Inviting Death: The life and death consequences of access to housing

housed… [un]housed…. [re]housed symposium, School of Interior Design, Toronto Metropolitan University

May 9th, 12-2:00pm

288 Church Street, room 707/709

The Office of Social Innovation will present a Transformation Cafe exploring the intersection of disability, death, and access to housing on May 9th, as part of TMU’s School of Interior Design’s housed…unhoused…rehoused symposium. Transformation cafes are discussions that are open to the TMU community and the public that invite people from different disciplines and communities to engage in dialogue around a common issue. We will begin with a screening of Liz Carr’s documentary, Better off Dead?, which takes a disability activist analysis to explore different perspectives of medical assistance in dying. The screening will be followed by a Death cafe. Death Cafes are salon-style conversations about death, conversations often quieted in secular, western/ized cultures. These loosely structured conversations are typically guided by questions aimed to animate personal, collective, cultural, political, and/or spiritual exchanges discussions about death. In this death cafe, we will discuss disabled people’s life and death chances within a culture in which medical assistance in dying coupled with a lack of adequate social services and supports may make it easier to access death than to access life.

Hosted by Carmen Galvan, Esther Ignagni, Flavia Novais, Max Ferguson, and Eliza Chandler

Access information: This event will take place in a barrier-free room and will be free and open to the public. We will have ASL interpreters. This will be a relaxed space. As a content note, we will take up discussions of death and precarity related to disabled and other marginalized communities. We will have an active listener on site.

About the symposium: The housed…[un]housed...[re]housed… symposium will shine its academic light on our affordable housing and unhoused crisis in Toronto, Ontario. Given our recent pressing issues and experiences with affordability issues, refugee settlements, the COVID-19 pandemic, addiction, mental health, and the climate crisis, the symposium will probe and discuss precedents with a critical and multi-disciplinary lens. Hence, there is a need to revisit, question, and expand on the Fair Housing Act discourse, which prohibits discrimination and the Ontario Human Rights Commission that housing is a human right. 

The symposium captures a range of topics and inquiries. It will examine the following Housing and Homelessness unifying themes: Local and Global Housing: Policies, Rights and Law, Rental Scams, Renovations and Evictions; Healthcare and Accessible Housing; Pedagogy and Practice: Civic Engagement and Pro Bono Work, Social Work, Social Medicine, and Social Suffering. 

We invite you to listen to presenters and see exhibitions and films from Ontario, Quebec, United Kingdom, and the United States. 

This event is supported in part by funding the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and The Office of the President, Toronto Metropolitan University, The Creative School: New Collaborations Grant, Interior Design at The Creative School, TMU Libraries, Lincoln Alexander School of Law, The Office of Social Innovation, Department of Architecture, and The Office of the Provost and Vice-President, Academic.