Sensing and spatializing survival: Affective geographies of gendered housing injustice and suicide in Toronto

Suicide is a serious issue among young women and femmes facing housing injustice in Canada, yet their experiences are often hidden. Despite broad recognition that suicide is complex, empirical and policy responses remain dominated by psychological science, clinical psychiatry, and public health epidemiology. This paper examines how critical health geography and feminist studies offer distinct insights into the conditions that shape suicide and survival. Drawing on narrative and arts-based accounts from four young women and femmes navigating hidden houselessness in Toronto, we treat the spatiality of suicide as a starting point and advance two contributions. First, we show how suicidal affects function as diagnostic registers of place, revealing how urban infrastructures are lived and felt. Second, we argue that suicide prevention requires felt spatial justice, including transformations in design, governance, and distribution that make safety, rest, and belonging possible. Strengths and limitations are discussed.