"It was tough on Everybody": Low-Income Families and Housing Hardship in Post-World War II Toronto

Purdy, Sean

doi:10.1353/jsh.2003.0191

Cited by 16 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Housing: the demise of the social; the market ascendant In the years immediately following the second world war, Toronto suffered a housing affordability crisis (Brushett, 1999;Purdy, 2003). Large-scale housing initiatives undertaken by both the public and private sectors in response to that crisis in the 1950s and 1960s produced much of the physical and social landscape of Toronto's present-day in-between city.…”

Section: Transportation: Shifting Mobilities and An Emergent Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Locating the Urban In‐between: Tracking the Urban Politics of Infrastructure in Toronto

Young

Keil

2014

Int J Urban Regional Res

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In the urban studies literature, urban politics is usually considered in two distinct locations: the city (often understood in quite conventional centralist ways) and the suburb (understood as spatially peripheral and politically at odds with the central city). At the metropolitan scale, the two types of urban politics are discussed in relation to one another. More recently, the metropolitan scale of urban politics has been expanded to regional dimensions. We pose the question of location of urban politics from a specific deficit in the geography of centre, suburb and metropolis. We argue that in today's regional political socio‐spatiality, politics will have to be found ‘in‐between’ the old lines of demarcation. Following Tom Sieverts' (2003) advice to look at the ‘in‐between’ cities that are neither old downtown nor new suburb but complex urban landscapes of mixed density, use and urbanity, we reveal the political vacuum that is at the heart of the urban region today. Using the politics of infrastructure in Toronto as our empirical example, we will show that vulnerabilities and risks for urban populations in that Canadian metropolis' in‐between city are co‐generated by the failure of conventional political spaces and processes to capture the connectivities threaded through those places that are in‐between the centre and exurbia.

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Section: Transportation: Shifting Mobilities and An Emergent Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Locating the Urban In‐between: Tracking the Urban Politics of Infrastructure in Toronto

Young

Keil

2014

Int J Urban Regional Res

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“…This period came to an end in the mid 1980's, when the federal government stepped back and delegated the provision of affordable housing to provinces, which further offloaded it to municipalities. The impact of the devolution of housing to provinces and municipalities is well recorded by various scholars Carroll, 1989;Colderley 1999;Purdy, 2003;Roberto & Carroll 2010;Wolfe 1998). What is most evident in these studies is how the reshaping of the Canadian welfare regime is closely associated to the residual nature of social programs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Redefining the Boundaries of Hidden Homelessness: An Examination of the Experiences of Women in Toronto and Barrie

Muzorewa¹

2021

Preprint

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Following the devolution of affordable housing to lower levels of government, municipalities have been partnering with private developers to address the growing problem of hidden homelessness, through the inclusionary housing (IH) policy. Very little has been written about this policy in Ontario, hence the purpose of this qualitative case study was (i) to uncover how women experience hidden homelessness in Toronto and Barrie, (ii) to analyze, understand, and evaluate the implementation of IH policy in Ontario, and (iii) to examine the effect of IH policy as it relates to women experiencing hidden homelessness in Toronto and Barrie. In-depth interviews were conducted with eleven women who were currently experiencing hidden homelessness or had a history of hidden homelessness, five policy experts, two private developers, and five frontline workers from community organizations working to end homelessness in Toronto and Barrie. An intersectional gender-based analysis was used to uncover the prevalence of hidden homelessness among women, and the effect of the IH policy in addressing this problem. Data analysis was done using thematic analysis and particular attention was given to women’s experiences with hidden homelessness and the perspectives of policy-makers and stakeholders. The findings suggests that, women experiencing hidden homelessness were situated within a hostile housing market where some were compelled to live in unsafe, substandard, overcrowded conditions, and were exposed to violence, while others lived in houses they could not afford, often working two jobs to cover rent. Although the introduction of Bill 7of the Affordable Housing Act, 2016, gave municipalities authority to implement IH strategies to boost affordable housing stock, yet slow implementation processes, challenges in negotiating a happy medium, red tape and the high cost of land, minimizes the effect of the IH strategy in Ontario. As such, the IH policy has not yielded any significant effect in Toronto or Barrie, and is only targeted at middle to upper middle income earners, at the exclusion of low-income women experiencing hidden homelessness. In addition, poor conceptualization of gendered homelessness, coupled with the absence of gendered statistics, and gender neutrality in the formulation and implementation of the IH policy, exacerbates women’s experiences with hidden homelessness. Moreover, a lack of political will to end homelessness further dampens the effects of IH strategies. Participants suggested a more integrative, multidimensional approach to ending homelessness.

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“…Using data generated from 33 semi‐structured interviews, Williamson suggests that although women's perceptions of power were strengthened when they were in control of the household income, it remained the case that men enjoyed a privileged position within the household: men's status as breadwinners legitimized inequalities of access to household money. Continuing the theme of households, Purdy examines the social and economic factors that caused housing hardship among working families in postwar Toronto. His article serves as a stern reminder that even those families with moderate incomes struggled to acquire secure, decent, and affordable housing after 1945.…”

Section: (V) Since 1850  David M Higgins  University Of Sheffieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review of periodical literature published in 2003

2005

The Economic History Review

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"It was tough on Everybody": Low-Income Families and Housing Hardship in Post-World War II Toronto

Cited by 16 publications

References 32 publications

Locating the Urban In‐between: Tracking the Urban Politics of Infrastructure in Toronto

Locating the Urban In‐between: Tracking the Urban Politics of Infrastructure in Toronto

Redefining the Boundaries of Hidden Homelessness: An Examination of the Experiences of Women in Toronto and Barrie

Review of periodical literature published in 2003

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