Mensah & Tucker-Simmons - final before TS

Correspondence Address: Joseph Mensah, Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York
University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3; Email: jmensah@yorku.ca

ISSN: 1911-4788

Volume 15, Issue 1, 81-101, 2021

Social (In)justice and Rental Housing
Discrimination in Urban Canada: The Case
of Ethno-racial Minorities in the Herongate
Community in Ottawa

JOSEPH MENSAH
York University, Canada

DANIEL TUCKER-SIMMONS
Avant Law, Canada

ABSTRACT In 2015, the predominantly visible minority immigrant community of
Herongate, in Ottawa, Ontario, was slated for redevelopment by its landlord,
Timbercreek Asset Management. This redevelopment involved mass eviction of the
incumbent tenants, demolition of the existing affordable housing and its replacement
with luxury rentals, which, by all indications, are beyond the financial reach of the
former Herongage tenants. This paper seeks to problematize large-scale residential
real estate redevelopment in Canada and examine its impact, using the Herongate
situation as a case study. Among other things, it profiles the Herongate community, its
history and present redevelopment, and explores the legal framework, and the limits
thereof, constraining mass evictions of this type in Ontario. The findings indicate that
the selection of Herongate for redevelopment was not fortuitous; generally, racialized
and immigrant communities like Herongate are disproportionately likely to be
selected for large-scale redevelopment projects, and thus subjected to mass-evictions.
Further results suggest that the dissolution of the Herongate community – and the
attendant dislocation of its members – has exacted a pronounced social and economic
toll and compounded the racial discrimination already experienced by the former
Herongate residents, most of whom are visible minorities. The paper concludes with
an appeal to imbue the redevelopment process with a greater regard for social justice,
and a right to housing as a policy solution to address the injustice caused by real
estate redevelopment.

KEYWORDS housing discrimination; mass evictions; social justice; gentrification;
Ottawa

Joseph Mensah

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 14, Issue 2, 81-101, 2020

Introduction

In his “Letter from America,” written as a prologue to Danny Dorling’s
Injustice: Why Social Inequality Still Persists, Sam Pizzigati (2015) observes
that “injustice envelopes us today and assaults us from every direction. We
can’t escape it. Injustice lurks everywhere we look, everywhere we click.
Week by week, only the particulars change” (p. xiv). One such particular is
what we grapple with in this paper: the mass eviction of a group of low-
income minority renters in the Herongate community in Ottawa. As Amartya
Sen (2009) points out, “what moves us… is not the realization that the world
falls short of being completely just… but that there are clearly remediable
injustices around us which we want to eliminate” (p. vii; emphasis added).
Convinced that some forms of injustice are remediable, this paper sheds light
on the Herongate situation, and provides reasoned arguments to promote
social justice in Canada’s housing market, in general, and the Herongate
community, in particular. The paper draws its theoretical insights from John
Rawls’s (1971) conception of social justice as fairness and Danny Dorling’s
(2015) analysis of why social inequality persist.

In 2015, the corporate landlord of the Herongate housing complex,
Timbercreek Asset Management, began to implement a phased demolition of
its properties in the Herongate community. The first phase, which began in
2015, affected some 80 units in Herongate (Kestler-D’Amours, 2018). A
notice for the second, which was slated for 2018 and affected 150 units, was
served on tenants by May of 2018, with the termination date of September
2018 (Kestler-D’Amours, 2018). By all indications, the notice complied with
the minimum notice requirements and other obligations under the Residential
Tenancies Act of Ontario. In fact, the tenants in the 150 units have all been
evicted; the last ones left the complex in November 2018. Media accounts
have it that the landlord wants to demolish the Herongate units mainly
because, from the perspective of the landlord, the affected units are simply
beyond repair (Schnurr, 2018). Couched in the theorization of social justice
by Rawls (1971) and Dorling (2015), this paper examines the dynamics of
housing discrimination and mass eviction, using the Herongate situation as its
main point of departure. More specifically, we examine the causes and
manifestations of housing discrimination in Canada, and explore whether the
Herongate situation exemplifies the phenomenon or not. To the extent that
the Herongate neighbourhood is an ethno-racial enclave, occupied mainly by
visible minorities and Muslims, we synthesize the extant literature on the
formation of ethnic enclaves, the (de)merits of living in ethnic enclaves, and
how mass evictions affect people in such neighbourhoods and Herongate.
Finally, we take on the issue of “a right to housing,” and shed light on how
mass evictions are regulated in Canada in the context of this human rights
ethos.

There are a number of unique features about Herongate that make it
particularly well suited for a case study of modern gentrification and housing

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Studies in Social Justice, Volume 14, Issue 2, 81-101, 2020

discrimination in Canada. For one, the fact that the Herongate community is
virtually coterminous with the StatsCan census tract 5050007.02 permits a
detailed analysis of the ethno-racial facets of gentrification processes. In
addition, Herongate’s socio-economic composition makes it an archetypal
example of an urban space that is susceptible to the encroachments of
contemporary gentrification. It has a high density of people of colour (70%),
immigrants (52%), and Muslims, and it is relatively poor. Further, unlike the
dismantling of Africville and similar urban renewal projects of the 1960s and
1970s, which were state-led initiatives, the forced displacement of Herongate
residents was driven entirely by a financialized, corporate landlord, a
somewhat newer and understudied phenomenon in the Canadian urban
context (Fields, 2014; Mensah, 2002).

