Mapping tenant displacement through lived experiences

In today’s housing crisis, many low income tenants are unjustly evicted and displaced from their homes. To date,
we have very little knowledge of how this happens and what this means to tenants, particularly outside big cities.
This project will disseminate research into displacement conducted in four communities across Ontario: Oxford
County, York Region, Kingston and Cornwall. The aim is to better understand the patterns and experiences of
displacement and to convey this knowledge to a wide audience. This will primarily be done in the form of a Story
Map, which combines mapping the loss of affordable housing with interactive stories, images and audio clips from
interviews with tenants who have recently been displaced. We will shed important light on three key questions: 1)
how displacement happens, 2) what this means for tenants who have been displacement, and 3) where tenants
end up moving to after they have been displaced and the experiences and conditions of this new housing. This
knowledge is essential to developing policies to combat the housing crisis and treat housing as shelter, rather
than a commodity. This project is a partnership between the University of Waterloo and the Social Planning
Network of Ontario.

Faculty Supervisor:

Brian Doucet

Student:

Partner:

Social Planning Network of Ontario

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of Waterloo

Program: