An illustration from the book Displacement City.
An illustration from the book Displacement City. Credit: Michael deForge Credit: Michael deForge

Displacement is such an intriguing word.

On one hand it refers to the physics of mechanical actions such as the weight or volume of liquid displaced/forced out of a position by an object. Household examples include water displaced when you sit in a very full bathtub or the ‘sous-vide’ method of cooking.

On the other hand, displacement is used to describe the unnatural movement of people such as:

“A person expelled, deported, or impelled to flee from his or her country of nationality or habitual residence by the forces or consequences of war or oppression,” –Merriam-Webster

Displacement when applied to people is the opposite of a dispassionate mechanical process. It is a process that involves loss, pain, death and in some cases is an instrument of genocide.

A history of displacement

History is full of examples of people’s displacement: the Irish famine migrants who came to Canada, the pogroms to eliminate groups of people based on religion or ethnicity, refugees fleeing war zones or natural disasters.

Within Canada, there is the shameful example of colonization of Indigenous peoples that included the removal/displacement of children to residential schools.

The United Nations (UN) addresses the issues of internally displaced persons who on a global level are impacted by violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters.

In 1998 advocates in Toronto recognized homelessness as the result of systemic human rights violations. Building on 50 years of international human rights declarations the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee issued a State of Emergency Declaration that homelessness in Canada was a national disaster, a form of internal displacement.

Danielle Koyama, a Toronto activist and frontline worker, examined homelessness in her 2002 theses ‘Internal displacement: A study of homelessness in the city of Toronto.’

Koyama found that homeless people met the UN definition of internally displaced persons. They had been forced out of their homes by social and political causes and the systemic violation of human rights. They shared similar experiences to internally displaced persons identified by the UN and suffered similar consequences from displacement.

Twenty-years later, without Canadian governments’ commitment to adequately fund social housing, homelessness worsened across the country to catastrophic proportions. The status quo meant full shelters, growing encampments, a high illness and death rate and public and media fatigue.

The pandemic made displacement impossible to ignore

Then a global pandemic arrived, and displacement became impossible to ignore.

Across the country the shuttering of community centres, libraries, coffee shops, further displaced unhoused people to the streets and parks, literally.

I had hoped that the anthology Displacement City. Fighting for Health and Homes in a Pandemic, which I co-edited with front-line worker Greg Cook, would be a postscript to the COVID pandemic. Instead, the book is launched this week in what many consider an eighth wave while brutal practices of displacement such as the closure of shelter-hotels and encampment evictions continue.

Book themes, ‘We are (NOT) in this together’, ‘Fighting Back’ and ‘Housing is a Human Right’ frame the 30 contributors’ writing, poetry, photos, and art.

Robyn Maynard in her foreword provides context for the struggle during the pandemic where people refused a politic of what Ruth Wilson Gilmore has called “organized abandonment” and instead provided community support and resistance.

Leigh Kern, Sandra Campbell, and Blue Sky with members of the homeless community provide instructive teachings on: “Institutions of childhood confinement, forced family separation, and displacement from the land are part of the Canadian architecture of genocide against Indigenous Nations.”

Their first paragraph begins like a screenplay for a post-apocalyptic film:

“On 17 March 2020, the City of Toronto fell silent. When the first COVID-19 stay-at-home orders were put into effect, Yonge Street emptied, and one could almost see Lake Simcoe when looking north from Dundas Square. People living on the land emerged from their corners of near-invisibility and began taking up space for themselves and helping each other survive in a shuttered city.”

Their chapter, in addition to one by Simone Schmidt and photographer Jeff Bierk show an extraordinary level of community building and support that one would normally only see in a natural disaster.

Greg Cook and Lorraine Lam further the description of policies and practices of displacement ranging from Toronto’s original shelters, the 19th century poor houses, to today’s practices of gentrification and enhanced policing of people sleeping outside.

Jen McIntyre, Steve Meagher, and a refugee family with children remind us that there were people ‘displaced there, displaced here.’ They describe the unique experiences of refugee families.

“For refugee claimants living in Toronto’s emergency shelter system during the pandemic, every single area of their settlement process was adversely affected: housing, health, education, employment, immigration, social connections. Services were shut down so quickly that they were met with many closed doors and very few answers. They were simply told to wait. Wait for social assistance. Wait for medical care. Wait for the lawyer to call.”

Michael Eschbach describes a dystopian roller coaster that included multiple displacements. Living in a shelter full of bunkbeds concerned about catching COVID, contracting COVID, moving to the COVID isolation hotel, then to a shelter-hotel, then being infected a second time, a trip back to the isolation hotel and back to the shelter-hotel.

Brian Cleary furthers the concerns of inadequate shelter conditions and his experience being ‘displaced,’ ie. kicked out of the shelter for speaking out about the conditions.

Nikki Sutherland, an Indigenous Cree woman recounts her displacement as a child of the Sixties Scoop. Further displacement ensued during the pandemic when she and a friend moved from a shelter to a tent due to various shelter and COVID restrictions.

Jennifer Jewell, a disabled woman who lived both outside in a park and at a shelter-hotel paints a stark picture of ableism that existed pre-pandemic and worsened in the lock-down. She reminds us of the dire and most basic need through the example of portable toilets that are not wheelchair accessible.

Disaster relief efforts during the pandemic were enormous

Frontline worker Diana Chan McNally, asks the obvious:

“How do you stay at home when you don’t have a home? For unhoused people, the pandemic starkly demonstrated how seemingly innocuous public health protocols, such as staying home, became both immaterial and taunting in the absence of brick-and-mortar housing. How do you self-isolate? How do you practice proper hygiene in the face of a deadly virus?”

She points out that drop-ins overnight had to provide the answers: “hot meals, clothing, on-site nurses, harm-reduction supplies, as well as washroom, shower, and laundry access – and the most basic need of escaping the elements.”

The Canadian Human Rights Commission recounts the heroic efforts of carpenter Khaleel Seivwright who built tiny wooden shelters for people living outside – shelters that were ultimately ‘displaced’ i.e., removed, and destroyed by the city.

Doctors Naheed Dosani and Trevor Morey describe the special challenges providing palliative care to unhoused people during the pandemic. Their story of meeting their 45-year-old patient with end-stage breast cancer at a downtown street corner to help her with nausea and pain symptoms is framed within a chapter that explains how and why health care and housing are necessary social policies.

Leilani Farha, global director of The Shift is clear: “To say that Canada is failing to meet its international human rights obligations with respect to housing is an understatement.”

“In the face of a once-in-a-century pandemic, governments in Canada have underperformed. Rather than coming together to use the pandemic as an opportunity to develop new relationships, new methods of work, and new resources, governments have tended towards the same old. Homeless people have been displaced from spaces and places in which they felt safe, and governments have largely denied renters any significant support while wringing their hands about the best way to assist first-time home buyers and support developers.”

The book closes with journalist Shawn Micallef’s afterword where he describes the social housing he sees on his walks and bike rides.

They are in all our neighbourhoods. A product of when we once had a national housing program.

That’s the message and solution.

To learn more about Displacement City, listen to Cook and Crowe’s interview with rabble radio’s Stephen Wentzell here.

Cathy Crowe

Cathy Crowe

Cathy Crowe is a street nurse (non-practising), author and filmmaker who works nationally and locally on health and social justice issues. Her work has included taking the pulse of health issues affecting...