In New South Wales, where are the First Nations women? In prison, still discarded and ignored

March 19, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Last week, the New South Wales Auditor General released a report, “Support for First Nations peoples in custody and post-release to reduce reoffending.” To absolutely no one’s surprise, the report shows that the state has failed to address the needs of incarcerated (or any) Indigenous people, or, better put, the state has successfully tortured Indigenous adults and children. As today’s Guardian notes, the “damning” report found “the number of Aboriginal adults in the state’s prisons reached record levels in December, exceeding the previous high that was set six months earlier. Last year also marked a record number of Indigenous deaths in custody, after 12 people died. In the decade to 2021, the number of young people in custody was steadily declining. But data shows trend has now reversed. The number of youths in prison overall increased by 34% in the two years from June 2023. Meanwhile, more than 60% of First Nations adults released from prison in 2023 reoffended within 12 months, according to the latest data.” What the Guardian report missed is the centrality of gender. First Nation women and girls live and die and suffer at the heart of these horrifying, and again altogether unsurprising, numbers. Where are the women?

Consider the numbers: “As at December 2025, 33.9% of adults in NSW custody (4,452 people) were First Nations, the highest number and proportion on record. First Nations women made up 44.8% of all women in custody and First Nations men made up 33.1% of all men in custody…. As at December 2025, 2,196 (36.1%) adults on remand were First Nations (pending further court action, usually after being refused bail), the highest number and proportion on record. 48.7% of all women on remand were First Nations, and 35% of all men on remand were First Nations.”

The report found that First Nation incarcerated adults often have greater difficulties accessing programs and supports because they are “overclassified”. Overclassified means they are disproportionately punished for minor offenses. The study found that between 2023 and 2024, the average rate of First Nations women charged with offenses while in custody was 101; the average rate for non-First Nations women as 51. Again, that means that out of 100 First Nations women, 101 were charged with offenses.

3.4% of the New South Wales population are First Nation adults and young people. In December 2025, 33.9% of New South Wales prison population were First Nations. That is the highest proportion on record.

Again, none of this is surprising. In 2018, Human Rights Watch issued a report, which noted, “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in prison are the fastest growing prison population, and 21 times more likely to be incarcerated than non-indigenous peers.” A version of that statement, “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in prison are the fastest growing prison population”, had appeared in major reports in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015,2016, and 2017. Now it’s 2026, and where are the women? In cages that pass for justice, in systems that ignore their needs, desires, lives, humanity, in a world that discards their past, present and future.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Kelly Flannagan, “Trying To Do My Time” / The Torch)

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“This place broke something in us. Something that I don’t know if we will ever be able to fix”

March 15, 2026 by Leave a Comment

 

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.”
Robert Frost, Mending Wall

When do we start to care? What is the threshold of our concern? Gordon Brown was once Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, a country with its own blood splattered history of abusing asylum seekers, especially children. Last week, in response to the U.S. bombing of Shajareh Tayyebeh school, the slaughter of 168 schoolgirls, Gordon Brown wrote, “The killing of a reported 168 people, primarily schoolgirls, in the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab in Iran has shaken to its very core the conscience of the world ….No child should ever become collateral damage in a conflict.” Brown then goes on to call for “the creation of a dedicated international criminal court for crimes against children”. As Gordon notes, this event is not isolated. Children are killed, assaulted, destroyed, broken from Gaza and the West Bank to Lebanon to Iran … and beyond. Gordon notes, “We cannot afford to stand by as yet another established international law governing the conduct of war is broken, apparently with impunity.” Something is broken … something in us. And it’s not only in “foreign lands”. It’s down the street, around the corner. Ask the five children of the El Gamal family, who have been detained in Dilley since June 2025. They wrote letters which were presented to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary on Wednesday.

The children are Habiba El-Gamal, 18; a sixteen-year old son; a nine-year-old daughter; and five-year-old twins, one boy one girl.

