Spacing Radio

With climate change leading to more frequent and more extreme climate events, predicting the next disaster and planning for it is essential. In many areas of the country, that means using data to anticipate extreme heat events, and give communities time to prepare.

Dr. Ryan Reynolds is the researcher behind Resilience Mapping Canada. Reynolds uses data and other tools to help communities prepare for climate events, extreme heat, flooding, and more. In determining who is most vulnerable in extreme heat, Reynolds says:

"This includes the elderly (in B.C. we decided that was about 60 plus) that were most vulnerable... Another one is adults who live alone. They're not necessarily being checked in on on a regular basis, so if they are having problems they might not be able to get assistance with that particular issue... Small children, particularly if they're accidentally left in vehicles... Health factors: there are particular health and mental health conditions that are exacerbated by extreme heat."

 Barbara Roden is mayor Village of Ashcroft, British Columbia. Ashcroft is actually a designated desert, so the community must be especially prepared for extreme heat events. To that end, they developed the Heat Alert Response Plan. For a small town, this presents challenges, but the village is embracing it. As Roden says:

"People like the fact that we're taking these steps, we are prepared. They just like to see their local government anticipating these things and being proactive, rather than reactive."

Listen to the episode to hear more about planning for extreme heat.

Many people across the country struggle to make ends meet. In many cases, that means they experience energy poverty: they can't afford to use energy when they need to, if at all. At the same time, we are trying to address climate change and become more resilient. What if we could address both concerns at the same time?

Energize Bridgewater was the winner of the 2019 Smart Cities Challenge. The program aims to identify where energy inefficiencies are in homes and find solutions to improve that efficiency, making the Town of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, better prepared for our changing climate, and helping vulnerable residents who experience energy poverty and struggle to afford power.

We talk to Bridgewater's Senior Energy Manager Asad Hussein and planner Meghan Doucette about the success of the program, and its future goals.

Women and children experiencing violence need housing options to be able to start a new life free of abuse, survive, and support themselves. But housing options that suit their particular situation and needs are often limited, due to the housing crisis, as well as a lack of appropriate services.

For these reasons, Tanyss Knowles, director of programs at the BC Society of Supportive Houses, says there is a connection between women and children fleeing violence and homelessness:

We know affordability is a growing issue across Canada and has been in B.C. for a long time. So women who come into temporary emergency services after leaving a violent home often can't move on to permanent housing because of the lack of affordable housing. And this has created a bottleneck in services, as more and more women and children are being denied access to services when they're seeking to leave a violent situation.

Sometimes, the barrier to housing for women and children fleeing abuse is baked into the standards set by government. Alina McKay, research coordinator at the Housing Research Collaborative, and University of British Columbia grad student Victoria Barclay have been researching how the National Occupancy Standards can actually impede access to housing. Victoria explains:

Because of the National Occupancy Standards, women who are fleeing violence with children are often actually denied housing because the family does not fit what that unit looks like. So if they need, according to their gender and the age of their children, four bedrooms when only two bedrooms are available, they're denied housing. Often that can mean they end up homeless.

How do we ensure women and children fleeing violence have a place to flee to?

Dans cet épisode, on découvre comment la ville de Lac-Mégantic, après avoir vécu le pire, s’est reconstruite pour devenir une meilleure version d’elle-même.

En juillet 2013, un train de cargaison qui transportait du pétrole a pris feu, déraillé et explosé en plein milieu de la ville de Lac-Mégantic. Six millions de litres de pétrole brut ont été déversés et la majeure partie du centre-ville a été détruite par l’incendie après que.

Cette tragédie a laissé beaucoup de marques et de traumatismes chez les gens de Lac-Mégantic, mais elle a aussi permis à cette ville de se reconstruire de façon inouïe. Non seulement, les résidents et résidentes de Lac-Mégantic ont fait preuve de résilience, mais ils ont également réussi, avec les efforts des fonctionnaires et des acteurs communautaires, à repenser leur ville - qu’il fallait presque rebâtir à zéro - de façon à ce qu’une tragédie comme celle-ci ne puisse plus jamais se reproduire.

Comment ont-ils fait? Comment le principe de résilience a-t-il pris forme dans la communauté de Lac-Mégantic? C’est ce que Danielle Maltais, professeure titulaire à l’Université du Québec à Chicoutimi et directrice de la Chaire de recherche Événements traumatiques, santé mentale et résilience, nous a expliqué dans cet épisode de Face au Futur.

Et, après avoir mis sur papier les grandes lignes de ce à quoi la ville devrait ressembler à l’avenir, Lac-Mégantic s’est rebâti en harmonie avec la nature. Alors que le pétrole a été responsable de la pire des catastrophes, c’est désormais des modèles énergétiques écoresponsables qui font avancer la région. Mathieu Pepin, chargé de projet en transition énergétique pour la Ville de Lac-Mégantic, nous a notamment parlé de la manière dont le projet de micro-réseau, unique en son genre, a pris forme et comment il continue, jusqu’à aujourd’hui, à inspirer d’autres communautés.

We meet Globe & Mail architecture critic Alex Bozikovic in the new Love Park on Toronto's waterfront, to talk about good public space design, bad maintenance practices, and the legacy of legendary landscape architect Claude Cormier.

