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Welcome to She They Us, a podcast about making room in housing for women and gender-diverse people brought to you by the Pan-Canadian Voice for Women’s Housing.
Join host Andrea Reimer to hear about why Canada’s housing crisis is hitting households led by women and gender-diverse people harder and what you can do about it.
Welcome to She They Us, from the Pan-Canadian Voice for Women's Housing. Your host, Andrea Reimer, is a housing advocate, educator and former Vancouver City Councillor, who's experienced homelessness firsthand. Andrea has spent her career at the intersection of power, policy and courage to catalyze transformative change. And here, she brings that passion to the stories of women and housing across Canada. This...
Is She They Us? A podcast about the women and gender diverse people living at the front lines of Canada's housing crisis. We need to end poverty. We are matriarchs. We are the life givers. We are the pillars of the community. You can't just go willy nilly evicting us. I feel like we honour our ancestors when we make an effort to remind a new generation what that path has been. We've gone so far beyond the boundaries of what's...
humane and it has to change. There's so many people that are trying to do just that. Our hopes for African Women's Alliance is that housing in Canada becomes truly inclusive, accessible. Home is much more than four walls. It's safety, stability and a place where I can just be myself without fear, where I can live with dignity.
Welcome to the final episode of this season of She They Us, a podcast about the women and gender diverse people living at the front lines of Canada's housing crisis. I'm your host, Andrea Reimer. In our last episode, we heard from Catherine, Sita and Adim, three women working to transform systems that weren't built with them in mind. They reminded us that housing justice isn't just about shelter. It's about belonging, dignity and power.
Today, we're closing the season with Jane, a researcher and advocate who brings both lived experience and deep community insight to the conversation. Jane's story weaves together what we've been hearing all season, that housing precarity doesn't just come from broken systems, it comes from systems that were never built for everyone in the first place. Together, we'll talk about what home means when it's not guaranteed.
what housing justice could look like if we dared to imagine it differently, and how communities are already doing that work. For that last part, we will bring back some guests from earlier episodes to help paint a picture of a housing system built for all of us. This is She, They, Us, and this is our final conversation of the season about turning struggle into imagination and imagination into change. Let's meet Jayne.
So my name is Jayne Melenfont. I'm from Kapuskasing, Treaty 9 territory, and I'm living in Tiohtià:ke, Montreal. Jane's story begins where so many others do, with hidden precarity. Living arrangements that look fine from the outside, but are held together by hustle, luck, and a lot of quiet fear. Their mom worked nights. The family shared space with grandparents. From the beginning, stability was something borrowed.
never guaranteed. I grew up in Kapuskasing with my parents and when I was born we just crashed with my grandmas and so housing, I guess from the get-go, was a little bit precarious and we lived with my maternal grandmother, we lived with my paternal grandmother, and I had pretty stable housing after that with my family. I think just before my 16th birthday I had moved to Saskatchewan with my mom who was, you know, working and taking care of my brother and I. and through a bunch of different circumstances, she ended up going back to Ontario and I stayed on my own as I was going through high school, in part because I had access to mental health supports there that I needed that I couldn't access in Northern Ontario. And so it was a really difficult decision that we made together that, you know, I moved into an apartment on my own with some friends. And then that kind of started this a couple of years of precarity where I was couch surfing. After that, I was living in squats.
I was, you know, shacking up with partners that maybe I shouldn't have just to keep a roof over my head. And so a trajectory that looks like a lot of gender diverse people and women and young people in general. And so that went on for a while. And then I would say even once I moved back to Ontario, I moved back in with my mom in like an overcrowded apartment. And then I experienced housing precarity for many years. And then that was kind of my experience. And again, I think both my experience, my mom's experience looked like...the kind of housing precarity that we see with women and gender diverse people where a lot of it is hidden and a lot of it is also just, you know, living paycheck to paycheck and having no sense of really a stable home. This hiddenness is key. It's the kind of instability that doesn't always make it into data or headlines, but it shapes people for years and it shapes how they see home.
