By Kirsten McRae
There’s a brutal calculus at work in our world: as global crises multiply, we’re systematically stripping away people’s last line of defense. The acceleration of housing commodification at a time when the cost of living is skyrocketing, geopolitical tensions are mounting, and the planet is warming isn’t just creating rampant homelessness – it’s dismantling human resilience at precisely the moment we need it most.
As Kevin Bell, former Judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria says in his book Housing: The Great Australian Right, “Values produce actions and outcomes. If you do not have the right values, you will not have the right actions and outcomes.” Looking at current outcomes around the world, it’s clear what it is that governments value, and it isn’t people or the planet.
In Toronto’s Thorncliffe Park, where dozens of residents have been withholding rent since May 2023, we see this value system laid bare. When a pension fund and global real estate investment firm took ownership of their buildings, residents—mostly newcomers, disabled people, and those on fixed incomes—found themselves caught between above-guideline rent increases and deteriorating living conditions. A public pension fund, meant to secure retirement for civil servants, is now part of the machinery displacing vulnerable communities; Their story illustrates how housing systems have lost their way. Even as residents organize, protest, and fight through the courts, they face a cascade of eviction notices and the constant threat of losing their homes. It’s a stark reminder that in our current system, the right to housing comes second to the pursuit of financial gain.
The mathematics of survival have become impossible. We’ve created a system where staying in one’s home requires the organization and courage of a political resistance movement. The transformation of housing into a financial instrument represents more than a shift in ownership patterns. It’s a fundamental reimagining of what shelter means in human society. Corporate landlords and pension funds have redefined homes as cells in spreadsheets, their inhabitants as figures to be optimized, their communities as inefficiencies to be eliminated. We’re not just facing a crisis of housing – we’re facing a crisis of what it means to be human in an increasingly inhuman system.
Despite this systematic unraveling of society’s safety net, stable housing has never been more crucial. The perversity of this moment is clear: as our need for community resilience grows, we allow profit motives to shatter neighborhoods. As our world grows more hostile, we dismantle our last remaining shelters against it.
Every displaced person, every evicted family, every unhoused individual carries within them a universe of potential that enriches our collective fabric. When we deny anyone the right to home, we diminish not just their future, but our shared possibility for a more vibrant, diverse, and humane world. And if we remain silent as this unfolds, what does that say about what we value?