This is the beginning of Habiba El Gamal’s letter: “My name is Habiba Soliman. I’m eighteen years old and I have been detained in Dilley, Texas since June 2025 with my family. Every morning we wake up wondering how much more of this we can take because nine months has felt like an eternity.” Habiba graduated high school in May. She “was chosen as one of the `best and brightest’ students in the state and was recognized by a picture with the mayor with a scholarship from the Colorado Springs Gazette. She wants to be a doctor and dreams of Harvard medical school.” She stills dream of Harvard … and she dreams of freedom: ““We forgot what it feels like to be free. We miss what it feels like to wake up in our own beds with our phones next to us. We dream about how we want our first meal together as a family to be pizza and then cake. We dream of a time when each one of us will be in school and will be able to work on his future. We dream of a normal life where we still are able to make a difference in the world.” We dream we dream we dream … But, Habiba adds, “this place broke something in us. Something that I don’t know if we will ever be able to fix.”

No child should ever become collateral damage. This place broke something in us. Something that I don’t know if we will ever be able to fix.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: 9-year-old child / Texas Tribune)

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Households with children experienced a sharp increase in food insufficiency soon after the eviction moratorium ended

March 10, 2026 by Leave a Comment

We live amid (reports of) orchestrated, organized violence against children – bombs dropping on schools in Gaza, Iran, Sudan; children kidnapped by masked agents of the State across the United States; children strip-searched in prisons across the world; and so much more performed in the name of “national security”. These all garner and deserve whatever attention they get … but we must remember, they don’t come out of the blue. They may be atrocities, but they are not anomalies. For decades we have drowned children in daily trauma, all in the name of development, property rights, national security, societal well-being, and the list goes on.

Consider, for example, the situation of children and eviction in the United States. A recent study, “‘The rent eats first’: Did ending the national eviction moratorium increase food insufficiency among renters in the United States?”, found exactly what one would expect. With the end of the moratorium, food insufficiency increased among renters. Black renters suffered the impact more than renters of other racial identities (in particular white renters). Women renters felt the impact most strongly. Lower income renters suffered more widely than other income renters. As the researchers noted, none of this was a surprise. But then they note, “Most strikingly, households with children experienced a sharp increase in food insufficiency soon after the revocation of the eviction moratorium”. Most strikingly … and yet not striking at all. In the United States, as elsewhere, eviction targets and impacts women and children first.

We have known this for a long time. Three years ago, in a widely disseminated study, the Eviction Lab found that, in the United States, those most threatened by eviction are young children. Each year, children under age 18 represent 40% of those threatened with eviction. In a discussion of the study, the authors note, “Across the life-course, the risk of experiencing an eviction—a deeply traumatizing event—is highest during childhood. Evicted children face increased risk of food insecurity, exposure to environmental hazards, academic challenges, and a range of long-term physical and mental health problems. We now know that nearly three million children face these risks every single year …. Our results demonstrate the disparate impact of eviction faced by at least two protected classes [under the Fair Housing Act]: Black renters and renters with children. As eviction filing rates return to pre-pandemic levels, it’s these renters who will pay the price.”

Since then, children have “graduated” from “food insecurity”, meaning “households were, at times, unable to acquire adequate food for one or more household members”  to “food insufficiency”, meaning a household does not have enough to eat. We have “progressed” from hunger to starvation. This is us, a nation whose policies subject children to trauma in the name of property rights, urban development, “progress”. Do not be surprised at the levels and range of atrocity committed upon the lives of “our” children. For they are the future … and the future is starving.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Käthe Kollwïtz, “Hunger” / MOMA)

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The ghost, and daughters, of Celia Ramos haunt and occupy Peru and beyond

March 7, 2026 by Leave a Comment

 

On Thursday, March 5, 2026, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the “highest human rights court in Latin America”, issued a landmark ruling, which opens: “In its judgment in the case of Ramos Durand et al. v. Peru…, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights declared the State of Peru internationally responsible for the forced sterilization and subsequent death of Celia Edith Ramos Durand in 1997. The Court also found the State responsible for the lack of due diligence and unjustified delay in investigating the events, and for the harm caused to Ms. Ramos Durand’s daughters, husband, and mother. Consequently, the Court determined that the State violated the rights to life, personal integrity, personal liberty, privacy, access to information, family, equality before the law, and health of Celia Edith Ramos Durand; and the rights to personal integrity, judicial guarantees, family protection, and judicial protection of her daughters, Marisela del Carmen Monzón Ramos, Emilia Edith Monzón Ramos, and Marcia Maribel Monzón Ramos. Baltazara Durand de Ramos, mother, and Jaime Enrique Monzón Tejada, husband of Mrs. Ramos Durand; and the rights of the children of Marisela del Carmen Monzón Ramos, Emilia Edith Monzón Ramos, and Marcia Maribel Monzón Ramos.”