Yeah, I think a lot of them were economic. mean, my mom also, it was her first time being on her own. You know, she moved in from her family home with my dad. And so she was figuring that out as well. And she was working, you know, she would work nights, she was working as much as she could. But I also think that there were barriers around what access to space as a gender diverse person or as a woman. Like, I think that there's ways that people face discrimination that wouldn't happen if there had been a man in a household. think, you know, landlords were trying to take advantage of things or, you know, treating her like she didn't know what her needs were. And that's happened to me as well. And so I think that there's this economic piece, but there's also the way that there's a stigma around maybe like single mothers and, and, or households that don't look exactly like what people think they will. That is a lot more insidious and difficult to kind of carve out as a housing challenge.
I asked them if their gender identity has created any challenges for them as a renter. I haven't. I've faced a lot of economic challenges trying to rent, but I think I'm a non-binary person who, you know, largely passes, which is not the case for other people that I work with and that I do research with. You know, I'm lucky that I'm usually read as, you know, a woman.
Whether that's lucky or not in all circumstances, in terms of renting, I think we know that like visibly gender diverse or trans people face a lot more discrimination. that was never a challenge that I faced, but I learned from a lot of young people and adults that I work with that have gone through that, that this is a really difficult form of discrimination to fight because it's often in these kinds of comments or ways of keeping someone out of a housing arrangement that are difficult to prove that that's what's happening, that it's discrimination based on gender expression. I think, you know, there's really not a lot of housing services for people who fall between the gender binary. And even in our research I've done, people have said sometimes like going back in the closet or trying to pass is the best thing you have in your toolkit at that time, because at least it allows you to access something resembling housing, but also that's not always the case either. But yeah, it becomes interesting how in moments, sometimes the things that you, like I don't want to be misgendered, I don't want to be misrecognized as I navigate the world, but sometimes it also might be something that allows me to pass in a way that others can't. That tension between being seen and being safe runs through every story we've heard this season.
In episode five, Adeemm called it, quote, visibility in the wrong way. Jane calls it a strategy for survival. But either way, the message is clear. In a country that says housing is a right, safety still depends on who others think you are. My original reason for contacting Jayne was because of their research.
I asked them to tell me a bit more about it and what it tells us about the challenges this poses for gender diverse youth when it comes to accessing safe, affordable, secure and appropriate housing. Yeah, I think that the challenges that trans, queer, gender diverse youth face are unique. Largely, I think broadly when we look at youth homelessness, a lot of the reasons are economic. There are kinds of things that I navigated where the resources weren't there, the system wasn't accommodating. And I think for queer and trans youth this happens as well, but it also happens in a different way where more than other youth, I think we see kind of family pushing young people out of their homes because they have a lot of stigma around sexual or gender diversity. And so I think that the unique challenges that these young people face is often that they have to find homes elsewhere. So they have to depend on peers or communities.
And they also might not be able to access shelter services or other emergency supports as easily. so I think part of it is like this ongoing stigma that we're actually seeing ramping up around gender diversity in particular, ⁓ where parents might not understand what a young person is going through or might actually just not want that happening in their home. And the other piece is that the services that exist aren't always there for them, especially for rural young people. ⁓ So especially with rural young people, we're seeing that they don't have access to services. So someone from Northern Quebec might be navigating their transness and come all the way to Montreal because they feel that's the only place they can explore it. And when they get here, they become homeless because they don't know anyone. And housing is very unaffordable. So I think that there are unique pathways for queer and gender diverse young people, that also intersect with these other economic and structural pieces. The focus of this season has been the historical experiences that shape the modern context. So I asked Jane if there has ever been a time that gender diverse people have had access to safe, affordable, and secure housing. I was just talking with someone today who said, you know, nowadays it's so hard to get housing. ⁓ And I was like, well, for a lot of people, it's always been difficult to have stable housing or it is dependent on fitting into a particular family structure or a particular box. I would say, no, I don't think that for women or gender diverse people, there's ever been kind of a reliable and dependable way to access safe, stable housing. And I think for gender diverse people in particular, for so much of history, we haven't been able to even be publicly ourselves. And I also think there's been always a reliance on networks of informal supports. And so even if we're thinking of queer and trans young people today, and that we know that they're more likely to experience homelessness and housing precarity and need to develop these kinds of alternative or chosen family structures, that's always been the case. And I think I can think of examples even from where I'm from where if you were queer or trans, you left town immediately and you would end up going to the city and to have some some kind of roof over your head you would connect with others who were like you and we know that there's this history in work that I've done where we've outlined you know the ballroom scene of kind of houses and taking in younger folks and having these intergenerational kind of families where that was how people took care of each other in the absence of having any access to housing outside of that and so I think that, what we see when we're looking at gender diverse people is that a lot of these histories are archived and remembered within queer communities, but were really invisible to how we were considering housing and who was accessing housing before that, particularly when we didn't maybe even have the words to talk about, you know, what does that mean for non-binary people if we didn't really have a name for non-binary people in the way we do today. And so I think that these histories have always existed. And I think that communities have been very aware of them, but they haven't been part of the public imaginary of what housing has looked like. what does home mean for a community in a society that's never really made space for them to have one? Yeah, I think it's a difficult question and it's one that often makes people I'm working with emotional because so many of us, know, we have an idea of what has made us feel at home, but we've also had a lot of experiences where we have not had that.
