BSH TeamNemoy Lewis

Nemoy Lewis

Assistant Professor School of Urban and Regional Planning Toronto Metropolitan University

Nemoy Lewis is an assistant professor in the School of Urban and Regional Planning. He received his PhD in human geography from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Lewis earned both his undergraduate and master’s degrees in geography at the University of Toronto. For his doctoral research, Lewis analyzed the ongoing foreclosure crisis in the United States and its effects on Black people and low-income communities in Chicago, Illinois and in Jacksonville, Florida. Lewis’ research explores how space is racialized by examining the co-production of racialization and financialization in North American urban housing markets, and the growing affordability problems impacting Black renters. His current research investigates a relatively new type of financialized landlord – primarily private equity, asset management firms and REITs – and their impacts on the physical infrastructures and urban social geography of disenfranchised communities.

Lewis recently commenced two major research projects that explore access to housing for Black Canadians. The first study examines the housing affordability and eviction crises by exploring financialized landlords and the broader consequences for Black renters during the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto. His second project aims to understand the distinct challenges Black Canadians face in their pursuit of home ownership.

Lewis has co-authored a paper on race and urban politics in Ferguson, Missouri in the leading geography journal, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (2016) and a book chapter for a special collection Gentrification as a Global Strategy: Neil Smith and Beyond (Routledge, 2018). Most recently, he wrote an invited commentary piece about the unexpected nexus between anti-Black police violence and real estate financing in the United States for the journal, EPD: Society and Space. Additionally, Lewis has a forthcoming invited book chapter entitled, “The Impact of Foreclosures on the Home Environments and Education of Black Youth in U.S.” in the text Education in the Cosmopolis.