Build Back Better — It will take more than banging pots and pans

We’re all in this together.

How many times have we seen that inspiring catchphrase on billboards, store windows, signs outside churches, and upbeat advertisements over these fifteen long months of COVID-19 restrictions?

Initially, it seemed we were indeed all in this together in those first few months.

We banged pots and pans and had our children make supportive lawn signs. All to show our solidarity.

We waited patiently in lines to buy groceries. Carefully keeping six feet apart. Adjusting our masks. Faithfully sanitizing our hands at store entrances. All to keep our communities, ourselves and the strangers next to us safe.

We’re all in this together.

As the pandemic wore on, “We’re all in this together” started to bifurcate.

Those of us with secure jobs, homes that we own, and, in many cases, the luxury of working from home, found our bank accounts and net worth not shrinking as we originally feared, but in fact, growing. We discovered online shopping. We started renovations. We bought new cars. We joined the real estate frenzy that saw us relocating to places like Fergus and driving home and cottage prices to unprecedented heights not just in the GTA, but across the entire country.

In conversations with friends, family, and colleagues, we talked about how grateful we are for our homes, our backyards, our internet, our health.

Have we suffered? Yes. Some of us immensely.

Our children and young adults have missed life milestones that can never be fully replicated. People we love have been isolated through illness and even death in hospital and long-term care. We have had to grieve over Zoom screens.

With vaccinations now approaching the vaulted 70% threshold, we are finally starting to think about life after the pandemic.

Yet, as we do, it is more important than ever that we revisit our lofty “We’re all in this together” sentiments as talk now shifts to “Building Back Better”.

Much as we meant it when we proclaimed “We’re all in this together”, there is now no debate that the burden of the pandemic has been disproportionately carried by the lowest income and predominantly racialized members of our communities.

A report by CIBC Economics found that across Canada, all the jobs lost in 2020 were jobs held by lower income workers earning less than $28 an hour. Conversely, there was an increase in the number of jobs at the top of the payscale. The wealthiest got wealthier with Oxfam Canada reporting the fortunes of Canada’s 44 billionaires increasing by over $63 billion since March 2020.

For those in lower income communities, precarious employment, reliance on public transit, lack of paid sick leave throughout the majority of the pandemic, and crowded or multi-generational living arrangements translated into much greater risk of COVID-related illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths. In Toronto, Black residents are 9% of the population, but represented 16% of COVID-19 hospitalizations. COVID-19 rates for South Asian / Indo-Caribbean communities and Latin American communities are two to three times higher than the average rate across the region.

For those of us who have been able to weather the COVID-19 pandemic from the comfort of spacious homes and financially secure lives, Building Back Better is going to take much more than banging pots and pans.

By necessity, so much of the pandemic was focused on reacting and surviving. Building Back Better demands that we look back on where we have come from and begin taking strong steps forward to ensure a better future for our region and the next generation. Building Back Better will take purposeful, intentional planning, investment and action.

Building Back Better must recognize that we did not all enter this pandemic on equal footing. Building Back Better must be rooted in an understanding that many members of our communities, including the essential workers who helped make our pandemic bearable, now face a longer and harder road to recovery than many of us do.

Many have lost income-earning family members to COVID-19. Many are living with long-haul health impacts including fatigue, shortness of breath and neurological deficits. Without the benefit of working-from-home parents, many children and youth have lost serious ground in their education. For others, loss of income has created mental health conditions and traumas that will take years to recover from. The end of eviction bans and rent leniency portends yet another wave of stressors and housing precarity at the very time when re-establishing stability at home and school are so vital to recovery.

So, how do we Build Back Better? How do we impact this massive societal need from the relatively limited power any of us have as individuals?

Here’s my list — or my starting list — as I think through this enormous challenge.

1) Commit to reading an article or listening to a podcast each day that challenges my thinking on an equitable recovery.

2) Resist the temptation to believe a booming economy will pull everyone along. We are booming now. This is a recovery like none other in modern history, it will take new thinking.

3) Have brave and respectful conversations with family and friends about privilege — and about the opportunity that comes from privilege to have a meaningful impact by using our voices and our resources to build a better future.

4) Commit to redeploying some of my pandemic savings away from the next renovation or purchase and instead invest in charities or programs that are supporting those most negatively impacted by the pandemic.

5) Finally, here at Habitat for Humanity GTA, we are redoubling our efforts to provide working, lower income families options beyond rental housing — options that provide the stability of homeownership while building generational wealth to lead to even greater inclusion for the next generation.

We are tired. We are irritated by this interminable pandemic. We feel like we deserve a good summer and a chance to reward ourselves.

All true. But more than ever, now is the time to redouble our conviction that We’re all in this together. The most important chapter of our lives lies ahead. The one in which each of us in our own way can truly contribute to a Built Back Better future for ourselves and for everyone in our communities.