“Glad you could all make it to hear me out. Here’s the problem. All three of you couples would like to buy this house, but you are from South Swabia. It would be the same problem if any of you were Boldonian, or from Apoliania. (Country/region names changed as a matter of good taste.)
“Sadly, I cannot sell my house to any of you. I signed a bill of sale when I purchased it that prohibits me from selling it on to anyone from your countries. I’m afraid my hands are legally tied.”
Harsh words in 1922, impotent ones a century later when such prejudiced ‘legalities’ no longer carry any force of law.
This writer owned a house in Hamilton, Ontario, part of a modest, but exclusive residential enclave built in the 1920’s. When purchased, there were constraints in the bill of sale that named three national groups to whom it was forbidden to re-sell.
Thankfully, a conversation like the one above never took place. Nor could it. Such writings describe restrictions that are now against the law in Canada. They persist in the sale documentation as a historical note of past local and national prejudices, but are now nothing more than a distasteful curiosity.
Sadly, however, the impetus to pre-judge people by assumptions about their virtue, economic class and ethnic/national origins are still with us, in unwritten but still potentially powerful form.
Prejudices appear frequently — some would say inevitably — during public hearings in which changes are proposed to neighbourhoods, particularly changes that promise an influx of new neighbours who threaten existing neighbourhood presumptions about the ‘kinds of people’ who should be ‘allowed in.’
A recent article in The Tyee discusses by-law hearings in and around the city of Vancouver. The hearings set out to discuss acceptable building forms, and invariably are hijacked by presumptions about future neighbours. The attitudes at these meetings every bit as toxic as those embedded that 100 year old bill of sale.
How to manage the tendency for such hearings to run off the rails? They can be managed, but confusion and conflict arises when powers-that-be are free to talk about the nature and needs of the building’s intended residents (the homeless, for example), but existing neighbours are declared offside for pursuing the same subjects.
Read more in The Tyee: Social Housing Was Proposed for Kitsilano. What Happened Next Is Predictable
For other thoughts on public meetings, and speaking the unspeakable, try: Statutory Public Meetings – A Trial For All Concerned
