Toward the Right to Housing in Canada: Lived Experience, Research, and Promising Practices for Deep Engagement

Authors

  • Jayne Malenfant McGill University
  • Jes Annan Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary
  • Laura Pin Wilfrid Laurier University
  • Leah Levac University of Guelph
  • Amanda Buchnea University of Guelph

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15402/esj.v10i2.70850

Keywords:

lived experience, housing injustice, homelessness, housing rights, community engaged methods

Abstract

Canada’s 2019 Housing Strategy Act (NHSA) lays the groundwork for important advances in ensuring the right to housing for all. Two key approaches outlined in the NHSA for communities in greatest need are conducting research and providing participatory ways for those communities to shape housing rights responses. This article presents insights from a project that explored how people with lived experience of housing need and homelessness engage in research on housing precarity in Canada. We review the literature on housing precarity that features people with lived experience as research participants, applying an intersectional framework and acknowledging the settler colonial context of Canada. And, as a research team who has members with lived experiences of housing precarity, we emphasize the importance of meaningfully incorporating people’s lived experiences, seeing deep engagement as a way to advance housing rights by harnessing lived knowledges. 

Author Biographies

Jayne Malenfant, McGill University

is an Assistant Professor in Social Justice and Community Engaged Education in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University in Tio’tia:ke/Montréal. They have been involved in research on housing precarity and homelessness for almost a decade and have lived experience. They have led lived experience engagement research, as well as being engaged as a PwLE in different research, institutional, and advocacy spaces. They are a non-binary White settler of French, Scottish, and Cree ancestry. 

Jes Annan, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary

is a Research Coordinator and Associate in the Department of Family Medicine at the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary in Alberta. Her research reflects her lived experiences, encompassing topics such as homelessness, hostile architecture, Black Liberation, and anarchist theory. In the recent years, she has expanded her research to include Indigenous health equity. 

Laura Pin, Wilfrid Laurier University

is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Wilfrid Laurier University, in Waterloo, Ontario, on the territory of the Neutral, Anishinaabe, and Haudenosaunee peoples and the treaty territory of the Haldimand Tract. She is a white settler-scholar, working on community-engaged research partnerships concerning social equity and public policy through a variety of methods and approaches.

Leah Levac, University of Guelph

is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Critical Community Engagement and Public Policy in the Department of Political Science at the University of Guelph, in the treaty territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit. She is a community-engaged settler scholar without lived experience of homelessness, who is deeply committed to learning with and from people whose experiences and knowledges are often excluded from public policy and related research and to transforming research and policy-making processes to make them work for PwLE. 

Amanda Buchnea, University of Guelph

is a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Guelph in the interdisciplinary Social Practice and Transformational Change program. She is a White, cisgender, settler woman based in Tkaronto/Toronto, without lived experience of homelessness. Amanda worked in youth homelessness prevention research and practice in 2016 and continues her research praxis in commitment to community engaged scholarship for housing justice. 

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Published

2024-08-21

How to Cite

Malenfant, J., Annan, J., Pin, L., Levac, L., & Buchnea, A. (2024). Toward the Right to Housing in Canada: Lived Experience, Research, and Promising Practices for Deep Engagement. Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning, 10(2), 1–32. https://doi.org/10.15402/esj.v10i2.70850

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