Drawing on the extant literature as well as data from Herongate, the
specific questions addressed in this paper include the following: What is
housing discrimination, and what evidence is there to suggest that it occurs in
Canada? How and why do ethnic enclaves form? What are the causes of
large-scale evictions, and which parts of the city usually attract such fates?
How does mass eviction affect its victims? To what extent are the existing
Canadian regulations on mass evictions efficacious in addressing the
Herongate situation? We intend to show that, indeed, Canadian cities,
including Ottawa, are not immune to the phenomenon of housing
discrimination, and that Blacks feature markedly among its victims. While
the Herongate case study corroborates the extant literature on housing
discrimination in Canada, as we shall soon see, it exhibits a clear novelty in
dealing with people who are, simultaneously, vulnerable to discrimination
from the standpoints of their race, religion, and social class. The mutually
reinforcing nature of this triple-jeopardy of discrimination makes the
Herongate situation highly detrimental to the lives of the victims. Also, while
most of the previous studies deal with the experience of housing
discrimination at the micro or individual level, at its core, the Herongate case
is about the experience of housing discrimination at the macro or group level
by way of mass eviction. Naturally, then, the ensuing discussion goes
beyond matters of individual identity and individual justice to those of
collective identity and social justice, thereby eliciting discourses of collective
action, social resistance, and mass compensation.

In addition to providing much-needed advocacy, and attendant publicity, in
support of those evicted from the Herongate community and others like them
who are fighting against rental discrimination, the paper could serve as a
handy backgrounder for social justice and public interest legal practitioners
and advocates grappling with housing discrimination in Canada. Before
examining the theoretical base of the study, the next section provides a brief
overview of the Herongate community.

Joseph Mensah

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 14, Issue 2, 81-101, 2020

The Herongate Community in Ottawa: A Profile

The Herongate neighbourhood is situated some seven kilometres south of
downtown Ottawa and corresponds with census tract Number 5050007.02.
The neighbourhood is bounded in the north and east by the community of
Alta Vista, in the south by South Keys, and in the west by Ridgemont.
According to the census, Herongate had a population of 4,681 in 2016, which
represented some 0.35% of Ottawa’s total population of 1,23,783 at that time
(Statistics Canada, 2016).

Beginning in the early 1990s and continuing into the 2000s, Herongate
attracted an increasing number of immigrants and their families, particularly
those of Somali origin fleeing civil war. From the 1990s until the present,
Herongate was transformed incrementally into a predominantly immigrant
community. Perhaps the most striking feature of the Herongate Community
was the overwhelming presence of visible minorities. By 2016, as many as
70% of the residents in Herongate were visible minorities, compared to an
overall visible minority proportion of 21.6% in Ottawa (Statistics Canada,
2016). According to the 2016 census, 30.9% of Herongate’s resident were
Blacks, 15.2% were Arabs, and 11.8% were South Asians; the comparable
figures for Ottawa in general for these ethnic groups at the time were 6.0%;
3.8%, and 3.1%, respectively. Additionally, by 2016, more than half of
Herongate’s residents were immigrants, while only 19.7% of Ottawa’s
residents were immigrants (Statistics Canada 2016).

With such a high concentration of visible minorities and immigrants, it was
not surprising that many Herongagte residents were of low-income
background, with some 49.1% of them having incomes of under $40,000 per
year by the 2016 census, compared to 21.2% of Ottawa’s residents who
belonged to this income category then. Even though there is no data on
housing quality in Herongate, anecdotal reports by the residents and the
landlord suggest that much of the complex required major repairs or
redevelopment entirely. Partly for this reason as well as others that are
elaborated below, Herongate was also an affordable place to live, with
significantly lower average rents than Alta Vista on its northern border as
well as much of the rest of Ottawa.1

Some of the evicted Herongate tenants and other tenants from cognate
properties owned by the same landlord, together with tenants from nearby
properties owned by other landlords, have formed the Herongate Tenant
Coalition (HTC) to resist the eviction, both through organizing efforts and
through a legal application to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. A 2018
HTC census found that approximately 120 of the 150 townhouses slated for
demolition were occupied, and provided housing for approximately 550

1 The average rent statistics produced by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation do not
include specific statistics for Herongate. However, reports from 36 evicted tenants suggest that
most Herongate residents either had to pay significantly higher rents or had to downsize when
they moved to other areas of Ottawa.

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people, including some 200 children (HTC, 2018). Moreover, nearly 90% of
the tenants captured by the HTC census were racial minorities, with Somali
immigrants accounting for about 44%; a significant proportion of the
remainder were Arab. The HTC census also revealed that a sizeable
proportion of the Herongate tenants were newcomers to Canada; and 21 of
the units were homes to people who were receiving support from the Rent
Geared to Income (RGI) program in the city (HTC, 2018).

Theoretical Grounding

This section sets the theoretical context by discussing our conception of
social justice, together with our views on why social injustice persists in
Canada and around the world, drawing primarily on the works of Rawls
(1971) and Dorling (2015), respectively.

Theorizing Social Justice: The Rawlsian Approach

Given the diversity of perspectives underpinning the regulation of social
(in)justice, it is unsurprising that the theorization of social justice remains an
area of intense debate. Different principles yield different theories, with
varying emphasis on themes such as desert, merit, entitlement, equality of
opportunity, and equality of outcomes. Perhaps the most substantive
contemporary theory of social justice comes from the work of John Rawls
(1971), who sees social justice as a demand for fairness. Even though it is
virtually impossible to do justice to the Rawlsian theory of “justice as
fairness,” it is still worthwhile to identify its salient features to help ground
our ensuing discussion properly.

