Life Stories of Displacement

Brad Ullner, a longstanding member of Disabilities and Human Rights Group speaks of the needed advances to be made for accessibility and inclusion in Waterloo Region.

Jeffrey Beckner, a member of Disabilities and Human Rights Group speaks of the many impact of limited physical mobility.

Myron Steinman, a longstanding member of Disabilities and Human Rights speaks of challenges for persons with mental health illnesses.

Jackie Prada, a member of the Disabilities and Human Right Group speaks of lack of opportunities for advancement for person with disabilities.

Eviction Prevention Peer Worker Jenaya Nixon with Mike Farwell.

The audio interviews were prepared for the regional council's Committee of the Whole meeting on August 11th 2020, addressing the humane side of trauma when the systems fail the most marginalized in our communities - especially the Indigenous and reacialized residents. The delegations were asking for more alternative housing and especially, more alternatives to shelters to ensure dignity and the respect of human rights of the residents we have left behind. The community movements are coming together across the region, to provide direct supports, bare witness & make sure the unsheltered voices are not erased. What the regional staff offered as dorm-style shelters, at this point addressed only the homeless single men who entered the system during COVID through the Radisson and Kaufman YMCA pandemic response spaces, but does not at all address at least 400 residents who are not in the shelter system. This point was not addressed at all by the staff nor the council.

Angela Goodwin explores success story from a shelter, a converted school, in Saint Catherine's with Rocco and David. They tell us to dream big, when we think how to support homeless and low income residents in our communities.

Angela Goodwin had conversations with people suffering with opined and drug consumption, due to health conditions, to hear more about the struggles and challenges to accessing supports and stable income. They also know that having people directly impacted by homelessness making decisions and offering solutions is a crucial piece in healing our communities. Welcome to Homes 4 All where we are taking a few moments today to Turn Up the Volume of voices of those most at risk during the coronavirus spread. As Co-vid19 continues to spread, people are forced to make tough decisions for the sake of some of our most vulnerable people. We, at the Social Development Centre, want to take this opportunity to remind you who MAY have slipped your mind in at this time because they are not in your direct social circle. SEE waterlooregion.org for a summary of government responses, community actions, and service provision

Angela Goodwin plays parts of an interview with a resident with lived experience of homelessness and feeling displaced by the construction and developments in Kitchener and Waterloo urban core, and asks Brian Doucet, the Canada Research Chair in Urban Change and Social Inclusion at the University of Waterloo, to comment on the experiences from a broader socio-economic lens. Before substantial change, "we need a 180 degree shift in attitudes towards poverty". The first call to action is to learn more, get to know the people impacted by the housing crisis, and start changing our mindsets to eliminate stigma about low income residents & the housing that they can afford or are pushed into.

Renovictions are real. There are many well thought through ways to evict long-time renters and replace then with more solvent ones. An interview with Professor Brian Doucet in summer 2019 exploring drastic neighbourhood changes along the Central Transit Corridor in Kitchener Waterloo.

One of the Life Stories of Displacement due to hardship of living in unsafe and unsanitary housing in downtown Kitchener. Interview with Brian Doucet and podcasted by the Social Development Centre Waterloo Region.

"I'm going to point out multiple places that used to have affordable housing, rooms to rent, um, that people could live on on a budget, on financial assistance." Walk-about interview showing places where affordable housing units disappeared and what options were left for those who had to move. Project done in partnership with University of Waterloo professor Brian Doucet, School of Planing and a number of community connectors with lived experience of poverty and exclusion.

As winter has set, and many people are excluded from the shelters due to so called diversion programs, they sleep rough, in the tents and abandoned buildings. They are all collectively displaced into the cracks of the city. We know their stories thanks to the partnership research project with University of Waterloo School of Planning professor Brian Doucet.

Displacement was not talked about in Kitchener-Waterloo as there were no community housing complexes being redeveloped, but a small scale, under the radar renovations and conversions of houses and low rise buildings. Through Life Stories of Displacement we are preserving some of the history of the process that has been changing the face of downtown and uptown thanks to the partnership with the University of Waterloo School of Planning.

Life Stories of Displacement opened up a bottom up critique of our relationships and ways we see the world. The interview was recorded through a partnership between the Social Development Centre Waterloo Region and University of Waterloo School of Planning in the summer of 2019 to make sure the history or displacement is not lost.