And so I'm very careful with how I ask this question, but I think overall in my work, I have asked it a lot. And I think what comes back over and over is some kind of sense of belonging and safety. And so when I even think of like histories of queer spaces and queer creations of home, I think that it helps us to understand what home can look like outside of what we imagine it to be. So often queer youth are talking about, you know, networks of peers, networks of other queer people who have brought them in and taken care of them when the state is failing to provide them their basic resources. And that these are intergenerational networks and that these are places where they feel they can be authentically themselves. They can explore as well. They don't have to, you know, pick one way to be can...
explore their gender safely and they can feel like they don't have to pass in order to access basic services. so belonging and safety are these notions that often come together when I'm talking to people about what home looks like, in addition to being able to eat. There's kind of the material pieces that are really important, but the thing that I hear most is that even when people are experiencing homelessness, they might still feel that feeling of home when they're with communities where they feel belonging and they build that together. And so I think home can be something that even without a roof people are developing, but obviously is something that should be resourced so they have all their material needs met too.
Andrea
This is one of the most striking things we've heard across every interview this season. For women and gender diverse people across cultures and across the country, home isn't a building. It's a network of people who see you, care for you and who make room for you. Jayne's research calls these networks housing justice in motion, informal, creative, often invisible systems of care that have always existed, even when governments refuse to recognize them. Their research pushes us to imagine housing differently, not just more affordable or more efficient, but more human. I asked Jane to tell me what housing justice looks like in practice.
Jayne
That's a great question. think housing justice, especially when we're looking at diverse people and trying to understand what that could look like in multiple ways, is about agency. ⁓ In the research that I have been doing, especially around kind of the existing housing supports that are available, there's a lot of different answers about what housing justice would look like. But the underlying thread is that people should be able to choose what housing looks like to them, that there should be some kind of there should be agency that people shouldn't be told, okay, cool, you're gonna get this type of housing because that's what we think is best for you. And this could look like a lot of different things. Maybe this looks like home where there's a lot of community. Maybe it looks like home where people have privacy. And maybe it looks like a combination of both, but that people should be able to choose how and when they engage with it and what it should look like. And so I think even with maybe... you know, rich people in Westmount who don't have to worry about housing insecurity. They also want choice in how they access that. So I think across the housing spectrum, agency is something that I've seen. And for many folks who are navigating housing precarity, agency isn't something they're afforded in existing housing services. It's kind of like, take what you can get. know, beggars can't be choosers. So you're going to take whatever program you fit into if that exists. Yeah, which is just not effective
for creating any kind of housing justice or notion of home. Agency, choice, creating space. These are the ideas that link every voice we've heard this season, from Marie's fight for her own and other indigenous women's housing to Stephanie's work to redefine housing to be more than walls and roofs, but rather an expression of justice, humanity, and power, to a deemed simple but powerful decision to refuse to disappear.
Andrea
It reminds me of a term I learned from Jayne when I first met them, radical imagining. I asked them to describe what that is.
Jayne
So I use radical imagining and imagination in my teaching. I use it in my community work. I use it in my research. And it's something that has really come out of me doing housing. I mean, I started working in homelessness research as a research assistant in 2014.
And what I found was there was a lot of spaces where we were trying to kind of strategically make policy recommendations or do these things to try to get just whatever we could through in terms of housing justice. But there wasn't a lot of space for us to actually think of what we would want ideally, what kind of, what we would desire, what we would want to see. ⁓ And through doing that, we often also invisibilized a lot of experiences and voices because, you know, we had to have one message.
