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Thinking beyond Residualism: Envisioning Alternative Community Housing Futures
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- Author(s) / Creator(s)
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Canada’s community housing sector encompasses a range of housing types operated by public, non-profit and cooperative housing organizations. Today, the sector is an important albeit residual part of Canada’s housing system. It provides subsidized homes to roughly 4-5% of households in Canada, a majority of whom are low-income. In the broader housing imaginary, community housing tenants are positioned, in material and symbolic ways, on the periphery of Canadian society. While this imaginary is emblematic of present-day neoliberal housing regimes, it sits uneasily alongside the vision of community housing articulated in the 1970s. During this period, tens of thousands of units of community housing materialized out of a social democratic imaginary, including its commitment to social solidarity through the de-commodification of housing for working and middle class households. What lessons can be learned from the past when looking forward to the future of community housing in Canada? This paper draws on theory from political-economy and uses historical methods to draw lessons from the 1970s – both in terms of institutional obstacles and institutional breakthroughs – to identify pathways forward that lead to a more just future; namely, towards a renewed housing system that actively promotes egalitarian redistribution and emancipatory recognition instead of economic inequality and social oppression.
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- Date created
- 2024-10-01
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- Subjects / Keywords
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- Type of Item
- Report