GeoLive Crowdsourced Mapping Unchartered COVID Evictions:
Are Women Disproportionately Affected by Job Loss?
It is well known that property ownership affects the relative ability of individuals to claim the “right to the city” and community, when on the other hand, renters—people who do not own property—are treated largely with ambivalence, suspicion, and even hostility, particularly when evicted. See my research paper suggesting that a GeoLive Renter crowdsourced map could offer in real time those boots-on-the-ground numbers created by and for women to push back against renovictions (renovating to increase rent up to three times more on vacant suites).
Many scholars hold the view that Vancouver is so expensive that the working poor (those whose yearly income falls below the poverty line) cannot afford to live there, and if they do live in Vancouver, it is often in substandard basement suites. A great deal of speculation has been made as to the lasting impacts of women’s job loss due to COVID-19 and what to do about it. COVID job loss has disproportionately affected women, many of whom work in low-paid service sector “soft economy” jobs: caregiving, gig economy, and temporary retail front-line jobs, which were affected the most by work closures and social-distancing measures. What is atypical of this economic downturn mainly affecting women is that to rebound, the traditional shovels-in-the-ground construction jobs will not reverse this economic impact, which may leave women permanently behind.
See: Desjardins, D., & Freestone, C. (2021, March 4). COVID further clouded the outlook for Canadian women at risk of disruption. RBC. Thought Leadership.
In this paper, I focus on analyzing data from the 2018 Canadian Housing Survey (CHS) and propose statistical logistic regression modelling coupled with a GeoLive crowdsourced map created by women in a particular Vancouver neighbourhood Kitsilano (where I live). I posit that in reference to pandemic job losses, which disproportionately affected women, a Geolive crowdsourced map could show that women are more likely to lead the number of British Columbia forced moves due to precarious housing and employment structure post-pandemic. In this report, I have GitHub coded the 2018 CHS, which pre-pandemic showed that men experienced the greatest forced moves in Vancouver. Gaining renter data before 2024 is critical if in Vancouver, second only to Hong Kong as the least-affordable city in the world (Demographia, 2020), we are to turn the tide by creating more socially responsible housing .
See: Quastel, N., Moos, M., & Lynch, N. (2012). Sustainability-as-density and the return of the social: The case of Vancouver, British Columbia. Urban Geography, 33(7), 1055–1084.