Any fair distribution of benefits and burdens of society is expected to entail
equality. However, equality means different things to different people, with
some seeing it in terms of equal distribution of outcomes and others in terms
of equal distribution of opportunities. Rawls (1971) made a ground-breaking
contribution to the debate on the relationship between social justice and
equality with his emphasis on fairness. His theory starts with a thought
experiment in which people find themselves in an “original position” from
which they are working together to form a new society. How do individuals
in this original position establish the principles of justice for their new
society? To address this questions, Rawls uses his famous metaphor of a “veil
of ignorance” to postulate a situation in which all those who form the new
society are ignorant of their place in it: they do not know their own
background characteristics such as age, class, creed, place of birth, and
gender. Rawls argues that to be fair is to be impartial, and the most
reasonable way to be impartial, in his view, is to operate behind a veil of
ignorance. The overarching argument here is a simple one: even though we

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Studies in Social Justice, Volume 14, Issue 2, 81-101, 2020

might want to promote our self-interest, because we do not know our own
place in society, we will play it safe and ensure that no one group is
disadvantaged in order to give advantage to another group.

By far the most important aspect of Rawls’s (1971) theory for our present
study is his difference principle, which posits that inequality in the
distribution of scarce goods and services is justified if and only if it serves to
increase the advantage of the least favoured groups in society. This is how
Rawls describes the application of the difference principle:

In applying it, one should distinguish between two cases. The first case is that in
which the expectations of the least advantaged are indeed maximized… The
second case is that in which the expectations of all those better off at least
contribute to the welfare of the more unfortunate. (p. 78)

Invariably, the Herongate situation has “winners” and “losers,” with

serious social justice implications, which are clearly amenable to a Rawlsian
analysis. Drawing on the difference principle, we urge the powers-that-be to
review all aspects of the case to see whether or not the mass eviction stands
to increase or decrease the advantage of the least favoured group. Rawls’
(1971) difference principle requires us to make the worst-off members of
society as well-off as possible in our social justice estimation. In the next
section, we examine why social injustice and inequality persist even in a rich
country such as Canada, drawing on the work of Dorling (2015).

Why Social Injustice and Inequality Persist: Insights from Danny Dorling

Regardless of where one stands in theorizing social (in)justice and inequality,
we all have good reasons to appreciate Danny Dorling’s (2015) recent
contribution to the discussion through his book Injustice: Why Social
Inequality Still Persists. In this book, Dorling examines the myths that sustain
inequality in society. According to Dorling, inequality persists because of
five main myths, including the beliefs that elitism is efficient, exclusion is
necessary, prejudice is natural, greed is good, and despair is inevitable. As
Sam Pizzigati (2015) points out in his prologue to Dorling’s book, “we have
simply imbibed too many myths from those who lord over us” (p. xvi); and
Dorling’s effort is to cut through these myths to help ameliorate the situation.

According to Dorling (2015), one of the enduring myths that sustain
inequality is the belief that elitism is efficient, and that people get to the top
through meritocracy. Feeding into this myth is the idea that the elite are,
perhaps, a gift to others, who should be grateful for the elite’s talents and
rewards. In Dorling’s view, people are very similar in ability, and for the elite
to think that they are perhaps superhuman – without acknowledging the inter-
generational transmission of privileges, wealth, and other advantages –
misses the point, and, indeed hurts not only the poor but also the elite
themselves.

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Another myth that sustains inequality, according to Dorling (2015), is the
belief that exclusion is necessary. In a way, this myth emanates from the first
one, as elitism is often used to justify exclusion. As inequality widens
through elitism, social and spatial exclusions become commonplace. The
third myth in Dorling’s account is the belief that prejudice is natural, which
is, in turn, a derivative of the preceding two. As he puts it:

Elitism and exclusion have further causes and corollaries, and the chief among
these is prejudice. As elitism and inequality rise, and as more people become
socially excluded… those at the top more often look down on others with ever
greater distain and, at the same time, with fear, as evidenced by growing social
segregation. (p. 8)

The idea that prejudice engenders fear is worthy of note here, since it

underpins much of the racism and Islamophobia that undermine the wellbeing
of racialized people in many Western countries, including Canada. The next
myth exposed by Dorling (2015) concerns the belief that greed is good.
Dorling traces the greed that led to the financial crisis of 2008, for example,
to the rise of elitism, exclusion, and prejudice in the preceding years. Dorling
notes that “by late 2014, chief executives of UK FTSE 100 firms were paid,
on average, 342 times more than their minimum wage employees” (p. 233).
Needless to say, the situation in Canada is not much different.

The final myth presented by Dorling (2015) concerns the belief that
despair is inevitable. There are indications that despair (in many of its guises,
including fear, mistrust, uncertainties, anger, stress, and depression) has
increased in recent years, as intra- and inter-national inequalities widen. As
Dorling rightly notes, “human beings are not mentally immune to the effect
of rising elitism, exclusion, prejudice and greed. They react like rats in cages
to having their social environments made progressively more unpleasant…
the greater the dose of inequality, the higher the response in terms of poor
mental health” (p. 305). Dorling urges us not to give in to despair as though it
is inevitable, for it is not.

What lessons can we glean from Dorling’s (2015) work for our
examination of the Herongate situation? Media accounts suggest that the
corporate landlord of the Herongate complex is planning to upgrade the
property for a more affluent clientele of tenants. Clearly, then, some elitism is
implicated in the endeavour, as the planned eviction is to benefit the owner,
as well as those in the top end of the housing market. Similarly, the eviction
entailed exclusion, since the plan is to replace the former low-income tenants
with affluent tenants. Also, there is some prejudice involved to the extent that
most of the evicted tenants were minorities, the majority of whom are Black
and Muslims who routinely encounter racism and Islamophobia in Canada.
Moreover, the planned upgrade, and the rent hike that would invariably come
with it, points to some selfish desire or greed (justified or not) on the part of
the owner. From Dorling’s work, we are convinced these dynamics are

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Studies in Social Justice, Volume 14, Issue 2, 81-101, 2020

neither inevitable nor justified, and neither is the despair they engender for
the individual and the collective.

