About the author | About the book | Author's notes
"This work provides a better understanding of how aging in place, despite being fundamental to public policy in Canada, is directly threatened by the commodification of housing."
About the author
Julien Simard is a social gerontologist. He holds a master's degree in health anthropology from the University of Montreal, a PhD in urban studies from INRS-UCS, a postdoctoral degree from McGill School of Social Work, and is currently completing a third postdoctoral degree at CREMIS and the Department of Sociology at the University of Montreal. For over 14 years, he has been working on issues directly related to aging in Quebec: end-of-life and palliative care, aging in place, home care, housing, forced displacement, residential dynamics in retirement homes, informal caregiving, and the realities of immigrant and/or racialized seniors. His work is rooted in materialist analyses of social conditions and the social determinants of health, and therefore in a constant effort to understand social inequalities affecting aging populations from an intersectional perspective. As an anthropologist, he bases all his work on ethnographic practice, while aiming to transmit and co-construct knowledge with front-line health care providers. He is a lecturer in the Gerontology Certificate program at the University of Montreal and has published a book entitled Vieillissement et crise du logement (Aging and the Housing Crisis), published by Presses de l'Université de Montréal.
About the book
Aging in the city is far from easy. The precarious situation of older people, who are often dependent on fixed or poorly indexed incomes, is growing. The housing crisis and rising living costs are hitting them hard, not to mention the lack of accessible home care, which is scarce and often too expensive.
Public policies promote keeping them in their living environment and community, but in reality, the needs remain immense. This book delves into the heart of the problem by analyzing the residential insecurity of elderly tenants in Montreal neighborhoods undergoing gentrification.
Part anthropological study, part journalistic investigation, and part critical social gerontology manual, Julien Simard illustrates the dynamics of social exclusion and reveals the tactics of resistance and agency employed by these people as they face a real process of marginalization.
Vieillissement et crise du logement is a book that delves into the dynamics of exclusion inherent in urban renewal and real estate speculation. It shows how low-income seniors are being evicted from their homes and how they are responding to these threats to their continued residence. This work provides a better understanding of how aging in place, despite being fundamental to public policy in Canada, is directly threatened by the commodification of housing.