According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, between 1996 and 2001, under Peru’s forced sterilization policy, almost 7000 women, almost all of whom were poor and Indigenous, were forcibly sterilized. During that period, more than 272,000 tubal ligations were performed. In almost 60% of the cases, there was no consent. Celia Ramos was one of a nation of women, a mother of three daughters. Celia Ramos died July 22, 1997. She was 34 years old.

The story is straightforward. Celia Ramos sought care at her local medical post in a rural village in the Andes. Health workers pressured her to have a surgical sterilization. Celia Ramos refused. The health care workers persisted. Using misinformation and intimidation, they “persuaded” Celia Ramos to agree to the operation. During the sterilization surgery, Celia suffered a severe allergic reaction and experienced respiratory arrest. She died 19 days later.

Marisela Monzón Ramos was ten years old when her mother died. Her younger sisters were eight and five at the time. In 2010, thirteen years later, after years of trying and failing to move Peruvian courts to act, they managed to persuade the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to consider the case. In 2021, the Inter=American Court of Human Rights issued a report finding the Peruvian state responsible for the violation of Ramos’s rights and recommending reparations be paid and measures be taken to prevent any repetition. Nothing happened. And so the daughters and their allies continued the struggle. After this week’s decision, Marisela Monzón Ramos explained, “We represent all of those thousands of women that suffered so much over so many years. For us, with this sentence, we are reliving what we have carried for so many years. It is both difficult and comforting. Although we have obtained justice and recognition of the truth, it does not take away from the injustice that Celia Ramos and other women lost their lives”.

The story of Celia Ramos and thousands of other mostly rural, mostly Indigenous women is a story of violence against women and of women’s struggle for autonomy and justice. At the same time, this week’s decision points to another aspect of public policy as an instrument of injustice. The decision notes, repeatedly, that Peru’s National Reproductive Health and Family Planning Programme set numerical targets for Indigenous, rural women of child-bearing age, pushed staff to meet those goals, rewarded staff who met those goals. In this program of national health, Celia Ramos was not a person, not a human, not a woman, she was a number. When national governments set numerical goals in the name of national well-being, it’s women and children first who suffer the consequences.

In the end, “the Court found that the family members of Ms. Ramos Durand—especially her three daughters, who were children at the time of the events—suffered profound harm as a consequence of the sterilization and death of Celia Edith Ramos Durand and the impunity surrounding the case.” Sterilization, death, impunity.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: ONU Mujeres)

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In Australian prisons, strip-searches assault women and children. You need to listen

March 5, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Early this week, the Australian Human Rights Commission, FIGJAM (Formerly Incarcerated Girls Advocates Melbourne), and Flat Out issued a joint report, Ending Strip Searching in Australian Prisons. The report offers eight key findings: there is no evidence of any relationship between strip searching and contraband detection; People in prison experience strip searches as acts of sexual assault and coercive control; strip searches are conducted routinely but rarely uncover dangerous items; less invasive alternatives expose strip searching as unnecessary; people in prison are routinely having their human rights breached by strip searches; children are being forced to strip in front of adult prison guards; the harms of strip searching compound the mass incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; there is a crisis of secrecy in prison.

Consider the findings concerning children: “In most Australian jurisdictions, children as young as ten are incarcerated and can be subjected to strip searching. Based on data covering varying periods in 2021-2022, it is estimated that, on average, children were subjected to more than 300 strip searches each month in prisons across seven Australian jurisdictions. In the month of April 2022 alone, 127 strip searches were conducted on children at two New South Wales (NSW) youth prisons. Only three searches identified items.” These children are disproportionately “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, children with disability and drug and alcohol dependencies, and children with complex trauma.” Not that it should matter, but many of the children who have been strip searched were not incarcerated; they were visiting incarcerated parents. A child is a child is a child.

