Renoviction: Gentrification's little sibling

A “GUEST COLUMN” essay by Carolyn Gibson Smith for the MSW Program at the University of Windsor

Social Work Practice with Organizations and Communities, July 16, 2017

In Toronto we hear a lot about gentrification vs. the displacement of precariously-housed people, like those struggling with mental illness or addiction. The latest was “We Bought a Crack House,” in Toronto Life, and Todd Ferguson’s brilliant crowdfunding response. But to break down a systemic trend into something we can address both individually, and at the municipal level, it’s easier to talk about “renoviction.”

The term first appeared in the popular press in Vancouver, and contracts renovation and eviction into one handy word. It’s the kind of eviction that happens when a family renovates a rooming-house, or a house with flats into a single-family home; or a property manager “upscales” an apartment building through renovations. It’s the little sibling of gentrification. As a social work student, I’ve learned that gentrification encompasses the wholesale shift of a neighbourhood from one demographic to another, and also involves changes in retail and commercial environments. When many families renovict, with the other changes happening at the same time, you get gentrification.

Historically, Parkdale-High Park had lots of affordable housing including rented apartments, flats in houses and rooms in rooming-houses. They served populations from vulnerable residents to recent immigrants, from young to old, and from low- to middle-income families.

The early 2000s turned out to be the tail-end of an era when half of a young, working couple like me could afford to buy a house in this diverse neighbourhood -- big enough for a family, but with a manageable mortgage. Then prices skyrocketed for a decade. Now, the neighbourhood has become expensive and homogeneous, in no small part due to renovictions.

My local Facebook group is now full of about-to-be renovicted neighbours in search of elusive rental housing. There is more demand for rental homes, but fewer and pricier units available. Many have reluctantly left the neighbourhood. Their loss depletes our diversity, our social capital and community connections. And from a social work perspective, I see how those with homes don’t realize they’re only one lost job, divorce, one life-limiting diagnosis, a major interest rate hike, or bout of mental illness away from losing their own homes, be they rented or mortgaged.

Developers capitalize on housing worries by suggesting the only answer is high-rise condos in our low-rise community. True, to get to critical density, height is needed. But the prices of new units are out of reach for most renovicted people. Furthermore, condos privilege a profit agenda, not a community-building agenda. Few developments include sufficient affordable housing, defined as monthly housing costs of less than 30% of a family’s income. There’s no mandate to include retail scaled for independent businesses, or spaces flexible enough to accommodate people throughout the life-cycle. New developments often don’t provide sufficient green and public spaces.

From a life-cycle perspective, I worry that in a decade people who have plowed a hefty chunk of net worth into creating single family homes will be in a bind. When kids are gone and parents need to downsize and retire, who will be able to buy these large, single-family homes at future price levels? Not the young families who need that kind of space. With current price trajectories, owners hoping their houses will be their ticket to comfortable retirements may be vulnerable.

Perhaps the city should be planning now to convert some homes back into duplexes, triplexes or multiplexes. We’d alleviate financial pressure for owners and create units for those who need affordable accommodation.

Toronto has thus far missed the boat on creating workable multiplexing regulations. A look at what it takes to convert to a duplex or triplex puts many people off. Unlike cities like Boston or London, we haven’t caught on to how to convert existing housing stock to multi-family dwellings. Which is unfortunate -- streamlining multiplex conversions could double Toronto’s liveable, affordable housing without zoning changes, major investments or disruption.

Governments should simplify regulation and create incentives, so we can shift back to multi-family housing in Parkdale-High Park and beyond. We could get our community diversity back. While we may not be able to halt gentrification, we could roll back renoviction, and provide more people with a lifetime of safe and affordable housing in a cohesive community.

Note on the Guest Column

The issue of gentrification was in the news this June, 2017 with the publication of Catherine Jheon’s controversial article in Toronto Life. She describes renovating a dilapidated rooming-house, home to several individuals with drug addiction, into a family home. She appeared to have no empathy or concern for those who are being made homeless. This is not a new issue for Parkdale-High Park, which has traditionally been home to many rooming-houses, which, while not ideal, provided shelter for many vulnerable citizens.

Many have spoken out passionately and creatively against Jheon’s piece. For example, Todd Ferguson set up a crowdfunding campaign for the “poor renovators,” and donated all the proceeds to organizations who support tenants’ rights (Mintz, 2017). And most recently tenants have undertaken a rent strike against delinquent landlords (Mathieu, 2017).

The requirements for Toronto Star guest columns vary from timely, relevant and under 700 words, to a rich description of what editors look for in a guest column (see Appendix A). I aspire to the second set of requirements, particularly remembering the audience isn’t my classmates.

What I wanted to do in this piece was to name the decision to re-make a home by displacing someone else. This is the kind of piece that suits The Toronto Star, which has a social justice bent and a regular housing beat. I know from working as a journalist that The Star sees itself as a national paper thanks to the Internet, and is interested in personal, creative approaches to long-term issues. This piece is both close to my heart and local to my neighbourhood. In the popular literature, the idea of renoviction appears to have originated in Vancouver (e.g. Brend, 2016). The topic should resonate for anyone in rapidly-developing communities all over the province and country. Interestingly, in the academic literature, most references to renoviction seem to come from Sweden (e.g. Ärlemalm, 2013).

