Housing, Human Rights and the City of Kitchenerby Peter Eglin

“[W]hatever their history, local governments have usually been dominated by local business interests,” wrote sociologist Gary Teeple in his 1995 book Globalization and the Decline of Social Reform. Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic expanded that thought in 2018 when he said about the Breithaupt Block 3 development proposal, “Although many councillors sympathized with residents’ frustrations, council needs to consider the message it is sending to investors.” (Waterloo Region Record, June 26, 2018). The same sentiment was expressed by Record columnist Luisa D’Amato on November 12 when she wrote, “Cities have to play by the rules and respect their own zoning decisions, otherwise there won’t be investment” (Waterloo Region Record, November 12, 2025).

These were the refrains echoing in my mind watching and discussing UW Planning Professor Brian Doucet’s outstanding film on Canada’s housing crisis Thinking Beyond the Market shown at the Princess on November 16 care of Waterloo MPP Catherine Fife (Brian Doucet Waterloo Region Record November, 10, 2025). Rather than bemoaning the federal and provincial governments’ disgraceful failure since the mid-1990s to house their citizens adequately despite 77 years of high-minded declarations to do just the opposite, Doucet takes his audience on a country-wide tour of ordinary people’s successful efforts to get local governments, charities and non-profits to build and to defend truly affordable housing, “affordable” being 30% of before-tax income (not the 80% of market value beloved of developers and their political friends). As a result we have all come to know what “renoviction” and “demoviction” mean.

Housing, after all, is first and foremost a human right before it is an investment commodity.

In the case of Metro Vancouver a section of the film is devoted to a remarkable partnership among three first nations and the City to develop a sizeable parcel of land in conformity with indigenous principles.

In Kitchener we could go a step further. Certainly, the City could take up available government land on which to build affordable housing. But if, as in Toronto (Toronto Star November 17, 2025), about 20 percent of approved projects are idle with vacant lots, while here 2,300 people are homeless, about 1,000 sleeping rough, let the City acquire those lots to build such housing with partners such as Indwell (also featured in Doucet’s movie), taking advantage of federal and provincial government programs.

What? Deprive private investors of their failing investments? Interfere with the market? Are you mad?

The Court’s judgment re 100 Victoria Street invoked s.7 of the Charter asserting the right of encampment residents to life, liberty and security of the person. That’s like saying it would be a crime against humanity for them to be evicted. And that’s like saying that members of Council need to consider the message they are sending to their constituents, the common people of Kitchener who elected them.

Councillors that I noticed at the showing were the Region’s Erb, Huinink and Rodrigues, Waterloo’s Hamner, Roe, Vasic and Wright and Kitchener’s Chapman flying solo. Given that the concept of democracy means rule by the common people (the “demos”), we commoners clearly have our work cut out for us if Kitchener is ever to become a place that truly honours the human right to housing of its residents.

By permission of the author. Also published in the Waterloo Region Record, November 26, 2025