In 2021, we wrote, ““Excessive strip-searching shines light on discrimination of Aboriginal women in the criminal justice system”. An article with that headline appeared yesterday. While the research and argument of the article is unimpeachable, one wonders about the shining light. The discrimination against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women by and in the Australian so-called criminal justice program is a longstanding open secret. In 2018, Human Rights Watch issued a report, which noted, “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in prison are the fastest growing prison population, and 21 times more likely to be incarcerated than non-indigenous peers.” A version of that statement, “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in prison are the fastest growing prison population”, had appeared in major reports in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015,2016, and 2017. Now it’s 2021, and where are we?”

Where, indeed. This week’s report opens with a foreword by Aunty Vickie Roach, “strong, proud Yuin woman”. The foreword begins, “As a strong, proud Yuin woman who was subjected to strip searches while caged in custody, I can tell you that it is state–sanctioned sexual assault. It is akin to being ambushed, raped and forced to strip naked in front of screws dressed in deliberately authoritarian, intimidating uniforms.” The foreword ends, “I have always fiercely advocated for people in prison, that they are deserving of dignity, and that their human rights must be respected. For us to be called human, we must respect everyone’s human rights. I have told my story far and wide – I have told the prisons, I have told the government, I have told the media and I have told the Yoorrook Justice Commission. Now I am telling you. And you need to listen.”

You need to listen.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Illustration: Judy Kuo / Human Rights Law Centre)

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The path to neo-feudalism is written in letters of blood and fire

February 24, 2026 by Leave a Comment

 

A headline in today’s Guardian reads, “Tax expert worried Australia on path to neo-feudal society as housing wealth drives inequality”. The article opens, “One of the country’s leading tax experts says the explosion in housing wealth has put Australia on the path towards a neo-feudal society where your prosperity depends in large part whether your parents own land or property.” The tax expert, Bob Breunig, then explains, “I don’t think we are back to pre-French Revolution times, but I am worried about that”. We should all be worried. But what exactly is neo about neo-feudalism? Absolutely nothing.

Global, national and local economies never stopped measuring jurisdictional wealth by housing wealth, both individual and sectoral. Landlords, banks, home owners never stopped being landlords, banks, homeowners. The capacity of one sector to evict members of another sector in the name of “development”, though often challenged, has never been broken and has always been codified into law. So .. what’s so neo about neo-feudalism? Absolutely nothing.

A couple hundred years ago, someone wrote, “The economic structure of capitalist society has grown out of the economic structure of feudal society. The dissolution of the latter set free the elements of the former. The immediate producer, the labourer, could only dispose of his own person after he had ceased to be attached to the soil and ceased to be the slave, serf, or bondsman of another. To become a free seller of labour power, who carries his commodity wherever he finds a market, he must further have escaped from the regime of the guilds, their rules for apprentices and journeymen, and the impediments of their labour regulations. Hence, the historical movement which changes the producers into wage-workers, appears, on the one hand, as their emancipation from serfdom and from the fetters of the guilds, and this side alone exists for our bourgeois historians. But, on the other hand, these new freedmen became sellers of themselves only after they had been robbed of all their own means of production, and of all the guarantees of existence afforded by the old feudal arrangements. And the history of this, their expropriation, is written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire.”

Expropriation is written in the annals of humanity in letters of blood and fire. What’s so neo-about neo-feudalism? Absolutely nothing. Look around. What do you see?

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image credit: Thomas Hart Benton, “Casualty” /  State Historical Society of Missouri)

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“Children are going to die in this country needlessly, more and more are going to die because of what’s happening here”

February 19, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Two-month-old Juan Nicolás

“Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”                               Matthew 19:14

On February 17, 2026, PBS New reported, “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced recently it will not review Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine despite late-stage trials showing it was safe and effective.” Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, noted, “This sent chills up the spines of all of us in public health and the vaccine world because it’s so arbitrary.” While an overwhelming majority of the FDA staff favored proceeding with the review, one member, Vinay Prasad, the chief medical and scientific officer and director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, killed the review. Even The Wall Street Journalobjected, in an editorial titled “Vinay Prasad’s Vaccine Kill Shot: Does the White House know the harm he’s doing to public health?” Yes, yes it does. Dr. Osterholm described the harm, “Children are going to die in this country needlessly, more and more are going to die because of what’s happening here”.

