, 2020), which has impacted how we understand evictions. Using available data, traditional understandings have focused on tenant reasons for displacement, most notably non-payment of rent, which within these court data sets is by far the most common reason evictions are filed and conducted (Nelson et al., 2021).Zell and McCullough’s (2020) typology of evictions, expands the definition of eviction beyond the formal court processes and distinguishes between evictions caused primarily by “tenant factors” (such as non-payment) and “landlord factors” (such as renovictions and ‘own-use’evictions). Complimenting the paper by Wachsmuth et al. (2023), this paper uses our dataset of90 interviews with individuals who faced forced displacement in the Canadian provinces ofBritish Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick to zoom in on a key time in which these placements occur (sale) and a key tool by which landlords use to carry them out (own-use).Our findings indicate that tenants experience the sale of their homes as a greatly destabilizing and uprooting moment...
2) Renovate to Better Evict: An Analysis of Media Discussions of Housing Vulnerabilities Caused by Renoviction in Canada
Chloé Reiser, PhD, postdoctorante CRACH, Julia Woodhall-Melnik, Ph.D., Université du Nouveau-Brunswick
The term renoviction has emerged to describe the specific process of evicting tenants to make renovations on units. Indeed, to increase revenue despite rent control, some landlords engage in ‘renovictions’, a strategy that involves renovating below market rent units to re-rent at higher prices, while simultaneously increasing the resale value of their units and displacing tenants. While not the primary cause of evictions in Canada, renovictions are on the rise. Representative of the exacerbated housing crisis occurring in many Canadian cities, this new term has gained increased popularity in the press and among politicians. This paper presents a critical content analysis of news articles that mention the term in five prominent Canadian media sources: the National Post, the Toronto Star, the CBC, Le Devoir and the Globe and Mail in English and French from 2017 to 2022. In doing so, the authors explore the presentation of this social and economic issue to the public. In situating renovictions within the broader academic literature on the transformation of housing systems in advanced capitalist societies, this paper highlights the role of renovictions as a cause and consequence of the housing crisis. Particular attention is paid to the link with housing vulnerability, to unequal power relations between landlords and tenants and to actions that strive to fight against renovictions that threaten the Right to Housin
3) The lived experience of evictions in Canada
David Wachsmuth, Matthew Adair, Cara Chellew, Danielle Kerrigan, Brennan Mayhew, Cloé St- Hilaire
Eviction is a relatively rare but enormously consequential aspect of the rental housing system. Housing is broadly recognized as a human right, but tenants’ ability to enjoy that right is thrown into question when they are forced out of their home, either because of “tenant factors” such as non-payment of rent or “landlord factors” such as renovictions. This presentation reports findings from a large-scale qualitative study of the lived experience of evictions in Canada, commissioned by CMHC and carried out over 2022 and 2023. It draws on 90 structured interviews with people with a recent experience of a forced move.
Respondents nearly unanimously reported having been forced to move due to landlord factors, most commonly because of landlords repossessing units for their own use, selling their property, or undertaking demolitions or major renovations. Single-household and multiple-household evictions are equally common. The majority of respondents described the landlord who evicted them as an individual or a family operation. Corporate landlords were substantially more likely to have evicted other tenants at the same time as the respondent. Tenants who receive eviction notices have the right to contest the notice through their provincial housing court, but only a small minority of respondents pursued housing court cases.
4) Parc-Ex Anti-Eviction Mapping Project: Data Activism and Counter-Mapping for Housing Justice
Tamara Vukov, Associate Professor, Department of Communication, Université de MontréalSepideh Shahamati, PhD Candidate in Geography, Urban, and Environmental Studies, Concordia University
The Parc-Ex Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (PEAMP) emerged in 2019 to highlight housing struggles and to support the residents of Parc-Ex in their fight against intensifying gentrification and displacement. By using digital mapping tools, quantitative and qualitative data, research, writing, and creative practices, the PEAMP project highlights the role of institutions and businesses like the University of Montreal and the tech companies on rent increase and displacement in Parc-Ex neighborhood. Recently, the PEAMP group published two online maps to represent eviction data and community resistance in the neighborhood. The Eviction Map uses the data collected by the housing association in Parc-Ex (Comité d’action de Parc-Extension) to represent the distribution of evictions in this area since 2017. The Power Map visualizes recent community actions and resistance, as well as the needs and desires expressed. This paper looks carefully at these two mapping projects and discusses the potentials and risks of using sensitive community data for activist cartographic efforts, along with the long-term, less visible work required to build durable, sustainable community and activist social infrastructures for data co-creation and visualisation. The paper studies the importance of negotiating the emerging tactical visibilities and opacities of data co-creation and privacy in activist mapping projects, and highlights the shifting considerations that have been taken to minimize the risk of potential harm to residents and participants during this specific project. Drawing on this counter-mapping experience, this paper emphasizes the importance of data protection in activist projects, and the existence of cartographic limitations for sustaining a secure online community mapping initiative. In so doing, and in contrast to dominant methods of extractive data collection that many digital and research infrastructures operate upon, this presentation highlights the less visible but no less important work of building social infrastructures and community relays that undergird effective and accountable data activism.