Understanding Housing Discrimination and its Prevalence in Canada

Housing discrimination is a social practice in which individuals or families
are treated unfairly in their effort to access or retain housing, based on their
background characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, social class, gender,
disability, or sexual orientation (Lemert, 2011, p. 146; Scott & Marshall,
2009, p. 189). Thus, housing discrimination is not limited to unfair treatment
in accessing housing in a particular building or location; it also involves
prejudicial treatment in retaining housing. Clearly then, there are
exclusionary and non-exclusionary dimensions to housing discrimination.
The former connotes “actions and practices that exclude an individual or a
family from obtaining the housing of their choosing [while the latter]… refers
to discriminatory actions that occur within an already established housing
arrangement” (Roscigno et al., 2009, p. 52).

There is considerable evidence to show that housing discrimination exists
in Canada, and this is unsurprising, given the prevalence of discrimination in
Canadian society, especially as it pertains to racialized people in
employment, education, and law enforcement (James, 2012; Tanovich, 2006;
Tator & Henry, 2006). The common methodologies used to determine
whether housing discrimination exist or not include housing discrimination
audits or paired-testing methods, quantitative surveys, and qualitative
interviews. With housing discrimination audits, two people – normally one
White and the other a visible minority – pose as equally qualified home
seekers, inquire about the availability of apartments or homes, and record
their respective experience regarding whether they were called back, whether
they ware told the unit was (un)available, whether they were required to pay
any fee or deposit, etc.

Even though paired-testing studies are uncommon in Canada, some
noteworthy ones exist, including the pioneering works of Chandra (1973) in
Montreal; the Manitoba Association of Rights and Liberties (1981) in
Winnipeg; Garon (1988) in Montreal; and Henry (1989) in Toronto. A more
recent paired-testing study was conducted by the Center for Equality Rights
in Accommodation (2009), which found significant levels of discrimination
against all five groups studied: lone parents, Blacks lone parents, people with
mental illness, South Asians, and people on social assistance.

In addition to this paired-testing research, there are numerous studies in
Canada that rely on either quantitative surveys or qualitative interviews, or
both, in cities such as Montreal, London, Winnipeg, Ottawa and Toronto,
with the latter featuring most prominently (Hulchanski, 1993; Hulchanski &
Weir, 1992; Mensah & Williams, 2014; Murdie, 1994, 2002, 2003; Owusu,
1996; Teixeira, 2006, 2008). While many of these studies deal exclusively

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with a particular ethno-racial group, some of them examine how two or more
groups compare with each other, with African immigrants featuring quite
frequently in these comparisons. For instance, Murdie (2002) compares the
housing discrimination faced by Somalis and Polish immigrants in Toronto;
Mensah and Williams (2014) compare the cultural dimensions of the housing
problems and discrimination faced by Ghanaians and Somalis in Toronto; and
Teixeira (2008) compares the housing problems faced by Angolans,
Mozambicans, and Cape Verdean immigrants in Toronto. Teixeira’s (2008, p.
253) findings indicate that the darker the skin colour of the African
immigrant, the greater the risk of discrimination in the rental market.

Clearly, there are studies pointing to the prevalence of housing
discrimination in cities such as Toronto and Montreal, but is there any
evidence of housing discrimination in Ottawa? Our extensive literature search
uncovered only a few such studies in Ottawa. Still, the limited number of
studies on housing discrimination in Ottawa should not be taken as evidence
of no housing discrimination in Ottawa. There could be other reasons for this
lacuna, including the lack of interest in such a controversial topic among
mainstream Canadian social scientists and the dearth of a critical mass of
ethno-racial minority scholars to tell their own stories. Meanwhile, given the
prevalence of discrimination in many spheres of life in Canadian cities,
including Ottawa (Daigle, 2017; Mohamed, 2007; Social Planning Council of
Ottawa, 2008), it is hard to see how Ottawa could be immune from housing
discrimination.

One of the first studies on housing discrimination involving Ottawa was
conducted by the Canadian Civil Liberties Organization (CCLO) in 1976, and
published in 1977 by Alan Borovoy. In this study, the CCLO examined
whether real estate agents in Toronto, Hamilton, London, Windsor, and
Ottawa were willing to discriminate on behalf of a fictitious family, which
purportedly wanted to sell its home, but only to a White person. The findings
indicate that “of the 30 agents surveyed, 90% agreed to comply with the
‘gentleman’s agreement’ to discriminate” (Borovoy, 1977, as cited in Novac
et al., 2002, p.16). In another study in Ottawa, Rupert (1997) found that as
many as 60 neighbours mounted a campaign to oppose the opening of a
group home for teenagers under the care of the Children’s Aid Society of
Ottawa. In a related study, Hodan Mohamed (2007) examined the settlement
and integration challenges of Somali single mothers in Ottawa, together with
their health implications. She found that the women experienced race-based
discrimination and social exclusions in their efforts to settle in Ottawa, and
that many of their mental health problems were underpinned by racial
discrimination in employment and housing.

