The African Diaspora in the United States and Canada at the Dawn of the 21st Century

Chapter 5: Housing Experiences of New African Immigrants and Refugees in Toronto

C Ch ha ap pt te er r 5 5 Housing Experiences of New African Immigrants and Refugees in Toronto CARLOS TEIXEIRA INTRODUCTION One of the defining characteristics of recent immigration to Canada has been its cultural and racial heterogeneity . Not only have the source countries of immigrants to Canada and its largest city, Toronto, changed from predominantly West European to a greater proportion of immigrants from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and South America, but also recent immigrants tend to come from a wider spectrum of socio-economic backgrounds (Bourne and Rose 2001; Murdie and Teixeira 2003). The Black community of Toronto reflects the immigrant heterogeneity of Canada. While the mass media routinely portrays the Black community as a singular group, it is actually a very diverse population and includes Black Canadians, Black Americans, Black South Americans, Black Africans, and Blacks from the Caribbean (Opoku-Dapaah 2006). Immigration has contributed to the growth of this population in recent years, with about half of Canada’s Black population (52 percent) consisting of immigrants, most of whom have arrived since the early 1980s (Mensah 2005). Statistics Canada records Canada ’s 2001 Black population at 622,210, making it the third-largest visible minority group in the country, after Chinese and South Asians. Most of Canada’s Black population have settled in one of the two largest urban centers , with 46.8 percent living in Toronto and 21 percent in Montreal. Black immigration from Africa to Canada is a relatively recent phenomenon. Canadian immigration policies historically have been prejudicial and discriminatory based on race, and have not encouraged the resettlement of African refugees in Canada. Today, despite immigration policy liberalization and adoption of more objective criteria for immigrant selection, immigration from Africa tends to be very low relative to other socalled “non-traditional” sources of Canadian immigration. For example, Africa currently contributes just 5 to 7.5 percent of all immigrants to Canada, although this number has been increasing over the last 10 to 15 years. (Danso and Grant 2000; Mensah 2005). African immigrants to Canada encounter longer delays and reduced prospects in comparison with immigrants from Europe or East Asia. As a result of these blocked immigration channels, most Africans in Canada come as refugee claimants and most settle in Toronto (Opoku-Dapaah 2006). Toronto is Canada’s traditional “port of entry” for all new immigrants, and is the country’s largest and most culturally diverse city. It is also one of the most expensive housing markets in Canada. New immigrants to Canada are likely to face the greatest affordability problems in this housing market (Hulchanski 2001; Murdie 2003). As a consequence, the settlement of immigrants in Toronto, and the corresponding transformation of the city’s ethnocultural mosaic, has been marked by increased segregation and poverty levels in sections of the city, and by high levels of residential mobility (sometimes “forced” relocation) and suburbanization. The settlement patterns (choices made by groups of people/immigrants regarding type of residence, neighborhood and city in which to live) of new immigrants have become increasingly diverse. For example, Asian business immigrants settle in relatively high-priced, single-family, detached suburban dwellings, while refugees are forced into lower-rent, private-sector apartments, many of which have poor maintenance standards. Recent evidence suggests that new immigrant groups and visible minorities, including Black Africans, are more likely than non-im- 62 Carlos Teixeira migrants to live in poor-quality housing and in neighborhoods with high rates of poverty (Kazemipur and Halli 2000; Opoku-Dapaah 2006), and extreme poverty among some immigrant groups. “Immigrants and refugees are increasingly falling under the category of absolute homelessness,” and these groups are “now part of the new face of homelessness” in Toronto (Ballay and Bulthuis 2004, p. 119). Many factors limit access to housing for recent immigrants. For example, the lack of federal commitment to affordable housing in the 1990s, and reductions in the commitments of many Provincial governments during this same period (with notable exceptions, such as Quebec which remained active in supporting non-profit housing), resulted in Canada having the smallest non-market housing sector of any major Western nation, except the U.S. Additionally , relatively few rental units have been built in Toronto since the mid-1990s, and rents have increased at approximately twice the rate of inflation. For many new immigrants and visible minorities, these economic factors are aggravated by barriers such as discriminatory practices in the private rental market (Dion 2001; Novac et al. 2004). Thus, race remains...