Displacement City: Fighting for Health and Homes in a Pandemic

"Anyone who visited downtown Toronto during the pandemic knows the devastating and powerful impact it had on the city’s homeless. Outreach worker Greg Cook and street nurse Cathy Crowe have a deep knowledge of the people behind the statistics and the headlines, and here create a better understanding of how policies affect people. In this powerful book, they have collected poetry, photography, essays that tell the stories of front-line workers, advocates, people who are unhoused. These include experiences living in the shelter system, displacement, the legacy of residential schools and the experience of the Indigenous population. A unique and powerful account."

Deborah Dundas, Toronto Star

"Displacement City is a timely and unique exploration of how the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated urban homelessness in Canada. It centres the voices of practitioners on the ground and those with lived experience of homelessness. This forward-looking book offers powerful insights into the central role played by frontline workers in advancing the fundamental human rights of access to health care and housing."

Idil Atak, Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology and the Faculty of Law, Toronto Metropolitan University

"Displacement City tells the story of Toronto’s pandemic health and homelessness crisis, tracing the structural roots and disastrous impacts of organized state abandonment. It exposes the brutal failure of the settler-colonial capitalist state to provide housing and care, while documenting inspiring stories of collective struggles for survival, life, and human rights. Essential reading for all who share their vision."

Martine August, Associate Professor in the School of Planning, University of Waterloo

"Our collective failure on housing as a human right has very real human and health costs. Displacement City is exactly what we need to better understand why the status quo on homelessness has been so cruel. The authors illuminate what is ultimately the strength and resilience of communities fighting for a more just city. We must dedicate ourselves to these learnings to truly honour all of the lives lost."

Dr. Andrew Baback Boozary, Primary Care Physician and Founding Executive Director of the Gattuso Centre for Social Medicine at the University Health Network

"At first glance, this is a story of suffering, pain, and trauma. But far more, this book brims with resistance, hopefulness, and solidarity. The authors labour in the shadow of every duplicitous ‘we are all in this together’ platitude and emerge with a powerful vision of care, health, and love. I urge you to read it – you will not regret the effort, and it will leave you with a powerfully different story of what community health can look like."

Matt Hern, Co-director of Solid State Community Industries and Author of What a City Is For: Remaking the Politics of Displacement

"This is a timely and necessary book, and one I wish didn’t have to be written. It paints a stark picture of the pandemic and the City of Toronto’s housing crisis – and what many recognize as a complete disregard of people’s human right to housing. Bringing forward the voices of those most affected by the crisis, the book shows readers a way forward and what needs to happen to create a city that makes room for everyone."

Elizabeth McIsaac, President of Maytree

"This thoughtful and powerful book explores the devastation of the pandemic on Toronto’s homeless. Displacement City relates our long, disgraceful history of dispossessing the vulnerable. It also shows how we managed to briefly do better with significant housing programs in the ’70s – and could easily do so again – if only the pampered elite could be forced to recognize that the unhoused are people too."

Linda McQuaig, Journalist and Author of The Sport and Prey of Capitalists: How the Rich Are Stealing Canada’s Public Wealth

"From the beginning of the book with its historical timeline and list of the deceased, we are in a very special publication that is both gripping and compelling. It reminds us how the ravages of COVID-19 have worsened the risk of those who are homeless. This is a clarion call for action, based in transdisciplinary analysis and learning through action, to address the social crisis of homelessness."

Ken Moffatt, Jack Layton Chair, Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Community Services, Toronto Metropolitan University, and Author of Postmodern Social Work: Reflective Practice and Education

"Greg Cook and Cathy Crowe have compiled a staggering collection of dispatches from the frontlines of Toronto's catastrophic housing crisis. Featuring writing from advocates, artists and the displaced themselves, we are given an unvarnished, raw look at a city at war with its own citizens during the biggest public health crisis in modern history. I'm relieved to know that we'll have this document of Toronto's neglect for future generations to look back on and learn from."

Rollie Pemberton a.k.a Cadence Weapon, rapper, activist, and author of Bedroom Rapper

"Displacement City is an urgent call to recognize and oppose the willful abandonment of and deadly violence against community members who are the targets of colonization, racial capitalism, and hetero-patriarchal and ableist institutions and policies. The truth-telling, insight, grief, and rage expressed in these pages must move us to demand radically different responses to housing and health crises from all levels of government and society, grounded in the lived experience and expertise of unhoused people."

Anna Willats, Coordinator/Faculty with the Assaulted Women’s and Children’s Counsellor/Advocate Program, Social and Community Services, George Brown College