Joseph Mensah

Studies in Social Justice, Volume 14, Issue 2, 81-101, 2020

Ethno-racial Enclaves: Exploring their Formation and (De)merits

From the standpoint of social theory, “ethnicity” is a socially constructed
attribute of individuals or groups based on their culture or nationality.
Members of an ethnic group, therefore, share a common cultural heritage
(Macionis & Gerber, 1999, p. 324). Ethnicity is often distinguished from
“race,” which is also a socially constructed attribute, but based on people’s
physical characteristics, such as skin colour or hair texture (Mensah, 2002, p.
16). While the two concepts are often used interchangeably, they are, indeed,
different. Thus, we find some scholars (Mensah & Williams, 2017) using the
term ethno-racial to be all-embracing in an effort to avoid the conflation of
the two concepts.

An “enclave” connotes the spatial concentration of a particular group
within a city (Qadeer et al., 2010; Walks & Bourne, 2006), while an “ethnic
enclave” implies the spatial concentration of an ethnic group and its cultural
institutions and businesses (Qadeer et al., 2010). Another closely related
concept is that of a “ghetto.” While “ethnic enclave” and “ethnic ghetto” are
related, they are different because of their disparate formation. Enclaves are
normally formed voluntarily by their residents, within the strictures of the
housing market and prevailing institutions and norms. Ghettoes, on the other
hand, are mostly formed as a result of extreme social exclusion practiced by
mainstream society. Of course, there is usually outside pressure behind the
formation of both ghettoes and enclaves; however, the level of pressure is
more intense in the case of ghetto formation. Ethnic enclaves are generally
looked upon far more favourably by outsiders, as “positive” spaces with some
benefits to their residents, compared to what ghettoes could ever offer. The
available Canadian literature indicates that ghettoes, at least those that are
comparable to what obtain in the United States, do not exist in Canada
(Murdie, 1994; Qadeer et al., 2010; Walks & Bourne, 2006).

The spatial concentration of ethnic minorities in ethnic enclaves is often
seen as a form of racial segregation, with all the pejorative connotations that
the term conjures. To be sure, ethnic enclaves can undermine the integration
and social mobility of some minorities. For one thing, life in the ethnic
enclave undercuts minorities’ effort to learn the official language of the host
society, as they are constantly interacting mainly with people of their own
ethnicity in their native language. Also, given the lack of local resources and
employment opportunities in many ethnic enclaves, residents often endure
long spells of un- and under-employment, low-income and, sometimes,
problems of crime. Meanwhile, as Mensah and William (2017) note in their
thought-provoking book, Boomerang Ethics:

Despite the negative perceptions of minority enclaves in the minds of some
Canadians, it would be erroneous to think that there is nothing good about these
places. Among other things, spatial concentration allows ethno-racial minorities
to maintain their cultural values and practices, strengthen their social networks
and, ultimately, enhance their intragroup social cohesion. (p. 62)

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Moreover, studies (e.g., Peach, 1996; Phillips, 2007; Walks & Bourne,

2006) show that such clusters allow minorities to attain the requisite critical
mass of population to support their economic enterprises and sociocultural
institutions. More often than not, the social networks engendered by these
enclaves give ethnic-owned businesses a competitive edge over other
businesses operating in these spaces. Finally, ethnic enclaves provide some
level of defense against racial discrimination from the majority.

Urban Renewals, Gentrification, and the Mass Eviction of the Urban
Poor

The prevailing literature generally deals with large-scale demolitions and
evictions in cities under the umbrella of “urban renewal,” which is often used
interchangeably with such terms as “urban redevelopment,” “urban
reconstruction,” and “urban revitalization,” depending on place and time.
Over the years, urban renewal has been used to describe large-scale
redevelopment of “the built environment in downtown and older inner-city
neighbourhoods, typically undertaken by the State or more recently in the
strategic form of a public-private partnership” (Ley, 2002, p. 881). Urban
renewal projects were very popular from the 1950s to the 1970s, as they were
used to change the general layout of cities by renovating and rearranging
some buildings and roads (Uzun, 2003, p. 365). Indeed, since the publication
of Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), the use
of “urban renewal” has declined, with some scholars only deploying it in the
past tense, in an effort to avoid its associated baggage.

A closely related concept to urban renewal is gentrification. Ruth Glass,
who coined the term gentrification in 1964, used it to describe a form of
revitalization, entailing the upper-income (i.e., the gentry class) takeover of
Victorian mews in London, UK (Glass, 1964). In its contemporary usage,
gentrification connotes “the influx of upper- and middle-class households
into an area of old homes that were previously occupied by lower-middle and
low-income individuals and households” (Yeates, 1993, p. 221).

Since the global financial crisis of 2008, there is a burgeoning literature
pointing to a newer form of gentrification, induced primarily by a growing
financialization of the housing market (Aalbers, 2008, 2016; August &
Walks, 2018; Fields, 2014; Fields & Uffer, 2016; Rolnik, 2013). Perhaps, the
best depiction of the new gentrification is by August and Walks (2018) in
their observation that:

While traditional forms of gentrification involved the conversion of rental units to
owner-occupation, a new rental-tenure form of gentrification has emerged across
the globe. This is driven by financialization, a new tenant protection, and
declining-social housing production, and it is characterized by the replacement of
poorer renters with higher-income tenants. (p. 124)

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Studies in Social Justice, Volume 14, Issue 2, 81-101, 2020

Evidently, gentrification is taking on different shapes in different cities,

and, thus, becoming difficult to pin down as a phenomenon with a clear
explanation. While its older version was dominated by “mom and pop”
landlords, the newer version is underpinned by globalization and the growing
financialization of the economy underway, with ownership accruing to
private equity funds, financial asset management corporations, and real estate
investment trusts (August & Walks, 2018).