And so what I do through radical imagination in my research and my teaching is to sit and just think collectively, what are some things we would desire? What would this look like if we didn't have to deal with financial ⁓ limitations? If we didn't think of what was feasible right now, but we're thinking of maybe in the future, a couple of generations, what this could look like, and start working from that place. Even if it's imperfect, knowing that that might be where we want to end up together. What could we do to get there? And so I think trying to get away from just documenting what's wrong. And I think of Pamela Spervy, she's always like, can we focus less on what's wrong and focus on what's strong? And I think we can do that in individuals of what do you want to see and how are you fostering that already? But also collectively as a community to be able to say, you know, if this system is inherently unjust, if this system is inherently making housing more difficult for gender diverse people, for women, for other folks, could we imagine a different system? Could we think of something else? Maybe we've seen examples of that. Maybe we can see that in our own lineages. Maybe we see that in our own practice in a way that resists the inevitability that some of us will become homeless and some of us will experience housing precarity. And so I found it to be a really helpful tool and at least get our thinking started of how we can act differently together.
Andrea
I love the way Jayne frames this, that we can't just patch the system, we have to dream a new one. And while governments debate strategies, communities are already building what they need. I asked Jayne where they are seeing radical imagining in action.
Jayne
I got really lucky to work on a project a couple, I guess a couple years ago now with Jody Gray and Charlotte Hunter and Alex Nelson, who were all bringing in examples from different communities of what this could look like. And I think what we highlighted was there are examples happening in queer Dungeons and Dragons groups that engage youth in some fun activities or the very few examples we have of trans specific, peer-led shelter spaces, which again, maybe shelters aren't the aim, but at least to have peer-led, queer-led spaces are kinds of these hopeful points within the current housing landscape where...
So often again, we're being told what we need, what we should do, and we're trying to be fit into these binary systems that don't acknowledge our realities. But I think the thing that I see the most in terms of examples is just kind of mutual aid and community-led care. Again and again, young people and adults are saying, and I experience this as well, in the absence of systemic supports, my community showed up for me. I was able to meet people who saw me for who I was, who allowed me to be who I am and who took care of me often, taking me in and letting me sleep at their house, feeding me, ⁓ helping me understand what was going on. So I think we see a lot of ⁓ informal and often unrecognized labor happening within communities that are impacted. And I think what we should be doing and what hopefully we're going to start to see is just a better resourcing of that work. Here in Montreal, I'm working with an organization called MYCASA, which is all peer-led, it's all led by Black and Indigenous peers who have lived experience of housing precarity and the child welfare system, and they're creating housing that they would have wanted to see for themselves. And they specifically also work with, you know, queer and gender diverse young people. And I think those are the kinds of examples where they are now being resourced to do that work that they used to just do because...
they were in it together. You know, they were taking care of their communities. And so I think these examples where we're finding funding and support and, you know, resourcing things that people are already doing to take care of one another is really promising. These projects aren't pilot programs or policy experiments. They're survival in action. And maybe they're also the blueprint for what comes next.
Andrea
Knowing what Jayne has learned from their own experience and from their innovative research. I asked what they would tell the new housing minister, what someone in power most needs to understand.
Jayne
In thinking of people who are in positions of power, I often think that what they need to understand is the importance of relationships and processes because, you you could say this type of housing needs to be built or these kinds of tenant protections need to be understood or we need to be funding this or that and I think those are all very important things to be saying to ministers and we need to be advocating for those. But to me one of the biggest challenges in getting gender diverse people to work with people in positions of power is a deep and historical mistrust of institutions that have failed to serve gender diverse people and have often contributed to their precarity and harm. And so when I think of advocating to those in power in government, who are drafting kind of policies and thinking through how things are organized, I want them to know that if they truly want to be learning from people of what works best, they need to build relationships that address that mistrust and show that perhaps there's an opening to doing things differently. Because as of now, gender diverse people are one of many communities that do not trust these processes often because they have been given evidence not to trust that the state cares about their well-being ⁓ and that the state is not going to offer the things they need to be safe and stable and have a home. So that is what I would say ⁓ because often I think many folks see relationships and process as kind of, you know, fluff. That really what we need to do, through whatever means necessary, there's an end we need to see in terms of housing justice or housing maybe not housing justice, but housing rights. And I think that the actual ways that we get there are as important as the things that we want to be seeing in our ideal kind of housing landscape. Jane powerfully summarizes what I've heard so often this season. Safe, affordable, secure, and appropriate housing for women and gender diverse people is not just about policy or economics. It's about relationships. It's about trust. It's about who gets believed and who gets to belong.