While the refusal to review was reversed on February 18, the reasons given were not that the government wanted to avoid the prospect of children dying in this country needlessly. They don’t.

On February 18, 2026, the same day the FDA reversed its decision, the San Antonio Current reported, “Two-month-old ICE detainee Juan Nicolás deported while sick with bronchitis”. Two-month-old Juan Nicolás was being held in the Dilley Immigration Processing Center. Two days earlier, the San Antonio Current reported that two-month-old Juan Nicolás was “choking on his own vomit… and having respiratory issues”. At that point, Juan Nicolás had spent a month, or half of his life, in detention. According to U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro, “His life is in danger.”

On February 17, the San Antonio Current reported that Juan Nicolás was “rushed to the hospital”, where he was diagnosed with bronchitis. Despite that diagnosis, Juan Nicolás was released and rushed back to Dilley.

Juan Nicolás will not die needlessly in this country … because, the following day, he was deported, rushed out of the country. U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro, explained, “After a discussion with their attorney, I have confirmed that Juan, his 16-month old sister, his mom and his dad have been deported. According to their attorney, the family was deported with only the money that they had in their commissary—a total of $190.” According to Univision reporter Lidia Terrazas, the family was “practically abandoned” in Mexico. Problem solved.

Children are going to die in this country needlessly, more and more are going to die because of what’s happening here.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: San Antonio Current / Instagram / Lidia Terrazas)

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“Even in Russia, they don’t treat children like this.”

February 15, 2026 by 1 Comment

A self-portrait Kamilla made while her parents spoke to NBC News.

“Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today?”
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

NBC News released a report this week, “‘Even in Russia, they don’t treat children like this’: A family’s nightmare in ICE detention”. The report opens: “Nikita and his wife, Oksana, fled Russia in desperation two years ago, believing America was their only hope of giving their three children a life free of fear and oppression. Instead, those children are growing up behind the razor-wire fences of a South Texas detention center, among hundreds of other families swept up in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.” What else is there to say, really? Plenty.

The three children are Kirill, 13; Konstantin, 4; Kamilla, 12. The family has been held in Dilley Immigration Processing Center for four months … and counting.

Konstantin was once a social, outgoing child. Now, surrounded by guards, who “are just as tough as the guards at the adult facilities,” and constant sharp noises, Konstantin cries a lot and keeps to himself. Actually, the guards at Dilley are tougher than guards at adult facilities, inasmuch as they are “guarding” children. Other than guards, what precisely are the dangers the children face?

Kirill taught himself to play piano and then attended music school. A bright and talented child … who now “spends most days withdrawn, waking at night with anxiety and panic attacks”.

Kamilla is a dancer who loves to perform. She now has partial hearing loss, “thanks” largely to the conditions at Dilley, which include whatever is worse than substandard health and medical care. She now lives in constant pain, with little or no relief. When her mother made a makeshift headband, to cover and protect the ear, the guards removed it, claiming it was “contraband”. Kamilla cried. Again, what are the guards “guarding”?

With Kamilla’s birthday approaching, she was asked if she had any wishes. She replied she had only one, “To get out of here.”

Kamilla’s case is not an isolated one: “When several children fell ill with stomach ailments at Dilley, medical staff refused to treat them unless they had already vomited at least eight times.” A “medical staff” that refused to treat ill children is not a medical staff. Period.

In January of this year, an 18-month-old at Dilley had dangerously low blood-oxygen levels. The parents knew something was terribly wrong. For weeks, they begged for someone to address the child’s illness. No one did. Finally, after week, she was taken to a regional children’s hospital, where she was treated for treated her for pneumonia, Covid-19, RSV and severe respiratory distress. She stayed in the hospital for a ten days. She was prescribed medication. She was then returned to Dilley, where the “medical staff” refused to administer the drugs.