Moreover, the new gentrification involves what August and Walks (2018)
call “squeezing” and “gentrification-by-upgrading” (p. 124). With squeezing,
the financialized landlords try to get as much revenue as possible from the
incumbent renters. The common tactics used include rent increases; increases
in ancillary fees, such as fees for parking and laundry; reduced services and
maintenance; and harassment, disruptive renovations, and unwarranted
evictions, as witnessed in the Herongate complex. Gentrification-by-
upgrading is where the financialized landlord uses a host of sophisticated
asset management tactics to “upgrade, flip, and gentrify entire buildings”
(August & Walks, 2018, p. 124). The idea here is to reposition and transform
the buildings to help shift their tenant base from low- to high-income people.
In fact, media accounts suggest that the landlord of the Herongate complex
plans to upgrade the Herongate units to “build an alignment” with Alta Vista
an affluent and White community just north of Herongate (“Alta Vista
Residents,” 2016; “Petition,” 2017). Census data indicate that Alta Vista is
80% White, with about 55% of its households having incomes of over
$100,000 per year, which is far higher than what obtained in the Herongate
community, where only about five percent of the households had incomes of
over $100,000 by the 2016 census.

Clearly, regardless of their causes, gentrification and mass evictions are
exercises in displacement. The fact that neighbourhoods in and around the
inner city tend to attract such projects too is quite telling in the context of the
power differentials between the displacers and the displaced After all, the
inner city is where the advantages of proximity and easy access to historic
attractions are often found; why wouldn’t those with power manoeuver for
such spaces at the expense of low-income people with no power? Relatedly,
given the empirically verifiable overlap between race, class, and space in
urban Canada (Mensah & Williams, 2017), and more so in the United States,
it is unsurprising that such low-income neighbourhoods are mostly inhabited
by ethno-racial minorities and new immigrants who generally struggle to find
housing outside of the neighbourhood, due both to their exposure to housing
discrimination and their lack of financial resources.

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The Struggle for Housing at Herongate: Insights from Rawls and
Dorling

Dorling (2015) observes that “if you had to choose one word to epitomise the
nature of human society as it is currently arranged worldwide, there is no
better word than injustice” (p. 6). Regardless of how one looks at
gentrification and mass evictions, they often entail injustice of one form or
another. Some people are bound to gain, while others lose, depending on the
context of who is doing the eviction and what options are available to the
parties involved based on their respective socioeconomic and political power.
The benefits of such projects may include increased revenues from the
replenished housing stocks and the attendant increase in property tax, as well
as access to improved amenities in the neighbourhood. For the most part, the
new residents (most of whom tend to have more disposable income than the
incumbent tenants) demand more upscale goods and services, resulting in
what Lees et al. (2007, p. 131) have dubbed “boutiqueification.”

At the same time, not only are the incumbent tenants “forced to find
alternative housing, but they also face the emotional impact of removal from
social networks and familiar community structures” (Murdie & Teixeira,
2011, p. 73). Moreover, such large-scale evictions tend to affect low-income
people more, since they find it difficult to acquire alternative housing in other
parts of the city. The situation is even more damaging if the victims are racial
minorities for whom housing discrimination is a reality in most cities in
Canada. As the preceding paragraphs show, most of the tenants evicted from
the Herongate complex are Somalis and other visible minorities, who are,
susceptible to housing discrimination. Moreover, the work of Mensah and
Williams (2014) shows that Somali immigrants, in particular, often live
closer to their mosques to allow them to participate in their religious
practices, including praying five times daily. Additionally, Somalis and other
Muslims prefer to live in their ethnic enclaves where they can easily procure
religion-sanctioned (halal) food, and where women can wear hijab freely
without condescending looks from outsiders. Even the fact that some Islamic
sects disallow their members to borrow money with interest payments makes
it difficult for them to acquire mortgage in the mainstream banking system,
thereby undermining their home ownership. Add to these challenges large
household sizes – especially among Somalis (Mensah & Williams, 2014) –
and their need for prayer rooms and gendered spaces within their homes, and
one would appreciate the unique difficulties that Somalis and other Muslims
evicted from Herongate encounter in their search for affordable housing.

What would Rawls and Dorling say about the Herongate situation? How do
we reconcile the competing interest of the tenants and the landlord in the
context of social justice? What does the Herongate situation tell us about the
urban citizenship and sense of belonging of the evicted tenants, particularly
given that most of them look different and come from far away lands? Should
the evicted tenants be compensated, and if so by how much, knowing very

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well that the poor, beset with income insecurity, can be easily enticed to
accept low cash payments? Undoubtedly, some of the evicted tenants may be
able to afford their relocation with or without any support. However, for most
of them, the eviction is simply too much to bear, not only because of the
financial cost, but also because of the attendant emotional and health
consequences (Fullilove, 2001, 2004; Goetz, 2011; Paradis et al., 2014; Shah,
2013). As Fullilove (2004) observes, by destroying their individual and
collective identities and their social networks, such displacements shake up, if
not destroy, the basic roots of the displaced and their communities.

