Nathanael Lauster

This thesis investigates how Canada’s efforts to fulfill the UN’s conceptualization of the right to housing can be improved based on the experiences of Indigenous, Black, and Women of Colour (IBWOC) who are fleeing gender-based violence in Vancouver and Toronto, Canada. Policymakers frequently prioritize the infrastructural and economic components of the right to housing. This can overlook important social aspects of the right to housing. Previous analyses indicate that comprehensive or intersectional approaches that cater to several needs such as legal and employment services are necessary to adequately house women after they flee violence. I use grounded theory to analyze semi-structured interviews with 10 IBWOC who have fled violence in Vancouver and Toronto. Important social aspects of housing emphasized by IBWOC fleeing gender-based violence includes a sense of community, a feeling of safety, and supportive landlord relationships. My findings shows that IBWOC who have fled violence value a sense of community. They also lack a feeling of safety that is highly relational to the people around them. Lastly, their relationships with private landlords are often poor but landlords are in a position to provide support. The results illustrate that housing is a social phenomenon and efforts to meet IBWOC’s right to housing must consider social needs.

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Research on informal housing has predominantly focused on formations occurring in the Global South, with less empirical focus on the Global North. Utilizing data from qualitative interviews with people practicing vehicle-living in the Metro Vancouver region, this study diverges from the Global South approach, by examining how individuals living out of their vehicles attempt to connect to the urban technological grid, and how these intermittent connections help people build and recreate a sense of home within makeshift, “illegitimate” living spaces. The results of this study contribute to the sociological literature on vehicle-living and housing inequalities, and helps expand the field of informal housing studies through the exploration of a form of mobile makeshift housing occurring within the specific material and socio-economic conditions of the Global North.

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This thesis explores the theoretical and empirical connection between the welfare state and national-level climate governance, drawing together the concepts of the ecological state, ecological modernization, and varieties of capitalism. It is argued that the eco-state represents the latest evolutionary phase of the modern state, though no state has achieved full eco-state status. In its nascence it has thus been layered on top of institutional structures that characterize earlier phases, namely welfare and production regimes. As a result, 'eco-state regimes' – differential degrees of eco-state development – have begun to take shape, mapping onto these two foundational regimes such that coordinated market economies with social democratic welfare states are the vanguards of ecological modernization, a discourse that dominates environmental policy arenas across the advanced capitalist world but that these particular countries have embraced with especial gusto and have the institutional and governance capacities to make a reality. It is proposed, then, that this ‘family of nations’ would exhibit comparatively strong climate governance from an ecological modernization perspective. Using available data, I assess the empirical relevance of this theoretical framework and suggest how it might be strengthened. A basic quantitative analysis of scores on the Climate Change Performance Index provides some support for the theory but the existence of two substantially discrepant cases – the United Kingdom and Finland – indicates that it is overly simplistic. I explore these two cases further in considerable depth using an interdisciplinary, comparative case study approach, which brings to light a range of influential extra-theoretical factors, including climatic, geographic, demographic, economic, political, historical, and geopolitical factors. My findings therefore highlight the importance of a broader conception of national context to a fuller understanding of variation in national-level climate governance and suggest an additional, alternative evolutionary path for countries with liberal market economies and liberal welfare states. However, the findings also call into question the possibility of a fully developed eco-state, and the likelihood of ecological modernization as a definitive solution to global climate change, in the context of globalized capitalism.

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Background: Despite the importance of housing to health, there continues to be a dearth of research on housing in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES). The two types of housing available to low-income people in this area are social housing and single room occupancy (SRO) housing. This thesis sought to evaluate low-income housing in the DTES by: reviewing the literature on housing and health; and evaluating the impact of the housing environment on stable and unstable tenants’ change in health compared to 1 year before the survey was taken.Method: This is a secondary analysis of data collected in 2007 as part of the Downtown Eastside Demographic Study of SRO and Social Housing Tenants. Tenants were aggregated to the building level based on their length of tenancy. Stable tenants were classified as living at their address for more than 1 year, while unstable tenants had lived at their address for less than 1 year. Multiple-regression analysis was used to determine which factors of the housing-environment contributed to better health-outcomes at the building level. Results: The literature review found that no studies have taken a building level approach to exploring the health outcomes of tenants, despite numerous qualitative accounts of the importance of the building-environment. Multiple-regression analyses demonstrated that social housing significantly contributed to health for both stable and unstable tenants. Building level health was also significantly higher if stable tenants were satisfied with building management. Unstable tenants were adversely affected if there were reports of problems-with-safety in the building, especially if they also lived in SRO housing. Furthermore, problems-with-safety was linked to problems-with-drugs.Conclusion: Social housing in all analyses contributed to significantly better health compared to 1 year ago. Consistent with qualitative findings problems-with-safety are especially detrimental to health for tenants of SRO buildings. Interventions to reduce instability within low-income housing include the facilitation of a safe environment, which is likely related to the quality of building management. Evaluative measures, to ensure quality building management, are essential to promoting stability and health within both SRO and social housing buildings.

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