We talk to playwright Michael Healey about "The Master Plan," a play about the doomed futuristic neighbourhood Google and Waterfront Toronto tried to build on the lakeshore.

And, as a preview of our latest Spacing issue "Once Upon a Time in Toronto," we talk to author/playwright/screenwriter Catherine Hernandez about why she writes about Scarborough, and the pain of having to leave the neighbourhood that inspires you.

Last season, we talked to a group of people from the Kensington Market Community Land Trust (KMCLT) in Toronto as part of a range of options for non-market housing. Over a year later, we check in with the state of land trusts across the country: where are they, what are their impact, and what do they need to succeed and even scale upward to other communities?

Susannah Bunce, associate professor at the University of Toronto's Department of Human Geography, has been researching the KMCLT. She has insight into how land trusts can grow and succeed, and the role they play in combatting displacement:

It removes land from the speculative market and holds land, in trust, by the non-profit organization for the purposes of keeping housing and land prices at a lower level for community benefit. That principle of community land trust organizing and the model itself is fundamental to combatting gentrification.

Nat Pace is network director for the Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts, and provides a look at trusts across the country, in communities large and small, urban and remote, and the role they play in increasing equity:

Right now in Canada, we have quite a few examples of equity-deserving communities using the model. There's a very interesting cluster in Nova Scotia of African-Nova Scotian communities who are looking to develop their own localized community land trusts as a way to create land bases for their communities, and also reclaim land titles that have been lost.

What can land trusts do to provide affordable housing and increase equity in this country?

This Spring, Spacing Radio had the opportunity to take the show on the road to the International Transport Forum in Leipzig, Germany. Now that the whole "who will be the mayor of Toronto" thing is settled, we bring you some highlights from the Forum.

Heather Thompson, CEO of the Institute for Transportation and and Development Policy, talks about the importance of smaller-order, local transit like buses.

Ann Frye of consultant firm Ann Frye Ltd. talks about striking a balance between accessibility and rethinking mobility.

And ITF Secretary-General Young Tae Kim talks about tackling transport emissions and traffic congestion holistically.

Finally, Spacing contributors Heather Breeze and Conrad Speckert talk about their "Single Stair Solution," which is also found in the latest "Fire!" issue of the magazine.

The days of the "mom-and-pop" landlord are largely behind us. Now, housing units are being snapped up or developed by large corporate entities and private equity firms. It can be hard to figure out who  actually owns a building. Homes being treated like major sources of capital, instead of places for people to live.

This is a major factor in the housing crisis, pushes people who are renting out of their homes and neighbourhoods, and changes the physical and social fabric of communities.

Erika Sagert, policy manager for the BC Non-Profit Housing Association, has been trying to identify just how many people are affected by this financialization of housing:

"It's really hard to be a renter in Canada. The numbers, in terms of sheer volume, really stand out. We talk a lot about proportion, so we're looking at one third of renter households in Canada are spending more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities. The number that stands out to me is 1.6 million rental households."

When it comes to the types of private equity shaping the rental market, and their effect on Black and other marginalized communities, Toronto Metropolitan University's Dr. Nemoy Lewis and research assistant Dimitri Panou have been tracking just that. As Dr. Lewis says:

"When we think about the term 'displacement,' it gives us the idea that we can just go down the street and move into the next apartment. But that next apartment might be owned by... a different financialized landlord who are also engaged in the same practice. So, as such, these landlords are causing folks to be expelled and banished from major urban centres."

Finally, Cloé St-Hilaire, PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo, is researching financialized rentals in Montreal, who owns what, and who is impacted the most:

"We saw there was a strong positive correlation between the percentage of financialized landlords and the percentage of households that were living in high-density areas, and there was also a strong correlation with renters' housing stress. So the more the renters were housing-stressed in the census tract, the more there was a propensity of having financialized landlords."

What do we do when big capital has taken over the landlord business?

The June 26th mayoral by-election is coming up fast. We've seen plenty of debate, a crowded field of candidates, and increased voter engagement. What's next?

Spacing senior editor John Lorinc, Toronto Star city hall reporter Alyshah Hasham, and Ontario reporter for The Narwhal Fatima Syed join us to talk about duelling housing platforms, the environment, the big, Doug Ford-shaped question mark, and more.

Evictions can completely upend your life. At best, you have to begin the search for a new home in an increasingly expensive and competitive housing market. At worst, you can't find an affordable replacement. It's a scary situation, even in the best circumstances.

In this episode, we get into why evictions happen, how frequently, tenant rights, and "bad faith" evictions.

First, we speak to Adam Mongrain, director of housing policy with the Quebec advocacy group Vivre en Ville about an online rental registry, which would provide renters and governments about changes in rental prices, and prevent unfair price hikes.

Next, Julie Mah is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, who has done a lot of work on gentrification and urban displacement, and tells us about how that can cause evictions.

Finally, Alexandra Flynn, associate professor at the University of British Columbia's Allard School of Law talks about the high eviction rate in B.C. municipalities, changes to the provinces "Residential Tenancy Act," the housing as a human right, including for those living in encampments.

Why do evictions happen, and what can we do to prevent them? We get into it.