The symposium wraps with a discussion summarising the insights of the panels and group meetings that took place over the two days of proceedings. In a discussion with those in attendance, each group presents some of their key insights and findings and how these findings and calls to action can be implemented through the various community organisations involved. Some of the key topics discussed are decriminalising approaches to homelessness, Indigenous homelessness, building relations with those with lived experiences, realizing the right to housing and increasing housing stock. You’ll hear how and who will be working on implementing their calls to action and which sources of power will be called on to assist them in doing so.

Audio Production by Collin Chepeka

Music by William Ward

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Turning to Peterborough’s intersecting opioid and homelessness crises, these panelists share their perspectives on a much-contested approach to addictions: harm reduction. Medical Officer of Health Thomas Piggott, Rapid Access Addiction Medicine/RAAM nurse Shannon Culkeen, and Fourcast project lead Shawntelle Campbell characterise harm reduction as caring for people, meeting them where they are at, maintaining their dignity, and keeping them alive. Housing First, a client-centred approach to housing that prioritises housing needs and does not require abstinence or treatment preconditions, can be regarded as a kind of harm reduction. The panelists show harm reduction to be about dignity, where one is not living with the pain of withdrawal, not being unhoused, not being judged for the substances one’s body needs, not regarded as disposable. Amid polarising views on solutions to the opioid crisis, the panelists urge an orientation towards connection and listening to other people’s expressions of widespread, common distress over the substance dependencies and homelessness that are reshaping this community.

Audio Production by Collin Chepeka

Music by William Ward

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.