Displacing Blackness

Poor residents contended with housing authorities regarding claims of unsanitary living conditions.
Case Example: The Orton Family
- Location: Buckingham Street, Halifax.
- Mrs. Orton represented the family at a hearing involving a condemnation order.
- Denied the board's accusation of their home being "filthy;" insisted the rooms were as clean as possible.
- Family defied prior orders to vacate, refusing to leave even after windows were removed during the cold month of March.
Interpretations of Motivations
- Possible reasons for the Orton’s resistance:
- Differing expectations regarding housing conditions compared to the board’s standards.
- Understanding that their income restricted them to their current living situation due to high demand in Halifax’s housing market.
- Likely reluctance to be forcibly relocated to what reformers deemed "proper housing."
Residents' perspectives were often discounted by reformers, indicating a significant gap in understanding and acknowledgment of their living conditions.

Reform efforts by the Health Board Committee reshaped the narrative around slum residents, depicting them as pathological.
Role of Knowledge in Urban Planning
- The reformers constructed the slums and their residents as subjects of knowledge, allowing them to speak as authorities on others' lives without their input.
- Residents were seen as objects needing improvement, lacking agency in decisions about their housing and lives.
Impact
- Reformers’ structure invalidated residents' subjectivity and experiences.
- Reform efforts promoted a bifurcated understanding between "normal" and "pathological" individuals, privileging middle-class norms.

Introduced as a comprehensive solution to slum conditions.
Aimed to demolish existing homes and construct “model tenements,” following learning from previous housing studies.
Advocacy for Housing Upgrades
- Reformers like Rev. Armitage proposed the plan to improve residents' living situations with better housing conditions.
- Goal to educate tenants into a higher living standard through improved environments, rooted in familiar environmentalist logic.
Scale of Change
- Required total demolition and reconstruction of neighborhoods marked as "squalid" and "miserable."

Model tenement initiatives stemmed from British public health experiments dating back to the 1830s.
- Influenced by earlier housing reform movements focusing on the link between living conditions and health issues.
Impact of British Models
- Established companies like the Society for Improving the Dwellings of the Labouring Classes (SIDLC) and Peabody Trust drove the tenement movements, constructing significant housing units in Britain.
- Some North American reformers, including Armitage, visited British projects to inform their strategies.
Financial Structure of Tenements
- Funded by private investors aiming for a 5% return, linking profit motives with social welfare objectives, termed "capitalist philanthropy."
Challenges
- Financial prospects of tenant benefits versus demands from investors created a tension in the project.

The tenements' design emphasized three spatial tactics for successful normalization:
1. Partitioning: Units designed separately to promote individual family living with designated areas for specific activities, fostering middle-class domestic behaviors.
2. Enclosure: Creating barriers between residential units and external environments to control and govern tenant behavior, making distinctions clear.
3. Surveillance: Incorporating observation mechanisms to instill self-regulation among residents.
Panopticon Reference: Jeremy Bentham’s design for increased surveillance applied to urban planning for tenants to internalize social norms.

Envisioned to create a large tenement housing development similar to successful British projects by incorporating elements of normalization:
- Massive structure: 480 feet long by 180 feet wide, encompassing a central courtyard and 550 units suited for varying family sizes.
- Slow Progress (1905-1908): Investors secured; startup delays and concerns around displacing current residents noted.
- Housing replacement decisions were made to minimize displacement but faced logistical challenges.

Initial enthusiasm shifted to concern over investment prospects.
Complaints from Armitage highlighted difficulties in moving residents alongside rampant financial disinterest, especially from local capital.
Final Municipal Decision: By 1909, city council rejected Armitage’s proposals largely due to perceived risks of public displacement for residents amid failures observed in equivalent international housing models.

Comprehensive public works initiatives: sewage systems, water mains, and street paving gradually replaced previous approaches to city planning.
Influences from leading figures like city engineer Francis Doane emphasized public welfare in planning, framed within new racialized scientific thinking.

Emphasis on city health solidified as primary intention behind urban planning.
- Not just remedying individual pathologies but aiming for an overall healthy, happy city population.
Ethical implications uncovered:
- The potential of "public good" initiatives being used to justify the harm of marginalized communities like Africville, whose needs were sidelined for broader urban agendas.

Success in raising awareness contrasted with failures in execution and displacing voices of slum residents.
Insights into socio-political dynamics: reformers' authority and the resultant neglect of genuine resident needs framed future planning endeavors.

Highlighted deficiencies simmered within urban housing reform institutions, calling for alternative models that better prioritize the need and agency of historically marginalized communities and address structural inequalities.