Document Type
Article
English Abstract
Homelessness, as a construct, is premised on settler colonial technologies of land ownership and private property. Encampments, as one of the most visible forms of homelessness, compel us to confront how our socio-legal processes undermine human rights and perpetuate inequity and oppression. How municipalities engage in the legal governance of encampments, often through eviction, exclusion, and criminalization, is a result of interlocking colonial and classist political economies. Borrowing from Collins’ “matrix of domination” and Smith’s “ruling relations”, this article examines the management and ultimate eviction of No Place Like Home, a tent encampment in a mid-size city in Western Canada. Drawing on fifty-four interviews with people experiencing homelessness, law enforcement, and other community members, as well as legal documents that ultimately led to the eviction of the encampment, we unpack the political domination of encampments that legitimize and prioritize the desires and social position of the housed population over the human rights of encampment residents. We argue that in their efforts to retain public property as an exclusive commodity for housed people, political actors used three tactics through which to justify the displacement of unhoused people and ultimately the denial of encampment residents as rights holders: 1) the invisibilization of Indigenous Peoples, and Indigenous women specifically, experiencing homelessness; 2) the construction of fire safety in the encampment as a public concern; and, 3) the prioritization of perceptions of safety among the general public to the detriment of the safety of encampment residents. Illuminating the intersection of colonial and class-based regimes embedded in the legal governance of encampments provides an avenue through which to advocate for the human rights of encampment residents.
Citation Information
Braimoh, Jessica; Dej, Erin; and Sanders, Carrie.
"‘Somebody’s street’: Eviction of Homeless Encampments as a Reflection of Interlocking Colonial and Class Relations."
Journal of Law and Social Policy
36.
(2023): 12-22.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.60082/0829-3929.1449
https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/jlsp/vol36/iss1/2
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19 To protect the identity of study participants we have altered all identifying information, including the name of the encampments, the city where the research took place, the surrounding area, and organizational names. After much deliberation, we also decided to anonymize the traditional territory upon which the City resides and the adjacent First Nations reserve. We believe it is imperative to acknowledge and name the Indigenous lands where this encampment is located but came to realize that it would jeopardize the anonymity of our participants, in particular one of the Indigenous women who experienced homelessness.
20 Notice of Application, 2018
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32 U.N. General Assembly Resolution 44/25, Convention on the Rights of the Child (20 November 1989); U.N. General Assembly Resolution 2200A (XXI), International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (16 December 1966)[ICESCR]; National Housing Strategy Act, S.C. 2019, c. 29, s. 313; Universal Declaration of Human Rights, GA Res 217A (III), UNGAOR, 3rd Sess, Supp No 13, UN Doc A/810 (1948) 71.
33 Collins, supra note 25.
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35 Indian Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. I-5). Thomas King, The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America (Toronto: Anchor Canada, 2012).
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37 Laurie Barron, "The Indian Pass System in the Canadian West, 1882-1935" (1988) 13:1 Prairie Forum 25.
38 Alex Williams, The Pass System: Life Under Segregation In Canada (Toronto: V Tape, 2015).
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40 Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang "Decolonization is not a Metaphor" (2012) 1:1 Decolonization, Indigeneity, Education, & Society 1 at 5.
41 Emily Paradis, "'I would like us to unite and fight for our rights together because we haven't been able to do it alone': Women's homelessness, disenfranchisement, and self-determination" in Jennifer Kilty, ed, Within the Confines: Women and the Law in Canada, (Toronto: Women's Press, 2014) at 52.
42 Brenna Bhandar, Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land, and Racial Regimes of Ownership (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018). https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822371571
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44 O'Grady et al, supra note 18.
45 Ibid; Joe Hermer & Elliot Fonarev, "The Mapping of Vagrancy Type Offences in Municipal By-Laws," Research Matters (22 July 2020), online: [https://www.homelesshub.ca/blog/mapping-vagrancy-type-offences-municipal-laws] [perma.cc/AQH3-X4HC].
