I think the risks of alienation are really high, in a social sense, if you’re a relentless critic or revolutionary. You can find quite a bit more support within your family, and your neighbours, and the community at large if you’re a supporter of the over-arching social systems rather than a relentless critic of them.
Author: Milan
Dissertation on TSpace
I am still trying to get them to replace the file with one that has a few minor typos corrected, but my dissertation went live on the University of Toronto’s TSpace platform today:
Please don’t buy one before asking if I was planning to make you one already, but you can buy a print copy at cost from Lulu.com. I am also ordering a batch to reduce shipping costs, so if you want to get in on that let me know.
Prohibiting eviction through fraud
One of the reasons why Toronto’s housing market is such a disaster is that landlords are basically immune from any mechanism for punishing them for misconduct.
They can abuse the ambiguity of the Residential Tenancy Act to baselessly refuse to assign someone new to a lease, as a way of forcing existing residents to leave or accept an illegal rent increase.
There is also widespread reporting on abuse of mechanisms that let a landlord evict a tenant for their own use of the space or similar reasons. I have personally — and had friends — threatened with eviction for a wide range of trivial or invented reasons, all as a pressure tactic to add stress and try to illegally force people from their homes.
The Landlord and Tenant Board system is completely jammed up, with even the most urgent hearings taking 8-9 months to happen (and then they may be inconclusive, leaving everyone waiting again).
One remedy that could improve things would be a criminal offence for evicting a tenant through fraud or abuse of process. Theoretically a mistreated tenant could sue for damages, but it’s hardly likely that someone scrambling for a place to survive would accept those legal fees and risks. Having a criminal offence would create a real stick to discourage and prevent landlord misconduct, slightly rebalancing power relations in order to make the law work more as written and less as words to be ignored and misused by those driven only be the desire to collect as much rent as possible.
Creating a criminal offence is justified for at least three reasons. Even good tenants who follow the law and pay their rent may face daily and severe stress from the knowledge their landlords are trying to get rid of them illegally. I have been personally and seriously stressed about housing, often to the point of losing sleep, almost every day since the crisis with my flatmate at my old place began years ago. Even with the extreme stress of a PhD program to compare with, Toronto’s housing market is worse.
Taking away someone’s home is a very serious matter, which is why we regulate housing so much in the first place. If the existing system cannot contain landlord misconduct, there must be one with more coercive power against them. Secondly, there is extensive evidence that this misconduct is widespread, if not routine. A significant change is needed to disrupt a rotten status quo. Finally, the potential monetary rewards for landlord misconduct are huge, especially when it has become normalized throughout the system. Only a strong counterbalance has a chance of blunting the incentive for landlords to profit through illegality and misconduct.
Media reports on fossil fuel divestment
Now that I am no longer tracking media references to the movement for my dissertation, I need a thread to post stories of interest to people tracking the movement.
For example: How Change Is Actually Made on Campus
A big March
In June 2013, I went to Montreal to see my brother Sasha graduate from McGill.
That was about 9 years, 9 months, and 3 days ago.
On Friday the 10th I am graduating in absentia and able to pick up my PhD diploma. Five days later I will be seeing Sasha in person for the first time since that Montreal visit.
Historical Toronto postcards
Flickr user Agatha Barc has some albums of historical postcards of Toronto and the University of Toronto. To me, they provide the contrasting thrills of seeing buildings that look just as they do today and seeing whole areas (like around city hall) that are now unrecognizable.
TO360 wayfinding consultation
Though I had noticed some of their signage (and, without knowing it, their printed Toronto cycling map has been a key planning tool for our urban hikes), I did not actually know about the city’s TO360 wayfinding project until I saw a post about it a few days ago.
They are currently working on the Long Branch area west of Humber Bay, and held a consultation yesterday at the local library.
The consultation was unlike anything I have done, and really cool. Some knowledgeable local residents turned up, and the TO360 people had printed maps the size of large dinner tables where people could correct errors, note things that ought to be included, and suggest places where they should include custom graphics for something like a building or monument rather than a generic labelled marker. It’s awesome to see a group with so much capability and official support working to map the city from a non-driving perspective.
As shown on p. 11 of the slides, the group is working through the whole GTA as they are funded by the city. It would be neat to explore new areas as they focus on them and contribute to forthcoming consultations. The results won’t just be used for map posts on the street and map posters in subway stations, but also future versions of the cycling map.
TMU GIS certificate
This program at Toronto Metropolitan University looks pretty cool: Applied Digital Geography and GIS
Choir photos
Yesterday I photographed the Opus 8 choir at St. Thomas’s Anglican Church: Opus 8 choir at St. Thomas’s Anglican Church