Contextualizing Black (Dis)Placement in Ontario through Systems of Housing, Homelessness and Incarceration

Plantation logics continue to insidiously permeate various levels of contemporary society. Even some of the most intimate of spaces, such as the home, are not free from the pervasive legacies and the continuation of colonial practices. Chattel slavery marked the beginning of the racialized and systemic placement and displacement of Black people, resulting in large and small-scale placelessness. This article explores Black (dis)placement in Ontario through three primary systems: public housing, homelessness and incarceration. The author provides a multidisciplinary critical analysis that investigates the convergences and divergences between the public housing sector and the prison system in Toronto while also considering the third liminal space of homelessness. Not only are these spaces explored independently, but their functioning as an ecosystem is explored through what the author calls the Carceral Domiciliate Network (CDN). The CDN refers to the ways in which Black people’s living spaces are largely restricted to prison, public housing, and the liminal space of homelessness. Rather than functioning idiosyncratically, together, these systems’ policies communicate with one another in a way that makes it difficult to escape its matrix.