Striking from Below: Tenant Organizing as Insurgent Planning
| dc.contributor.advisor | Sotomayor, Luisa | |
| dc.contributor.author | Nam, Rudia | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-02-14T19:10:27Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-02-14T19:10:27Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024-08-31 | |
| dc.description.abstract | This Major Paper examines tenant organizing in Toronto in the context of two overlapping crises: an affordable housing crisis and a crisis in landlord-tenant governance. This research introduces the concept of ‘tenant insurgency', which describes the process by which working class tenants challenge landlords outside of entrenched institutions and laws that govern the landlord-tenant relationship. This research applies theories of insurgent planning, insurgent citizenship, and feminist care ethics to discuss how tenant organizing represents a strategic, bottom-up response to the systemic failures of governmental and legal institutions in safeguarding tenants' rights. Using a mixed-methods qualitative research design consisting of semi-structured interviews and document and media analysis, this research investigates the history, motivations, limitations, and opportunities of tenant organizing in Toronto. Key findings suggest that the insurgent planning practices and strategies undertaken by tenants stem from a distrust in the legal system, prioritize collective action, and create new tenant infrastructures of care beyond the traditional legal system. Findings also reveal the fragmented landscape of tenant organizing, shaped by variegated goals, political motivations, and strategies of tenant organizing groups. This research argues that tenant insurgency not only addresses immediate rental housing struggles but also calls for a re-imagining of landlord-tenant governance and political participation, shifting the scales in power to the end of working class tenants. This research contributes to counter-hegemonic scholarship on insurgent planning and citizenship, landlordtenant governance, and housing justice, offering practical insights to scholars, planning and urban policy practitioners, and social movement organizers in cities of the Global North. | |
| dc.identifier.citation | Major Paper, Master of Environmental Studies, Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York University | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10315/42639 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.subject | Housing | |
| dc.subject | Spatial justice | |
| dc.subject | Urban social movements | |
| dc.subject | Planning | |
| dc.title | Striking from Below: Tenant Organizing as Insurgent Planning | |
| dc.type | Research Paper |