The Bylaw State: Encampment Evictions and the Struggle for Public Space

Come to Massy on Wednesday, June 17th at 7 pm to hear Alexandra Flynn in conversation with Andrea Reimer, to hear how municipalities create an exclusionary ideal of public space through evictions and banishment, and make a powerful case for a more inclusive approach that protects people, not just spaces.

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The venue has a gender neutral bathroom.

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Covid Protocols: Masks are recommended, and we'll have masks available. We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.

Book:

Encampments occupied by unhoused and precariously sheltered people have proliferated in recent years in cities and towns across Canada. While right-to-housing legislation and other rights protections exist on paper, their minimal legal force has left municipalities mostly free to use policing and bylaw enforcement to remove encampments from public spaces. The result is unnoticed but devastating violence against highly vulnerable people who have no choice but to survive in public spaces.

Author:

Alexandra Flynn is an associate professor and Associate Dean, Graduate Studies and Professional Programs at UBC’s Allard School of Law, where she teaches administrative and property law. Her focus for the past five years has been on housing and homelessness. She’s the director of UBC's Housing Research Collaborative, which houses the Housing Assessment Resource Tools project, the Balanced Supply of Housing research group, and several projects related to the right to housing. Before becoming a professor, she practiced Aboriginal law at Ratcliff & Company and worked as a senior policy official at the City of Toronto. She is a long-time volunteer on access to justice and has received several legal aid awards and a SSHRC award for housing research excellence.

Moderator:

Andrea Reimer brings a rare lens to this conversation - after experiencing homelessness as a youth, she went on to spend two decades as a trusted civic voice, and serving as an elected Vancouver City Councillor and School Trustee, and appointed Metro Vancouver and TransLink Director. A lifelong organizer at the intersection of power and justice, Andrea has spent her career giving people the tools to hold government accountable and pushing governments to serve those commonly left behind in policy. After leaving public office in 2018 she was awarded a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard's Graduate School of Design and now teaches about navigating power structures at UBC and SFU and supports innovative public policy through her consultancy, Tawâw Strategies. She is the host of the SheTheyUs podcast which centers the voices of the women and gender-diverse people at the front line of the housing crisis and was named BC Non-Profit Housing Association's Affordable Housing Champion in 2025. Andrea moderates this conversation about The Bylaw State not as an outside observer, but as someone who has lived on both sides of the policy line.

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