As a social work student, I am continually taking the concepts I’m learning and applying them to the neighbourhood in which I live. I try hard to translate academic and theoretical concepts into everyday language, making ideas accessible to those without formal training in social work. I’ve identified the macro-level policy issues that make the change strategy of multiplexing close-to-impossible in a jargon-free way (Aaron, 2009; Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation, 2016; Levinson King, 2016; City of Toronto, n.d.).

I’ve noticed my neighbours don’t see the structural and social impacts of their personal decisions, and I wanted to draw that connection. Nobody wants to admit to displacing the vulnerable, they always describe it as “asking the tenants to leave” when they set out to renovate. This needs to be named and called out on behalf of all those who don’t feel they have a voice. I also wanted to get those doing the displacing on-side by pointing out that one day they may well end up financially vulnerable, and that renoviction and gentrification diminishes the social capital of their neighbourhoods, as best elucidated by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone (2001).

It can be different. I lived in Paris’s 19th and 20th arrondissement from 2011-2014, which set a new high-water mark for me in socially-responsible urban housing. Setting aside the issues of redeveloping existing communities by fiat, Haussmann’s innovation in the 1800s was to specify mixed-use building requirements for all architects and developers. Every building was to accommodate people at every financial level. Thus to this day, street level houses retail, the first floor professional offices, and many business operators live above in owned or rented apartments. Lower-income workers rent out the top levels (Wikipedia, 2017). The government and corporate employers also provide housing subsidies so employees can afford to live near where they work. It was the most vibrant, heterogeneous neighbourhood I’ve ever lived in.

By contrast, in Toronto we’re seeing the neoliberal marketization of our neighbourhoods, with for-profit developments replacing the independently owned, low-rise, affordable streetscapes of our old neighbourhoods. Market forces conspire against affordable residential and commercial rents. Christopher Hume (2017) recently highlighted the kinds of policy changes cities like San Francisco have enacted to minimize this kind of development.

As social workers, we understand that when neighbourhoods become overpriced and exclusive, and many are forced to leave, everybody loses. We lose community networks and memory. If we still get to live there, we lose an inclusive community that functions for all (Parada, Barnoff, Homan, M. S., & Moffatt, 2010). We also lose “daytime residents” like retirees, those on social assistance, parents who can afford to stay home, and home-based workers. These are the people who provide a community with social capital: they’re volunteers at schools, outreach programs and agencies supporting seniors or mental health; they keep an eye on things when they walk to the shops, cafés or sit outside the church; they run independent businesses or are self-employed professionals.

Luckily, Parkdale-High Park has very active, powerful, and organized communities of residents with diverse needs, engaged in planning with the city and developers. People turn out to hold developers to account, most recently with the redevelopment of the Loblaws property at Bloor and Dundas West. With the support of local businesses (many of whose owners also live in the community), we’ve succeeded in building new community assets like a community recreation centre in Sorauren Park. Meanwhile, Parkdale Organize and Parkdale Community Legal Services support residents in holding landlords to account (Mathieu, 2017).   

I hope my column will help to educate and galvanize readers toward the kinds of action that could improve and sustain the neighbourhoods that make Toronto a great, modern city.

References

Aaron, Bob. (2009). How to create a legal second suite. The Toronto Star. Retrieved from https://www.thestar.com/life/homes/2009/06/06/how_to_create_legal_second_suite.html

Ärlemalm, J. (2013). Resisting renoviction: The neoliberal city, space and urban social movements. Arbetsrapporter Kulturgeografiska institutionen. Nr. 920. Retrieved from http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:698848/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Brend, Y. (2016, October 23). 'Vancouver shouldn't just be a city for the rich': Tenants call for restrictions on 'renovictions'. Retrieved July 14, 2017, from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/renoviction-sale-vancouver-8-families-1.3817870

Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation. (2016). How the strategy works - Permitting secondary suites. Retrieved July 14, 2017, from https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/inpr/afhoce/afhoce/afhostcast/afhoid/pore/pesesu/pesesu_001.cfm

City of Toronto. (n.d.). Chapter 150 specific use regulations. Retrieved July 14, 2017, from http://www.toronto.ca/zoning/bylaw_amendments/ZBL_NewProvision_Chapter150_10.htm

Jheon, Catherine. (2017). We bought a crack House. Toronto Life. Retrieved from http://torontolife.com/real-estate/parkdale-reno-hell/

Levinson King, Robin. (2016). Whatever happened to the Toronto duplex? Toronto Star. Retrieved from https://www.thestar.com/business/2016/02/09/what-ever-happened-to-the-toronto-duplex.html

Mathieu, Emily. (2017). Parkdale tenants kick off ‘rent strike’ to demand repairs, end to rent hikes. Toronto Star. Retrieved from https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/04/30/parkdale-tenants-kick-off-rent-strike-to-demand-repairs-end-to-rent-hikes.html

Mintz, Corey. (2017). Going to extravagant lengths to troll a Toronto Life hate-read. The Canadaland Show Online. Retrieved from http://www.canadalandshow.com/todd-ferguson-trolling-toronto-life/

Parada, H., Barnoff, L., Homan, M. S., & Moffatt, K. J. (2010). Promoting community change: Making it happen in the real world. Nelson Education.

Putnam, R. D. (2001). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Simon and Schuster.

Wikipedia. (2017). Haussmann’s renovation of Paris. A translation of De Moncan, P., & Heurteux, C. (2002). Le Paris d'Haussmann. Ed. du Mécène. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Paris