Natuashish
In an article for The Independent, At Home in the North’s director, Julia Christensen and Aimee Pugsley write on housing as a social indicator of health and the links between the housing crisis in Canada’s north, the spread of infectious disease, and coronavirus.
Dictionary definitions suggest that crisis is exceptional, a situation marked by instability and impending decisive change, a breaking point that requires an urgent response without which there will be collapse. And yet, northern housing has been at a critical tipping point for decades. What purpose does it serve to think of chronic northern housing need as a crisis, particularly when the breaking point becomes routine, and governments fail to respond with the urgency required?