"Well my thoughts is that there’s a lot of people on social assistance out there needing housing, like cheap affordable housing. They’re tearing these houses down, like two and three-bedroom houses that they could rent out cheap to the low-income people... A house or even an old factory that’s closed up, and make rooms, put somebody out there for supervision, be somebody always there that – somebody so many hours there. Run the place, give everybody rooms to live in or apartments to live in. It’d be better than tearing it down, and build a big condo..." Life Stories of Displacement are made to do not let us forget how we are building our cities and to mitigate the impact on marginalized, low income population, created in collaboration with Professor Brian Doucet at the School of Planning at University of Waterloo.

"If you get a rooming house here and this guy's got a million dollar house here, right, there's going to be some push to get the rooming house out, right. Because, it's lowering his property value, right. And, you know, a rooming house it's not the greatest place in the world, but it's providing a bit of a service where people can live, right. Because, it's hard as hell to live up there right now, right." Life Stories of Displacement are made to do not let us forget how we are building our cities and to mitigate the impact on marginalized, low income population, created in collaboration with Professor Brian Doucet at the School of Planning at University of Waterloo.

We wish to stress the point that residents living on low income are a highly diverse population, and in a limited number of interviews, we encountered people who have post secondary education and are in precarious employment, homeowners, business-owners and low income earners, social assistance recipients and recipients of the Canada Disability Pension. We recorded the life stories thanks to the partnership with the University of Waterloo professor Brian Doucet and staff from St John Kitchen in the summer of 2019. We hope that a range of voices previously absent from the urban development planning strategies in Kitchener and Waterloo will be at the core of the affordable housing strategy planning in Waterloo Region.

We wish to stress the point that residents living on low income are a highly diverse population, and in a limited number of interviews, we encountered people who have post secondary education and are in precarious employment, homeowners, business-owners and low income earners, social assistance recipients and recipients of the Canada Disability Pension. We recorded the life stories thanks to the partnership with the University of Waterloo professor Brian Doucet and staff from St John Kitchen in the summer of 2019. We hope that a range of voices previously absent from the urban development planning strategies in Kitchener and Waterloo will be at the core of the affordable housing strategy planning in Waterloo Region.

Life Stories of Displacement: We wish to stress the point that residents living on low income are a highly diverse population, and in a limited number of interviews, we encountered people who have post secondary education and are in precarious employment, homeowners, business-owners and low income earners, social assistance recipients and recipients of the Canada Disability Pension. We recorded the life stories thanks to the partnership with the University of Waterloo professor Brian Doucet and staff from St John Kitchen in the summer of 2019. We hope that a range of voices previously absent from the urban development planning strategies in Kitchener and Waterloo will be at the core of the affordable housing strategy planning in Waterloo Region.

We wish to stress the point that residents living on low income are a highly diverse population, and in a limited number of interviews, we encountered people who have post secondary education and are in precarious employment, homeowners, business-owners and low income earners, social assistance recipients and recipients of the Canada Disability Pension. We recorded the life stories thanks to the partnership with the University of Waterloo professor Brian Doucet and staff from St John Kitchen in the summer of 2019. We hope that a range of voices previously absent from the urban development planning strategies in Kitchener and Waterloo will be at the core of the affordable housing strategy planning in Waterloo Region.

Social Development Centre Waterloo Region supported the study 'Neighbourhood Change along LRT' by Professor Brian Doucet from the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo and recruited interviewees living on low income to participate in the oral history project about their experience of displacement in the age of gentrification. We are committed to turning up the volume on life stories that need to be a part of the affordable housing strategy planning in Waterloo Region.

Social Development Centre Waterloo Region supported the study 'Neighbourhood Change along LRT' by Professor Brian Doucet from the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo and recruited interviewees living on low income to participate in the oral history project about their experience of displacement in the age of gentrification. We are committed to turning up the volume on life stories that need to be a part of the affordable housing strategy planning in Waterloo Region.

Social Development Centre Waterloo Region supported the study 'Neighbourhood Change along LRT' by Professor Brian Doucet from the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo and recruited interviewees living on low income to participate in the oral history project about their experience of displacement in the age of gentrification. We are committed to turning up the volume on life stories that need to be a part of the affordable housing strategy planning in Waterloo Region.

Life Stories of Displacement are meant to turn up the volume of marginalized voices in the conversations about displacement and truly affordable housing in the urban core of Kitchener and Waterloo 2019-2020.