When “medical care” means refusal to care in any way, when the food is poisonous, when the “education” is such that children stop reading, when pianists go silent and the dancers sit all day, there can be only one wish: “To get out of here” Are we sleeping, while others suffer? Are we sleeping now? Tomorrow, when we wake, if we wake or think we do, what shall we say of today?

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: NBC News)

 

COMMENTS:

Mari: wow, this makes me cry. So sad, this is the moment to do something !!

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A Winter of Anguish for Minneapolis Children

February 4, 2026 by Leave a Comment

But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,

And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are.

                                    Walt Whitman, “Long, too long America”

“A Winter of Anguish for Minneapolis Children”. That’s the headline of an article in today’s New York Times, and really … what else is there to say? As the United States approached its nineteenth-century civil war, Walt Whitman asked if we were capable of show the world what our children en-masse really are. Are we? By something like a popular vote, “citizens” of the United States elected a government hell bent on imposing suffering on our children, en-masse.

Whitman ended his brief, five-line poem: “(For who except myself has yet conceiv’d what your children en-masse really are?)” Who indeed.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image: Henri Matisse, “.L’Angoisse qui s’amasse en frappant sous ta gorge…”  – “The Gathering Anguish That Strikes in Your Throat”/ Museum of Modern Art)

 

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If elected, Amanda Burrows would be Vancouver’s first renter and woman mayor

December 18, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Amanda Burrows

Who sets housing policy where you live? Renters? Homeowners? Or both? Does anyone in charge of housing policy in your area really know anything about the experience of facing eviction or, more drastically, of being evicted? Recently, Amanda Burrows announced her candidacy for the mayoral nomination of Vancouver. Burrows is “a prominent social justice advocate in Vancouver” as well as Executive Director of FIRST UNITED, a faith-based community services provider. Vancouver is Canada’s least affordable city. Burrows knows that. As she explained in a recent interview, “I have been evicted before, which is so many people’s stories in this city: being severed from the community and not finding a place to live because there’s barely any vacancy and it’s so expensive. I couldn’t even find a place if I wanted to.”

Burrows explicitly raises the question of renter representation in her campaign. In a world in which global, national and local economies have equated “wealth” and “development” with greater and growing inequality, increasing numbers of people are facing the varied and yet not so varied landscapes of “affordable housing crisis”. Part of that means more and more folks are renting. For example, according to a recent report, in the United States “the share of first-time home buyers dropped to a record low of 21%, while the typical age of first-time buyers climbed to an all-time high of 40 years”. That means many are putting off buying a home, and leaving the rental markets, for over a decade.

In 2022, researchers from Boston University and the University of Georgia published a report, “Who Represents the Renters?” The researchers pored over the data concerning 10,000 local, state and federal officials. Guess what they concluded? “We find that renters are starkly underrepresented by a margin of over 30 percentage points—a gap that persists across a variety of institutional and demographic contexts. Public officials are substantially more likely to own single-family homes that are more valuable than other homes in their neighborhoods. Collectively, these findings suggest deep representation inequalities that disadvantage renters at all levels of government.” 89% of city councilors were homeowners in sample cities where homeownership hovered around 51%. 83% of mayors and 76% of city councilors were homeowners. Finally, the average homeowning officeholder’s property was worth 50% more than the median value in their ZIP code.

The report concludes, “The underrepresentation of renters among elected officials is troubling and affects the kinds of policies discussed on the local and national stages.” Troubling, indeed. The troubling is not about this councilmember or that mayor, but about the composition of the body that decides, and in many instances creates, housing policy, and therefore housing itself. You may or may not live in Canada or the United States, but wherever you live, the question of renters and homeowners pertains. Amanda Burrows may or may not be elected, although I for one wish her well. The question here is the question asked by researchers a few years ago, as by researchers in mid-nineteenth century England: Who sets housing policy where you live? Renters? Homeowners? Or both? Does anyone in charge of housing policy in your area really know anything about the experience of facing eviction or, more drastically, of being evicted? Who speaks, whose voices and experiences are excluded?

Homeownership rates by office category

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Kate Hyslop / The Tyee) (Infographic: Katherine Levine Einstein, Joseph T. Ornstein & Maxwell Palmer, Who Represents the Renters)

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