46 Liam Casey, "Toronto mayor defends homeless encampment clearing amid criticism," Global News (23 June 2021), online: [https://globalnews.ca/news/7973445/trinity-bellwoods-park-homeless-encampment-eviction-john-tory/] [perma.cc/9PP7-WQAV].
47 Ibid.
48 See e.g. Kate Bueckert, "Mixed reception' from residents as A Better Tent City asks to move from Kitchener to Breslau," CBC News (2 June 2021), online: [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/a-better-tent-city-move-kitchener-woolwich-1.6049979] [perma.cc/4BUV-9NP2] (on the mixed public reaction to the relocation of the Better Tent City in the Region of Waterloo).
49 Sharon Chamard, "Homeless Encampments" Center for Problem-Oriented Policing (2010), online: [http://www.popcenter.org/problems/homeless_encampments] [perma.cc/S2RA-XJ3X].
50 Nick Blomley, Alexandra Flynn & Marie-Eve Sylvestre, "Governing the Belongings of the Precariously Housed: A Critical Legal Geography" (2020) 16:1 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 165. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-021020-105357
51 Tony Robinson, "No Right to Rest: Police Enforcement Patterns and Quality of Life Consequences of the Criminalization of Homelessness" (2019) 55:1 Urban Affairs Review 41; Forrest Stuart, "From 'Rabble Management' to 'Recovery Management': Policing Homelessness in Marginal Urban Space" (2014) 51:9 Urban Studies 1909; Stuart, Down and Out and Under Arrest: Policing and Everyday Life in Skid Row (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016). https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098013499798
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54 Blomley, supra note 50; Jennifer Wolch & Geoff DeVerteuil, "New landscapes of urban poverty management" in Jon May & Nigel Thrift, eds, Timespace: Geographies of Temporality, (London: Routledge, 2001) 149.
55 Joshua Freistadt, "No Dumping: Indigenousness and the Racialized Police Transport of the Urban Homeless" in Evelyn Peters & Julia Christensen, eds, Indigenous Homelessness: Perspectives from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, 2016) 67; Sherene Razack, "'It Happened More Than Once': Freezing Deaths in Saskatchewan" (2014) 26:1 CJWL 51 https://doi.org/10.3138/cjwl.26.1.51
56 National Housing Strategy Act, supra note 32, preamble.
57 Supra note 32 at Art. 11(1).
58 Ontario Human Rights Code, RSO 1990, c H 19, 2(2); British Columbia Human Rights Code, RSBC 1996, c 210, 10(1); Nova Scotia Human Rights Act, RSNS 1989, c 214, 5(1)(b).
59 Bhandar, supra note 42.
60 British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, "Human Rights and Duties in Housing", online: [http://www.bchrt.bc.ca/human-rights-duties/housing/index.htm] [perma.cc/P7KT-JME3].
61 James B. Baron, "Homelessness as a Property Problem" (2004) 36:2 The Urban Lawyer 273 at 284-85.
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64 Lived Experience Advisory Council, Nothing About us Without us: Seven Principles for Leadership and Inclusion of People with Lived Experience of Homelessness, (Toronto: The Homeless Hub Press, 2016).
65 Indigenous woman, interview code PWLE01.
66 Red Hill is a pseudonym for the first visible encampment in the City of Aster Falls. 67 Interview code SP03.
68 DeVertuil, May & Von Mahs, supra note 17.
69 Bhandar, supra note 42.
70 Interview code C13.
71 Supra note 65.
72 Gayatri Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" in Cary Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg, eds, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Illinois: Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, 1988) 271 at 280.
73 Supra note 65.
74 Tricia McGuire-Adams, "'This is What I Heard at Naicatchewenin': Disrupting Embodied Settler Colonialism" (2021) 6:1 Journal of Indigenous Wellbeing 7.
