A salon-style take on Toronto’s housing crisis
Free event aims to tackle causes, effects and potential solutions over cocktails
During the Age of Enlightenment, “salons” were inspired social gatherings, where people could discuss the issues of the day, amuse and educate themselves.
On Wednesday, a salon with similar aims will take place in Toronto, only this time the issue of the day is the city’s housing crisis.
“If you want change on any topic, you need to organize around it and get other people interested in creating the change you want to see,” said salon organizer Phil Mendonca-Vieira, 29.
“I hope people leave the room feeling informed, pissed off and ready to do something about it.”
Mendonca-Vieira and co-organizer Shaker Jamal, 30 — “two immigrants and not-so-young urban professionals” — started BetterTO.ca to host quarterly salons at a local bar and channel the “active energy that you can feel bubbling on social media but hasn’t become a political priority for anyone.”
They hope to shine a light on Toronto’s most critical issues, and chose to start with housing since it affects so many people in their circles.
“If you’re not middle class, or are a millennial, you are especially affected by this,” Mendonca-Vieira said. “Not only do we have job insecurity but also crazy housing insecurity. We can’t build stable links to our communities. We are one eviction away from having to leave the city. It impacts (this generation) disproportionately.”
BetterTO will walk through Toronto’s housing crisis at the salon with guest panellists “so everyone can leave with a coherent picture of what’s happening,” which will be fol- lowed by discussion and drinks.
Urban planner Sean Galbraith and the University of Toronto’s Emily Paradis, a senior research associate and project manager of the Neighbourhood Change Research Partnership, are two confirmed speakers at the inaugural salon, with other guests to be announced.
“Development in Toronto has fundamentally changed . . . we need to spread the pain and density around,” said Galbraith, who has worked in the private sector for the past 16 years.
“Things have gotten so bad that it’s possible that the pendulum needs to swing very far in the other direction.
“I don’t know that there’s going to be the political will to actually impose that kind of damage.”
Paradi, who has been an activist and researcher in this field for more than 25 years, said thinking about housing as a right, not simply a market commodity, is an attitudinal change in conversation that’s been a long time coming.
“You guys have really gotten screwed,” she said of young Torontonians. “There’s been no new (federal or provincial) development of social and public housing for 25 years and also pretty much no new development of rental housing.
“There’s an amazing sense of betrayal as people are arriving in a job and housing market that essentially has nothing to offer them.”
Organizers hope the salon will allow participants to leave with a “coherent picture” of the issues discussed so that they may start coming up with solutions to improve conditions for all.
Ideally, BetterTO plans to host salons on a range of issues that are affecting citizens, from the state of police to affordable child care.
“I personally have a passion and a growing hate for the housing issue,” Mendonca-Vieira said, “but we are open to getting other people and issues into the program.”
Their first event takes place tonight at 7 p.m. at No One Writes to the Colonel on College St.