Making Room: The Geography of Rooming House Regulation in Toronto

This dissertation addresses the contemporary moment of the uneven regulation of rooming houses using qualitative research methods including semi-structured interviews, participant observation and document analysis. The uneven regulation of rooming houses provides an opportunity to study the local administration of poverty, the fragmented legal landscape of municipal law, the suburbanization of poverty and the governance of a marginalized tenant population. This dissertation questions how municipal governments function administratively, how space—specifically suburban space—influences urban governance and how an imagined geography of a 1970s skid row permeates present-day debates concerning suburban rooming houses. The geography and regulation of rooming houses in Toronto is fragmented. This fragmented legal landscape provides an opportunity to study how the bureaucratic functions of the municipal government alter the state of affordable housing in the city. In 1974, Toronto implemented a rooming house licensing bylaw as a response to fatal fires and unsafe living conditions in rooming houses. Still, in 1989 the Rupert Hotel fire happened in a licensed downtown rooming house. This specific fire garnered considerable municipal attention to the ‘problem of rooming houses.’ When the City of Toronto amalgamated in 1998, the rooming house licensing bylaw remained within the jurisdiction of the former City of Toronto (the downtown) and rooming houses were prohibited in the former cities (the inner suburbs) of Scarborough and North York and licensed (in a limited capacity) in Etobicoke. As poverty continues to rise in Toronto’s inner suburbs, rooming houses are increasingly in demand. Meanwhile, the legal status of rooming houses continue to be precarious as they are perceived to be illegal in the suburbs and legal in the downtown. Overall, this dissertation documents the geography of municipal bylaws in the context of gentrification, urban renewal, increased poverty in the suburbs and the everyday role of law.Ph