Lessons from the Long View of Housing and Land Crises in Coast Salish Territories

This research considers understandings of the housing crisis as experienced today in Coast Salish territories/southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada in light of the land question. Interviews with policy makers, elected officials, advocates for the unhoused, and those involved in the real estate sector reveal contrasting and at times contradictory understandings of the housing crisis, its causes, and proposed solutions. These are set against historical sources on the colonisation of Vancouver Island, which understood the land question to include both how land serves to mediate both the proper relationship between Indigenous peoples and colonial regimes, as well as the proper relationship between landowning and tenant classes. This research asks what similarities exist between the housing crisis as understood and experienced today and the land question as posed historically, and looks at how historically proposed policies of land reform, such as land value taxation, are and could be adapted to the present, in ways that both ameliorate the housing crisis experienced today and support Indigenous jurisdiction.