Andrea
We've been through a lot of history this season and talked with women and gender diverse people whose experiences of Canada's housing crisis are directly connected to those histories. I wanted to bring Linda Rourke back, the show's writer and producer who I talked to in episode one to talk a bit about the ground we've covered. So Linda, you've been with me through every interview this season. What's been standing out for you as we've listened to these stories?
Linda
Impossible to pinpoint because I think every conversation that we had with these amazing people, ⁓ everyone needs to hear them. you know, what I saw was how it echoes across time and place. Andrea, like if you listen to Marie and Dara and Adeem, they were all fighting those same kind of battles, yet decades apart. And what I was really impressed with were the women, you know, persisting and building home, no matter what they were up against, you know, when the systems were saying no. I think really truly though was the emotional weight of listening to all of this. We talked, I mean, I was off camera so people, couldn't see me, but you know, fighting back the tears, like just getting so emotional because it was really eye-opening and a bit sad as a Canadian to not know this history, to not know as much about the exclusion acts.
I mean, don't even, you know, get me started. I'll start to tear up about residential schools. I mean, I'm appalled by what happened in this country. So, and even the economic, you know, lockouts that happened to some of these women, like, it was just so hard to listen at times, but also incredibly heartwarming because these women and gender diverse people are just so unbelievably resilient.
Andrea
Yeah, that definitely, I mean, I know that at an intellectual level, but I think sitting through the interviews and then pulling it together into stories, really kind of gets in your bones. But that was the point. It's what we set out to document this season. So when we started this season, the question was, did housing ever work for women and gender diverse people in Canada? So where did we get to?
Linda
Hmm. Right. Yeah. Well, the answer is clearly no, you know, I mean, that was so strongly, part of all the conversations that, that, no. ⁓ but what I think is remarkable is what people built anyway, you know, like what these women and gender diverse people did, ⁓ through networks and just that the, resistance in the home place, ⁓ which, know, was the article that you brought up from bell hooks, called it like these aren't stories of victimhood. Really, there are stories of that incredible strength that these fabulous people that are part of this country called Canada have done. And when you first pitched this season to me, ⁓ you know, what made you realize that we needed to ask the historical question? Because I really think that that just elevated this season.
Andrea
Hmm, that's such a good question. Well, you know, when I first started the podcast, generally, like three seasons ago. I realized in this moment, I did all these interviews with women and gender diverse folks, and I realized that we kept talking about the housing crisis, the housing crisis, the housing crisis, and we never defined it. And so I went back and found that interview. So a similar thing happened to me around this episode where I'm like, what's the question we're not asking? And I realized it really was around this question of we talk about the housing crisis and the next step is being, okay, well, housing is broken, quote unquote, so let's fix it. And then I'm like, well, wait, if it was 100 % fixed, air quotes, fixed, would it, that was like, I don't know what, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, my housing didn't work back then. Most of my, people I know's housing didn't work back then. I...I really wanted to trace these patterns. Are today's challenges new or are they just a retrenchment and echo of things of the past? And I realized when I was thinking that through, you really can't understand the present without understanding the past. And because each of us, of course, carries a unique story about, it rests within a larger story in Canada around anti-indigenous racism and colonization, around anti-black racism and slavery and colonization, around, you know, a huge chunk of our history where immigrants who were not from certain countries and certain even religious backgrounds were excluded. And so we had to tell the story in that light. And I think it's really showed us that not only is there not one housing crisis that men and women and gender diverse people experience differently, but there's not one reason for that crisis that there's many different. It's almost like the roots have grown into different soils. And so if we want to create something that that's quote unquote fixed, we're fixing a lot more than the last 20 years of Canadian history. Yeah, I like that.
the roots and different soils. So what surprised you the most as we went through the interviews?
