Plain

It feels like housing is at a tipping point in the city of Edmonton. There have been four main events highlighting the situation:
These events should be understood within ongoing settler colonialism and a housing crisis endemic in Canada’s broader housing system.

Housing in Canada

• The state of housing both in Canada and globally is worsening, but the housing crisis is not new.
• Read more:
  Two-thirds of Canadian and American renters are in unaffordable housing situations

  While affordable housing policies in Canada emerged following the Second World War, colonialism is foundational to housing policy, evidenced by the high rates of housing vulnerability that Indigenous Peoples face.

Encampment sweeps violate human rights

• This isn’t happening, apparently, when it comes to encampments, which are both a site of human rights violations and of human rights claims.
• The coalition argued human rights were violated during encampment sweeps.
• Domicide is applicable to the encampment sweeps in Edmonton, the historical domicide that enabled the settlement of Edmonton in the first place, and the laws that governed the unsuccessful lawsuit launched by the Coalition for Justice and Human Rights.

Coming together in colonialism

• When authorities make reference to “public safety” concerns about encampment, unhoused people are positioned as dangerous.
• The destruction of those encampments simply drives people who are unhoused further to the margins.
• But punitive approaches like encampment sweeps perpetuate settler colonialism and prioritize the perceptions and preferences of the ruling class.

Katie MacDonald receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.