Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to today's episode of Red Eye. I'm Jane Williams.
Speaker: On the podcast today, Lorraine Chisholm talks with Veronique Sufi about a new research project to tackle racial inequality in Metro Vancouver's housing crisis.
Speaker: Sky -high rents, ultra -low vacancy rates, and fierce competition for the scarce homes have become the grim but familiar picture of housing in the Vancouver area. But the housing crisis does not affect us all equally. A new research project by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives will dig deep into how the crisis impacts racialized immigrant and Indigenous people.
Speaker: Veronique's Yuffie will lead up the Metro Vancouver's color -coded housing market research project. Veronique is the CCPA BC's researcher for racial and socioeconomic equity. She's also a PhD candidate in geography at Simon Fraser University. Hello, Veronique. Hello. and Nice to be here. Really nice to talk to you again. What is the impetus behind this project? Why are you doing it? Sure. Yeah. Well,
Speaker: The CCPABC, you know, we're the Policy Alternative Centre here, we've been working on housing issues for a long time, particularly in the last decade. But about a year ago, we established, I say we, I wasn't there yet, we established my research desk that I sit on, which is the Racial and Socioeconomic Equity Research Desk. And part of this research initiative that I'm sitting in is to have a group of an advisory committee, a group of folks from the community that serve um racialized, indigenous, immigrant communities, also folks from unions, academics, to kind of advise me on, you know, what are the priority issues for these communities. And very early on, when I started in this position, one of the first things folks brought to me is, you know, above all else, we're really, the it feels like this housing crisis is
Speaker: affecting our communities at a different rate and in a different way than is being represented in the numbers in the overall media that we're seeing about the housing crisis. And housing policy doesn't seem to be responding to the way that this housing crisis is affecting people differently. We've, you know, we're seeing a bit of a one size fits all approach to trying to solve the housing crisis. And so that really motivated us to try and start up this this research project that you did a great job introducing here to try and better understand, first of all, what are the numbers here? How can we measure the way in which
Speaker: the housing crisis may be affecting different communities in a different way. Do we have data to represent this? And where we don't have data, you know, where can we intervene and do new research to kind of fill in those gaps and then bring that back to these communities and together develop policy solutions that might better address the problems they're facing.
Speaker: Now, you described how the project will be looking to address a data gap. Can you explain how gathering empirical data around patterns of inequity in housing help efforts at analysis and advocacy?
Speaker: Yeah, so you know some of the questions we have here might be able to be answered by the census, by some of STATCANs like the Survey of Financial Security, maybe be some data from BC Assessment. Some of the questions we have here are what proportion of folks income is going to housing because if it's more than that thirty percent that's supposed to be the guideline that's going to impact people's ability to save for the future or maybe even make ends meet in the first place. We'd also like to get a sense and we think we might be able to do this with some available data of you know how far people have to commute in order to get to work because of the differences between
Speaker: people's incomes and the cost of living where they may work. So these are some of the initial questions were that we might be able to answer in part. Housing size, housing suitability, or folks that are in core housing need. So we do have, there is some data available for the Metro Vancouver area or for BC more broadly.
Speaker: on these questions. So we'll start there and then together with our Housing Advisory Committee, we'll identify what gaps remain. And that's where ah the second phase of our research passed this data analysis phase, which, you know, we do a great job of that, but we're suspecting that there may be some gaps between the questions we have and what this data is able to tell us. So that's where our second phase of research will come in. And this will be a qualitative research phase that will fill in those gaps so we can with our community partners engage directly with Indigenous, racialized, newcomer, migrant communities and
Speaker: through surveys, interviews, workshops, gather data on their experiences related to housing. So this includes discrimination, eviction, and how that might intersect with challenges related to their age, gender, or income. So well we'll put those two big pieces, that quantitative part and that qualitative part together to inform what policy we recommend.
Speaker: Now, where does UNDRIP and a lens on indigenous rights and a decolonial approach come into this picture and and the obvious underhousing of indigenous people up until now here in Metro Vancouver?
Speaker: Yeah. the So, you know, a priority for us in this research is not only to stay in line with that commitment to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, that BC has made, that Canada has made, but to also set this research in a historical context. So we're often looking at housing policy of what's housing policy now and how do we move forward.
Speaker: without looking at the historical context of who's been dispossessed of lands and what kinds of policies maybe outside of the narrow scope of housing might impact that dispossession. And we really see a connection between the dispossession of land experienced by Indigenous people and the way that racialized newcomers have come to the country, you know, generally for purposes of work and are systematically underpaid, their labour is undervalued. And so they also end up excluded from housing in various ways. And some of this you know historically has been systematic. So we know about redlining in the US and part of this project will be to try and understand if there has been any explicit or implicit kind of redlining in Metro Vancouver as well.
Speaker: and That'll really be interesting to see what comes out of that. Now, I understand you plan to advance indigenous -led housing projects as an important potential solution to the housing crisis. Can you tell us about your thinking there?
Speaker: Yeah, you know we're committed both at the CCPABC, but also the province overall you know should be moving towards a bigger commitment towards land back. you know It's time for us to be returning land to its rightful owners. and As scary as that may be for some folks, you know, I know there's been a lot of fear mongering around what land back means to the settler population of Metro Vancouver or BC, particularly in this lead up to the most recent election here. And a part of what we're doing here is to show that that's
Speaker: That's not scary at all. We can actually solve two problems at once here, return lands to their rightful owners and potentially see new affordable housing being developed, as we have seen with some some lands that have been returned to Indigenous First Nations here in Metro Vancouver already. We're seeing major contributions to the housing supply being led by First Nations development groups.
Speaker: How do you hope the project can make a difference in the long term? I think first and foremost is just to flag for policymakers that it's essential to look at everything, you know even something like housing that doesn't seem inherently to require that Intersectional lens that that looking at it through the lens of of race or indigeneity most policy really does need to be looked at through this this intersectional lens of how is this policy going to affect different groups of people differently.
Speaker: because we're not starting from an even playing field. So, you know, any new policy that we develop, we need to understand ah in what way is the the playing field uneven and what has led to that before we decide what the solutions are so that we make sure the solutions to the problems we're looking at will bring us closer to to equity.
Speaker: So that's that's really the big motivator here. the The second motivator for us with this project is to have really like a stakeholder driven, a community driven approach to developing housing policy that's going to see more people in more affordable housing and ideally fewer people without housing at all.
Speaker: Well, it's been great to talk to you about this and I'm really going to have to stay on this file and see how the project evolves. Yeah, me too. I can't wait. I mean, of course I'm on the file, but I can't wait to see what we find. I'm really excited by this research and yeah, look look out for our briefs that will be rolling out and the final report in a couple of years. Absolutely.
Speaker: Take care, Veronique, and thank you so much. Thank you. I've been speaking with Veronique Sciuffi. Veronique is the CCPABC's researcher for racial and socioeconomic equity. She will lead up the Metro Vancouver color -coded housing market research project for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Speaker: The Red Eye Collective is based in Vancouver. You can check us out at coopradio dot .org slash redeye.
