Metropolitics

Visible Minorities, Visible Risk: Toronto's Unequal Eviction Burden

Prentiss Dantzler & Khalil Martin & Abigail Meza — 2025-09-16T05:00:00Z

In Toronto, who gets evicted isn't random—it follows the city's racial and economic divides. Canada's data practices hide crucial details about who is most at risk.
Evictions are a leading cause of housing insecurity in cities worldwide, disproportionately affecting lower-income households and non-white racialized groups. In Canada, although attention to evictions is growing, there is limited research available. As the most populous city in the country, Toronto is home to a diverse set of

- Essays / evictions, social class, poverty, housing, tenants, rental, rental housing, minorities, precarity, Canada, Toronto

Massive Evictions and Housing Crisis in Chile

Santiago Castillo Braithwaite — 2025-04-15T05:00:00Z

In the midst of a deep housing crisis, more than 100,000 families in Chile are currently living in informal settlements. Santiago Castillo examines the rise of land occupations following a 2019 social uprising and the recent state responses that, far from providing solutions, have only deepened the conflict.
---- Series: Horizons in the Housing Struggle Starting in October 2019, amid the most intense protests since the end of Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile, a wave of urban land occupations

- From the Field / Latin America, South America, Global South, housing, housing crisis, evictions, land, Chile

Securing Shelter While Facing Eviction: The Case of Syrian Migrants in Lebanon

Dima El Khouri — 2022-12-16T06:00:00Z

Dima El Khouri documents the politics of securing housing for Syrian refugees in Lebanon. She shows the complex web of negotiations that take place between refugees, local Lebanese city dwellers, local authorities, and international NGOs.
Between the beginning of the conflict in Syria in 2011 and 2014, the Lebanese government failed to react to the arrival of Syrians fleeing conflict in their country. By 2015, approximately 1.5 million Syrian refugees resided in Lebanon, in addition to almost

- From the Field / Syria, Lebanon, refugees, migrants, migration, shelter, housing, evictions

The Promises and Realities of Data-Driven Community Development

Austin Harrison — 2022-02-22T06:00:00Z

Tennessee nonprofit Innovate Memphis has spent nearly a decade designing the Memphis Property Hub, a public data platform for community development corporations (CDCs). Austin Harrison asks if this is a replicable way to democratize neighborhood- and property-level data, so as to level the playing field between community organizers and well-resourced state and market actors, and bring community organizing back to the fore of urban CDCs' activities.
Over the past decade, city governments and

- From the Field / data, open data, smart city, community-based organizations, community organizing, community development, housing, evictions, United States, Tennessee, Memphis

A Social Portrait of the Subprime Crisis

Camille François & translated by Oliver Waine — 2021-05-14T05:00:00Z

What have been the social and urban consequences of the subprime mortgage crisis, and what lessons can be learned and applied to the current health and economic crisis? Isaac Martin and Christopher Niedt's 2015 work, Foreclosed America, paints a sociological portrait of households evicted from their homes in the United States.
The economic consequences of the Covid‑19 pandemic invite comparisons with previous global economic crises, not least the recent subprime crisis. This crisis, which

- Reviews / subprime, crisis, financial crisis, housing crisis, Covid-19, coronavirus, pandemic, United States, foreclosure, evictions, inequalities

Reflections on Four Years of Housing-Justice Support Work with Mapping Action Collective

Sachi Arakawa & Tim Hitchins — 2021-04-13T05:00:00Z

Mapping Action Collective, based in Portland, Oregon, leverages mapping and data to support housing-justice organizing, using GIS to dismantle systems of oppression, and grounding its work in the needs of the communities and movements with which it works.
---- Series: Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research As the interwoven US crises of homelessness, evictions, displacement, and housing instability reach catastrophic levels, students, scholars, practitioners,

- From the Field / housing, housing justice, mapping, cartography, data, community organizing, Portland (Oregon), Oregon, United States, homelessness, evictions

Landlord Tech in Covid‑19 Times

Erin McElroy & Wonyoung So — 2021-03-30T05:00:00Z

Covid‑19 has expanded trends in surveillance technology deployed by landlords and property managers—resulting in racialized and gendered harms—and targeted people who are already surveilled by the carceral state.
---- Series: Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research Covid‑19 has exacerbated existing forms of housing injustice, as the corollary economic recession, stay-at-home orders, and increased domestic work such as childcare have made it impossible for

- From the Field / technology, landlords, evictions, surveillance, Covid-19, coronavirus, pandemic, tenants

“Every Eviction is an Act of Violence”

Tara Raghuveer & Joshua Akers — 2021-03-23T06:00:00Z

Josh Akers interviews researcher, organizer, and activist Tara Raghuveer about her work with KC Tenants in Kansas City, Missouri, and with the Homes Guarantee. They discuss housing issues and activism in Kansas City and at the national level, and what the Covid‑19 pandemic has meant for housing struggles and the future of housing movements.
---- Series: Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research In early December 2020, Metropolitics editorial board member Josh

- Interviews / activism, video, housing, rental housing, tenants, community organizing, evictions, Covid-19, coronavirus, pandemic, United States, Kansas City, Missouri

Displacement, Demobilization, and Democracy: Current Eviction and Historic Dispossession in Richmond, Virginia

Kathryn Howell & Benjamin F. Teresa — 2020-02-04T06:00:00Z

High eviction rates in Black Richmond neighborhoods must be understood in the context of a long history of political and physical displacement that has suppressed activism in these neighborhoods.
In April 2018, the Princeton Eviction Lab released a nearly nationwide dataset of eviction filings and judgments between 2000 and 2016. From this work, a New York Times article identified Richmond, Virginia, as having the second-highest eviction rate of large cities in the United States. Five of the

- From the Field / Black neighborhoods, Black politics, democracy, displacement, race, race and space, United States, Richmond, Virginia, evictions

Understanding the Causes of Eviction-Based Urban Displacement: Bringing Critical Urban Theory Back In

J. Revel Sims — 2019-09-24T05:00:00Z

Close analysis of eviction patterns in Dane County, Wisconsin, between 2000 and 2016 suggests that tenant poverty is not the sole driver of displacement, and that we must consider the importance of other structural factors.
Recent scholarship on eviction places the phenomenon within the context of increasing social and economic precariousness and the lack of affordable housing. This work exposes the importance of what was deemed a “hidden housing problem” within the social sciences (Hartman

- From the Field / displacement, critical urban theory, gentrification, evictions