142 Kenechukwu Aneke
Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning
Resisting Eviction: Domicide and the Financialization of Rental Housing by Andrew
Crosby. Fernwood Publishing Co. Ltd., 2023. 196 pp. ISBN: 9781773636375
My interest in tenant housing rights issues in Canada, especially as it relates to tenant eviction
and displacement, prompted me to pick up this boldly written and insightful book by Andrew
Crosby. At the School of Planning, University of Waterloo, Crosby serves as a postdoctoral
researcher with interest in housing-related matters. Crosby powerfully captures, in an
investigative manner, the unwholesome practices that propelled the demolition of rental units
in Heron Gate neighbourhood, Ottawa, and the consequent eviction and displacement of its
close- knit renters. The book has ten chapters, and to gradually ease readers into the issues to
be discussed, Crosby, in chapter one, adopts a story-telling approach. He starts off by narrating
his housing experiences during his teenage years, describing what affordable living was like and
how that compares to the Heron Gate and Heatherington neighbourhoods as it relates to the
general “make-up of the neighbourhood” and the “sense of community” it offered.
Using his mother’s experiences to represent a fraction of the experiences of most renters
across the rental market in Canada, Crosby lays bare the adverse impacts of financialization
of housing on affordability and liveability of rental units in Canada. He describes his mother’s
rental experiences in Canada and how the unscrupulous practices of most financialized
corporate landlords threw renters like her into an almost unending cycle and quest to rent
cheaper units, even when such is at the detriment of their living conditions and physical
security. He explains how this left in his mother an undying desire for adequate living which
was met only through homeownership. However, Crosby notes that continued reliance on
homeownership invariably contributes towards what he categorizes as “manufactured housing
crises” as it promotes the gentrification of low-income neighbourhoods by removing affordable
housing options and substituting them with high-end unaffordable rental units.
To better support these claims, in chapter two, Crosby engages with the history of colonial
settlement to show how the first contact of European settlers with the Indigenous People
of unceded Algonquin territory translated into unauthorized appropriation and questionable
occupation of their native homelands which were subsequently transformed into rental
communities like the contemporary Heron Gate neighbourhood under urban development
schemes that are hinged on the displacement of “undesired” and “non-preferred” Indigenous
and racialized populations.
Chapter three challenges the objectivity of liveability as the foundational rationale
behind urbanism. Crosby appears to be highly skeptical about the generality of the discourse
on liveability. He believes this to be a municipality and white agenda towards displacing
Indigenous and racialized people for the purpose of creating liveable whitespaces as urban
cities for settler societies. He uses the example of Heron Gate to demonstrate this. He notes
that settler-induced gentrification hides under the guise of revamping such ‘unliveable’ areas
to demolish and erase traces of unwanted occupants of these areas—Indigenous and migrant
populations—so as to reproduce liveable urban spaces for white settlers only. Chapter four
explains the research methodology adopted. Crosby utilizes a qualitative research method
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by way of “political activist ethnography” that involves data collection and analysis through
interviews, participant observation, and textual research.
Chapter five traces the rationale behind the eviction and demolition practices in Heron Gate
to a rigged social system that Crosby believes is embedded with racially-motivated economic
inequity and stigma. The chapter carefully navigates the lived experiences of some residents
of the Heron Gate neighbourhood and concludes that the eviction trend in such low-income
areas is hinged on a predatory approach whereby financialized corporate landlords go after
the vulnerable renters in these areas on the notion that they are less likely to challenge their
evictions. Crosby points out that these evictions are falsely justified with claims of landlords
wanting to upgrade the units and make them more liveable. He exposes this flawed justification
for eviction and displacement of tenants and links the reason to landlords’ desire for these areas
to be cleansed. Crosby further notes that these landlords aim to achieve this by frustrating
renters out of their units through purposeful maintenance neglect.
Chapter six discusses the strategies adopted by financialized landlords to foster the eviction,
displacement, and replacement of ‘undesirable’ tenants with tenants that have the ability to pay
rent at market rates. Chapter seven narrows in on the public relations efforts used to play down
the precarious reality of the housing situation of most tenants after the first phase of demolition
of Heron Gate neighbourhood. Crosby implicates the regulatory system in Ontario as an agent
and facilitator of gentrified evictions and displacements. He then ascribes some racial and
traumatic undertones to this demolition. Chapter eight explains how tenants mobilized to
resist the second phase of demolition of Heron Gate, showing how this resistance by tenants’
coalition was met with ugly repressive tactics that sought to suppress agitated tenants through
intimidation in a bid to protect the landlord’s brand.
Chapter nine explains how the involvement of Heron Gate tenants as part of the
redevelopment design process lacks transparency of purpose and is a mere smokescreen used by
the financialized landlord as a public relations strategy to make its demolition process appear
to be driven by community wellbeing. Crosby claims that the relationship between property
developers and some municipal officials in Ottawa is mutually beneficial and ultimately
facilitates gentrification and displacement of undesired tenants. Chapter ten sets out an overview
of the human rights lawsuit initiated by former tenants of Heron Gate neighbourhood. Crosby
relishes the positive impacts the case could have on the future of housing rights in Canada.
This book is a must read for researchers interested in uncovering, from the lived experiences of
evictees, the hidden reasons for evictions. However, probably because of its focus on a particular
neighbourhood in Ottawa, I should note that there is one significant lacuna in the book. I
observed that Crosby did not engage with discussions on the hosting of Mega Sporting Events
in Ontario and how that adversely contributes to the trend of financialization of rental housing
in Toronto and Ottawa. For instance, with regards to the 2026 FIFA World Cup scheduled
to be held in the city of Toronto, there is concern that financialized landlords in Toronto may
exploit the precarious housing situation by engaging in ‘no-fault’ eviction of tenants so as to
raise their rent and make profit based on the anticipated high demand that would be placed on
the housing market by soccer fans and spectators coming into the host city in 2026.
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Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning
Should such happen, it would occasion evictions, displacements, and homelessness, not
just in the city of Toronto, but also in nearby cities like Ottawa. Thus, out of curiosity to learn
more about this, I was hopeful the book would discuss it or make references to it. However,
it did not but this still does not take away from the value of the book; just that discussing it
would have further strengthened Crosby’s claims on the adverse effects of financialization of
rental housing.
Reviewed by
Kenechukwu Aneke
University of Saskatchewan
Email: tdm678@usask.ca