In 1976, the Canadian government committed to ensuring the rights of Canadians to housing and recommitted to this right in 2017 with the National Housing Strategy and again in 2019 with the National Housing Strategy act. With this background in mind, this panel discusses how using grassroots organizing and policy advocacy reshapes power dynamics away from earning rights through market participation to mobilizing and actualizing the right to housing. The first presentation, featuring Irene Suvillaga from Peterborough ACORN and Nico Koyanagi, a coordinator at OPIRG Peterborough, discuss the housing crisis in the context of Canada a neoliberal settler colonial capitalist society. They describe how the current rental regime in Ontario favors developers and landlords at the expense of those living in precarious situations. They argue that we can resist this financialization of the housing market through generating collective power and use ACORN – the Association of Community Reform Now – as an example of how to mobilize this power to reassert our rights to housing. The second presentation discusses the role basic income plays in actualizing our rights to housing and security. Speakers Elisha Rubacha and Joëlle Fauvreau from the Basic Income Peterborough Network bring the conversation back to the rights our government has committed us to. They argue that basic income – the idea that everyone deserves an income – is one method of actualizing these rights. They discuss the distinct types of basic income and how basic income can help grow our democracy.

Audio Production by Collin Chepeka

Music by William Ward

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