With the difference principle, Rawls (1971) entreats us to operate in ways
that increase the advantage of the truly disadvantaged in terms of money,
power, and access to scarce resources. Compared to the landlord and the
potential gentrifiers, the evicted Herongate tenants are the least favoured, and
thus deserve preferential treatment. Adherence to the difference principle can
come in many ways, ranging from the status quo to different levels of
compensation aimed at a reasonable amelioration of the monetary, emotional,
and health cost to the victims. With the Herongate tenants protesting against
their eviction, it follows that they would like to be reinstated; thus, from the
standpoint of the difference principle, it would be prudent to take their
request to return seriously. Should this demand be too much for the landlord
to bear, then different levels of compensation should be on the table for the
tenants. With the difference principle, Rawls draws our attention to the moral
power and obligation that people have regarding their sense of justice.
Similarly, Sen (2009) argues that “if someone has the power to make a
change that he or she can see will reduce injustice in the world, then there is a
strong social argument for doing just that” (p. 205). If one accepts this
argument, as we do, then it follows that people with power should neither
operate in their self-interest alone nor on the basis of mutual interest, but,
indeed, go further to address the unilateral obligation that comes with the
asymmetry of power they wield in society. Evidently, both Rawls and Sen
recognize the obligations of power and the need for the powerful to do more
to advance the wellbeing of the poor and marginalized to reduce injustice.

From the work of Dorling (2015), we know that injustice is not inevitable;
after all, hegemony breeds its own counter-hegemonic movement.
Accordingly, the Herongate community and its supporters should be
encouraged to resist the eviction, or pursue the commensurate compensation
to redress the monetary, emotional, and health costs implicated in the
eviction. To the extent the social justice advocacy is at its core moralistic,
what forms of resistance are ethically permissible? What can the evictees of
Herongate demand from the landlord and civic authorities, without infringing
on moral sensibilities? Notwithstanding – or, perhaps, because of – the moral
imperatives of social justice advocacy, the Herongate protestors should not be
faulted for their outrage. As Sen (2009) poignantly reminds us, resistance to
injustice is not only based on sound argument but it also draws on indignation
(p. 390). Still, among the most prudent approaches opened to the Herongate

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protesters are open-minded engagements with the housing gatekeepers;
petition-imbued public protest; and legal action, without any inclination
toward physical violence and the destruction of property.

The Herongate Situation: The Right to Housing and the Regulation of
Mass Evictions

The Herongate tenants and their allies engaged in various forms of resistance,
including lobbying politicians, public protest, and legal action. Still, they
were displaced and only minimally compensated. Though some were able to
relocate within the neighbourhood, many others moved to disparate
neighbourhoods and lost their connection to the Herongate community. Even
if some of the Herongate tenants are eventually afforded the right to return to
the new development, which is one of the legal remedies some of them have
requested from the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, they will never be
fully compensated for the substantial disruption to their lives or the erosion of
their community.

One way to realize greater justice in development projects like Herongate
is to recognize a right to housing in Canada. This right is enshrined in several
international covenants, most notably Article 11 of the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which
Canada is a signatory. The ICESCR’s broad guarantee of housing rights has
been interpreted to include specific protections against mass evictions for
large development projects. The institution tasked with reporting on and
advancing the rights enshrined in the ICESCR, the UN Committee on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, elaborated on specific rights with
respect to evictions in its General Comment Numbers 4, the Right to
Adequate Housing, and 7, the Right to Adequate Housing: Forced Evictions
(Kothari, 2007). These rights include a right for tenants to be consulted on
large-scale development projects that threaten to displace them, and a right to
return or permanent resettlement upon project completion. In 2007, the UN
Special Rapporteure published the Basic Principles and Guidelines on
Development-Based Evictions and Displacements, which enjoins states to
ensure, among other protections, that those displaced in mass evictions
carried out for the purposes of large-scale development may return upon
project completion (Kothari, 2007).

Although the ICESCR has been signed and ratified by Canada, it is yet to
be implemented by Parliament into domestic law. The absence of a domestic
law enshrining a right to housing means that although Canada has committed
itself internationally to upholding that right, there is no domestically
judiciable law to make it meaningful and enforceable, despite an impressive,
yet ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to have it read into sections 7 (right to
life, liberty, and security of the person) and 15 (right to equality) of the
Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the context of Charter litigation in

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Tanudjana v. Canada (Attorney General), 2014 ONCA 852. To date, whether
section 7 of the Charter guarantees a right to housing, or whether it imposes
any other positive obligation on the state to take action (rather than merely
restraining state action), is subject to an ongoing legal debate (Cottrill, 2018,
p. 84; Heffernan et al., 2015, p. 30). In the absence of a justiciable right to
housing in Canada, there is no general right of return for tenants evicted en
masse for the purposes of real estate redevelopment.2

It was not entirely fanciful for Timbercreek to assume that it could
redevelop Herongate from an affordable to luxury rental complex without
encountering major legal obstacles, such as the right to housing. In its
eviction of Herongate residents, Timbercreek complied with the Residential
Tenancies Act, which regulates evictions in Ontario, and it otherwise
followed municipal regulations for demolitions and property development.
Although the manner in which Timbercreek pursued its development violates
international law, it could do so with impunity in the absence of a
corresponding domestic law to stop it. A right to housing per se is therefore
not being asserted in the legal challenge launched by the Herongate Tenants
Coalition in the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario in Various Applicants v.
Timbercreek Asset Management Inc., et al. - HRTO File Numbers : 2019-
36509-1 to 2019-36523-I. Rather, the application advances novel arguments
based on the anti-discrimination provisions of the Human Rights Code of
Ontario, maintaining that it is discriminatory to displace a community
composed overwhelmingly of migrants, people of colour, and people sharing
other personal traits protected by the Code, in order to replace it with a
community of affluent whites.

