Hey everyone!

I've just finished my first week of work at the Toronto Chinatown Community Land Trust (TCLT). They seek to acquire community-owned property to ensure affordable housing and to support small businesses in Toronto's Chinatown. It feels very startuppy at the moment; they only set up a couple years ago. The idea is to use sustainable non-extractive finance to maintain and acquire more properties, and to have democratic governance so that members can vote on what should happen with these properties. All of this is embedded within an anti-colonial framework that respects indigenous peoples' claims to the land, as well as standing up for working class folk in the area. I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity to be a fly on the wall as this happens!

My project is to set up a longitudinal field survey: I'll be compiling a database of thousands of properties in the area, their property owners and whether they're for sale, to better understand community needs and to better inform strategies for acquisition and community organising. All this research would be to catch up with massive real estate developers, many of which seeking to buy up properties and replace them with giant condominium towers and chain restaurants, displacing local residents and local businesses, for profit. This pursuit of profit threatens the intangible cultural fabric of Toronto's Chinatown, and the homes and livelihoods of the people that make Chinatown a destination for tasty, affordable food.

Even though I've only been here for a week I already feel like I'm part of the community! Everyone has been so incredibly hospitable. The office is by the courtyard of a sleepy mall in Chinatown: I see many of the same characters walk past the office each day, delivery drivers, aunties and their adorable dogs, the karaoke store owner next door who once had a very heated argument in Cantonese in the courtyard... I also spent my pomodoro breaks in my first day pruning tomatoes and harvesting mint in our community garden, flourishing in what was previously a pile of rubble after a fountain was destroyed. The mall has become my village, the area somewhere I can truly call my home for these six weeks.

I've stepped into an incredibly complicated environment. Every community member has their own relationship with Chinatown and their own vision for how it should evolve. There are business owners, landlords, artists, undocumented immigrants, second, third, fourth, fifth generation immigrants, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Taishanese, Mandarin speakers... Growing up in a very white town in England and going to university where people generally hail from upper-middle class environments, I've been struck by how truly diverse Chinatown is.

One time I felt this was when I helped facilitate a workshop where stakeholders consulted upon a policy platform for Chinatown, and everyone had something different to say! Decision making from a public policy standpoint often relies upon modelling assumptions that whisk together diametrically opposed ambitions into some idea of a general will. Working from the grassroots, embedded within a community, I embrace getting to know each person as a person and not as a data point for an opinion poll. My colleagues (and I suppose me as well now) are working out a balance of interests in an environment where there are unstoppable forces and immovable objects. I cannot think of any greater challenge. I cannot think of any greater thrill.