Linda
Yeah, often didn't surprise me, think, you know, partly how recent some of this is, you know, mean, Jenn being denied a mortgage in the 2000s, you know, like we're not back in the 1950s. But it felt that way when I was listening to her story. I'm like, this is a successful, strong woman was having issues, even, you know, just as 20 some odd years ago, like I just don't even understand that. And then, you know, the exclusions, like the Chinese Exclusion Act targeting one group where I was like, what? Again, going back to that part of history where I'm like, I didn't really know a lot about this, all I really understood about some of the history was, you know, the Chinese building of the railroad. And so I was like, and then everything that happened after that was just like, what, how, why did this happen? I think too, how invisible so much of this really is, right? That we just don't see the couch surfing, like people trying to find someone that might be willing to share part of their space for them, if it's sleeping on the couch for a bit and going from home to home with that, overcrowding in houses where we're still seeing and hearing this and there's a recent fire and so many people end up dying because there's too many people in a space, but they have no choice, those are the things that started to help me connect the dots as well. And like, oh yeah, like, oh yeah, heard about that. But you know, now I understand that background a little bit more in the situation, a little bit more and can see how that can happen now instead of just going, being judgy, right? I think sometimes we are like, why are those people living in the same space? And it's good reason for it.
oh, I just, love to the...the creativity of resistance, see does hell no, we won't go signs like that actually made me chuckle. think too, in the way she says it, like in just such a strong, powerful woman. mean, what she did is incredible to begin with, like that story everyone needs to hear. And then, you know, I have to speak to how every single person that we talked to talked about home as people belonging. Not just the walls around them, not the size of the space, nothing like that, but it's that the people, the belonging, having something that grounds you. you know, I just thought how fundamentally important that is, that that is a human right to me. Like, that's how I look at it. Like, everybody should have the right to have a home. We need to do something about it. ⁓ Anyway, there was just, I mean, I could go on and on, Andrea, because there are so many incredible...
moments and conversations and when you were doing the research and the interviews, was there a moment where you had to stop and you truly had to process? I I could see it often on your face where you were just like, woo yourself, but where you were just processing the things that you were hearing. And this is, you know, a lot of your world.
Andrea
Yeah. Well, I mean, you were talking earlier about like as a producer, you're off camera, but you're close to tears or in tears. As an interviewer, I have to be on camera and some of, mean, at a basic level, I'm asking people to walk back into some of the worst days of their life and share them with people. And so I feel like to honor that, I have to hold this space. I'm almost crying now, just like thinking back to it and like, takes a lot of effort to like.
⁓ Just create that container for them so that they feel safe or as safe as you can reliving those moments. ⁓ And I know, I mean, the women, you'll hear it. We're gonna play a little montage after this, ⁓ after our discussion, but you'll hear it. How important it is to these women and gender diverse folks to tell their stories, to be heard. And so I understand that's part of the bargain, but it's still a lot to ask them to do and I just try so hard to hold the space. But I think, I mean, there are moments that really the ones that as I was editing and thinking about how am I going to voice, like bridge this without breaking down? Because it's actually with you and Jordan when we're doing the narration that I feel like I let the emotion ⁓ kind of come over me.