75 BCNPHA & Thomson Consulting, 2017 Homeless Count in Metro Vancouver. Final report, online: [http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/regional-
planning/homelessness/HomelessnessPublications/2017MetroVancouverHomelessCount.pdf] [perma.cc/88LV-K7A7].
76 Interview code SP01.
77 Interview code P03.
78 Chris Andersen, Race, Recognition, and the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015); Bonita Lawrence, 'Real' Indians and Others: Mixed-Blood Urban Native Peoples and Indigenous Nationhood (Vancouver, UBC Press, 2004).
79 Vowel, supra note 36.
80 Andersen, supra note 78; Mark Rifkin, "Settler Common Sense" (2013) 3:3 Settler Colonial Studies 322. https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2013.810702
81 Thistle, supra note 28; Farha & Schwan, supra note 1.
82 Collins, supra note 25.
83 Supra note 65.
84 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, GA Res 61/295, UNGAOR, 61st Sess, Supp No 53, UN Doc A/Res/61/295 (2007) [UNDRIP], Art. 10.
85 Ibid at Art. 21(1).
86 Ibid at Art. 23.
87 Interview code PWLE06.
88 Ibid.
89 Interview code PWLE07.
90 Interview code C14.
91 Salim Ahmed et al, "Barriers to Access of Primary Healthcare by Immigrant Populations in Canada: A Literature Review" (2016) 18:6 Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health 1522 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-015-0276-z
Angela Kalich, Lyn Heinemann & Setareh Ghahari, "A Scoping Review of Immigrant Experience of Health Care Access Barriers in Canada" (2016) 18:3 Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health 697 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-015-0237-6
Miriam Stewart et al, "Multicultural Meanings of Social Support among Immigrants and Refugees" (2008) 46:3 International Migration 123. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.2008.00464.x
92 Vowel, supra note 36 at 115.
93 Supra note 87.
94 David G. Embrick & Wendy Leo Moore, "White Space(s) and the Reproduction of White Supremacy" (2020) 64:14 American Behavioral Scientist 1935 at 1941. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764220975053
95 Andrea Smith, "Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy" in Daniel Martinez Hosang, Oneka LaBennett & Laura Pulido, eds, Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century, (Berkeley: University of California, 2012) 66 at 69. https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520273436.003.0005
96 Interview code PWLE04.
97 Arundhati Virmani, "National Symbols under Colonial Domination: The Nationalization of the Indian Flag, March-August 1923" (1999) 164 Past & Present 169; Jeff S. Denis, "Contact Theory in a Small-Town Settler-Colonial Context: The Reproduction of Laissez-Faire Racism in Indigenous-White Canadian Relations" (2015) 80:1 American Sociological Review 218; Cole Harris, A Bounded Land: Reflections on Settler Colonialism in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2020); Daniel Rück, The Laws of the Land: The Settler Colonial Invasion of Kahnawa:ke in Nineteenth-Century Canada. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021). https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122414564998
98 J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, "'A Structure, Not an Event': Settler Colonialism and Enduring Indigeneity" (2016) 5:1 Lateral, online: [https://doi.org/10.25158/L5.1.7] [perma.cc/J3M9-JRC7]. https://doi.org/10.25158/L5.1.7
99 Interview code PWLE05.
100 Supra note 96.
101 Interview code SP04.
102 We thank an anonymous reviewer for this insightful observation.
103 Interview code P01 (emphasis added).
104 Dorothy E. Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987).
105 Notice of Application (2018). Full citation details have been removed to support anonymity.
106 Fire Services Act Order (2018)
Fire Safety Regulations (2017). Full citation details have been removed to support anonymity.
107 Response to Application (2019) at 2.
108 Fire Safety Order (2019) at 46.
109 Ibid at 38.
110 Supra note 87.
111 Supra note 108 at Schedule A.
112 Ibid at 78.
113 Supra note 105 at 12. 114 Supra note 65.
115 Rifkin, supra note 80. 116 Supra note 76.
117 Supra note 96.
118 Supra note 24.
119 Supra note 96.
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