Even if successful, the Herongate case will not result in the recognition of a
general right to housing in Canada. Although the Herongate tenants’
application argues in favour of a right to housing, that right is not being
advanced as the robust, constitutionally enshrined right that it was in
Tanudjaja (although the Herongate case could help lay the groundwork for
such a right in a subsequent case). Rather, the application argues that where a
violation of the right to housing, such as mass eviction without consultation
or the right to return, creates a discriminatory impact by adversely affecting
people because of their race, colour, and ethnicity, among other grounds, then
the Human Rights Code has been violated. Put another way, the argument is
that when a landlord develops its property, it is required by the Code to
ensure the development does not discriminate against people because of their
race, skin colour, or other personal traits protected by the Code. If the
application is successful, the practical consequence will be that developers in
Ontario would be prohibited from acquiring a predominantly immigrant or
racialized neighbourhood, and then evicting everyone for the purpose of
developing upscale rental housing or condos to rent to more affluent whites.

2 The notable exception is Toronto, and possibly other municipalities in Canada, which have
bylaws that empower the city to impose a right of return in certain circumstances.

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However, the rights being asserted in the Herongate case are not a perfect
substitute for a universal right to housing. They are an effective workaround
for some, at best. What if, for example, a developer takes over a poor white
working-class neighbourhood, evicts everyone, redevelops the property and
then rents to more affluent whites? Discrimination based on poverty or
economic status is not prohibited by the Code. So a mass eviction in those
circumstances is not prohibited because of the absence of racial, ethnic, or
other form of discrimination prohibited by the Code.

But should not the right to be free from arbitrary eviction be guaranteed to
everyone, including working class whites? If so, what would those rights look
like? How could they be enforced? More robust and meaningful housing
rights, and greater social justice in housing, are possible. A justiciable right to
housing has been implemented in other jurisdictions internationally, in some
cases with admirable results (see, for example, King, 2015). An exhaustive
list of states that have enshrined a right to housing in law is beyond the scope
of this article, but noteworthy examples include South Africa, Scotland, and
France. These countries and others have, to varying degrees, implemented the
housing rights enshrined in the ICESCR and ancillary documents. South
African courts, for example, have recognized a specific right of persons being
displaced by large development projects to meaningful engagement and
mandatory consultation (Chenwi, 2015, pp. 78-80). Had the right to housing
been implemented in Canada, the Herongate evictions may have looked much
different.

Conclusion

Forms of capital absorption in cities, including gentrification and mass
evictions, are dialectical processes, and thus entail creative destruction or
destructive creation. As such, these processes often have “losers” and
“winners;” and to the extent that they also have class and racial dimensions, it
is not hard to realize that it is the “poor, the underprivileged and those
marginalized from political power that suffer first and foremost” (Harvey,
2008, p. 33). It is clear from the preceding discussion that housing
discrimination is real in urban Canada. Additionally, it is evident that, unlike
the formation of ghettoes in the US, where extreme external pressures are
involved, ethnic enclaves, such as the Herongate Community in Ottawa,
come about mainly because they conform, at least in part, to the needs of the
minority group in question. Even though such segregated spaces often
engender negative connotations in the minds of outsiders, they help the
minority residents to sustain their cultural values, strengthen their social
capital and social cohesion, and ultimately promote their settlement and
integration in the host country. Clearly, then, mass evictions of minority
populations from their enclaves do not only take a monetary toll on residents,

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but they also exact considerable emotional, psychological, and health
consequences – all of which have social justice implications.

With insights from Rawls (1971) and Dorling (2015), we noted that it is
about time that landlords seeking mass evictions paid due attention to the
well-being of the incumbent tenants, especially when the tenants are low-
income minorities who are likely to face extreme difficulties in finding
housing outside of their enclave. Thus, mass eviction decisions should not be
informed by raw economic considerations alone, for there are always some
underlying ethical issues to be addressed. For one thing, if renovations lead to
improvement in the housing stocks, and even yield profit for the city,
developer, and landlord, at the expense of the vulnerable, weak, and poor
members of society, then what are we to make of the moral sensibilities of
our society? Moreover, how are we to protect the interests of the powerless
against those of the powerful? Rawls, for one, would expect us to maximize
the wellbeing of the powerless relative to the powerful in such situations.
And from Dorling’s work we know that resistance and counter-hegemonic
advocacy in such situations are worthwhile, since, in his view, injustice and
despair are neither justified nor inevitable. Meanwhile, as demonstrators and
social movement activists bring their loud laments about these mass evictions
to the public, it is uncertain whether their opposition will be sustainable
enough to produce any meaningful and mutually agreeable solution. Still,
there is hope, for urban resistant movements are increasingly going global,
with supporters and signs of rebellion coming from far and wide places with
the aid of social media. In addition to the pressures exacted by urban
resistant movements and the insights drawn from the works of Rawls and
Dorling, federal, provincial, and municipal governments have a role to play to
resolve this social (in)justice. A clear policy suggestion from the preceding
discussion is for the federal government to pass a domestically judiciable law
– in consonance with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights (ICESCR) – to uphold Canadians’ right to housing. Relatedly,
there is the need to establish a Mass Eviction Complaints Board, of a sort, at
the provincial or municipal level to help resolve the conflicting interests of
the parties involved in such disputes by conducting hearings and prescribing
legally binding compensations. Clearly, our approach to resolving the
Herongate situation has its limitations, since it dwells mainly on the anti-
discrimination provisions of the Human Rights Code of Ontario, which,
obviously, does not prohibit discrimination based on social class or poverty
per se. Thus, while poor Blacks can be protected by the Code, from the
standpoint of their race, the same cannot be said of poor Whites. Until
Canada enacts a domestically justiciable law to enforce the right to housing,
the need for further research to deal with the special case of poor Whites who
might fall prey to mass evictions cannot be over-emphasized.

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