Linda
Yeah, and I felt that so strongly through ⁓ all the stories and really truly in awe of what people can overcome even when they're hit really hard. You know, they talked about building solutions, you know, like there's no, feel sorry for myself and it's like, like this is the situation and let's find ways to make it better. mean, you know, Marie teaching about natural building materials. I thought that that was just so amazing. Like she looks around and she sees, you know, how can we, so not only build housing, but do it better. You know, do it more sustainably. I mean, I loved that. And then, you know, Pamela running the programs that she did, like reuniting families with their kids. First of all, I can't even imagine. I am a mom. And I when I hear some of these stories about reuniting these families that haven't, you know, have been separated and I just can't even imagine that but you know it's like like let's look for these solutions to make these changes and Fadilah and you know just everything that she's doing to create ⁓ that community through the African Women's Alliance. I know I mean the list is so big like Adeem helping other refugees after everything that she personally experienced and being homeless herself you know in this country and
Jayne, I mean, I could just listen to Jane. Well, I could listen to so many of them just talk and talk and talk. know, ⁓ Catherine was another one where just everything she said. Stephanie, mean, Jayne's doing this incredible research to reimagine whole systems, you know, for women and gender diverse people especially. And they're brilliant. that's like, you know, Jayne is absolutely brilliant in the thought process that they have and how they…the outlook and this is what I just couldn't believe. These are leaders in our country, in our communities. are people who are organizing things to make the changes and visionaries, true visionaries and we can all learn so much from them. And you as well, Andrea, I want to go back to you talking about the emotional piece of all of this and it is hard what you do. It is really hard to do interviews like this and hear these stories and not get emotional, but you've also created such a safe space for these incredible people to tell their story. ⁓ you know, I've had, I'm going to get emotional because I had such ⁓ the pleasure of getting to know you through this process. And I know people who know you know how amazing you are. But this is my first journey with you. And I want to tell every person who starts to listen to this podcast, you know, Andrea is amazing. You know, you're right in with all of these incredible people that you spoke to in the sense of really working hard and giving everything you have, like juggling, you know, conference and, and, you know, meetings and like just everything that you do. But yet this is still a priority for you to get these stories out there and have the chance to share them with others. And that truly ⁓ is probably, this is probably the most wonderful experience that I've had in the sense of really feeling like I'm part of something so meaningful, and I really want people to listen to, seasons one, two, and three. And then I have to ask you, have you started thinking about season four?
Andrea
Well, first off, I'm glad people can't hear blushing on the radio or on podcasts. It has been really amazing working with Everything Podcasts generally. It just brought everything to the next level. But Linda, like this season, I just, your personal investment and, you know, I, agonize over the length of pauses and editing, over the, you know, word choices. And I just appreciate how much you've helped me really pull it into the story that these, these, ⁓ the stories that we've heard deserve to be told at a, at a big level. So yeah, I started thinking about the next season about halfway through the first interview on this season, right? Being like, ⁓ get it in this, get it in that. I mean, so that listeners know.
And this isn't going to surprise you. We are limited by things like time and money, like everything in life. And so you have to make very hard choices about what you can fit into any given season. The podcast is part of a larger project that supports women and gender diverse people who've experienced housing precarity to tell their stories, to use their voices. The sort of theory of change here is that, yes, stats and data matter. But as we discuss, like, women and gender diverse people, particularly gender diverse people, are very much hidden from those stats. And even if they weren't, the people who have the power to make a difference generally are not women and gender diverse people because of the inherent power structures we're dealing with.
So the short answer, we started doing two trainings while I was doing this season of the podcast. So there's new stories coming and new storylines. And I was like, there's this, there's that. There was a report that came out as well on ⁓ the differentiated access by race in Canada to homeownership. So that got me thinking about like a whole other thing around women and gender diverse folks looking at different kinds of tenures of homes, housing, like renting, co-ops, culture, but like all these different ways. And I would love to do a season. If I, if money and time were less of a constraint, just about all the brilliant solutions we heard about, like they seem like, know, drops of water, but they're actually very powerful drops of water that can be expanded and create ripples. And I think the way to do that is to give those stories. So have I thought about season four a lot? Have I decided on a theme yet? No, but we're gonna get there.
Linda
It's great. I mean, it's endless, the stories. And as you said, getting those out there to tell their stories, the more stories we hear, the more we hear from different voices of ideas and solutions and just the need for that change moving forward is really, really important. So what do you want people to take away from this season?
Andrea
Yeah, well, a few things. ⁓ History matters. Like, it's not past, it's present. We've asked people every season what does home mean to them. When we did it in this season, after, like, so first we interview and ask them to talk about history, et cetera, et cetera, and then ask them what home meant to them, it was... I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it. was just such a transformative experience about them. And I think we just need to bring that into our housing discussions. ⁓ Not just the history of a dominant culture, but the history of the people that's been hidden. That the housing crisis isn't just broken economics. It's very much like the thread through there about what does home mean to you. It's about power and who just gets to belong because they're here. And then the people who have to fight for space and prove or show that they belong or create communities. ⁓ I think Jayne speaks so eloquently to this in this episode, create the communities where they belong. Women and gender diverse people have always been creative problem solvers. Like the positive side of all this negative is that the way you survive is by figuring it out yourself and creating these incredible solutions that policymakers should really be looking at. And that we don't need to...to start from scratch. Like to that end, communities are creating solutions that work for them. So let's find them, elevate them, amplify them, fund them, support them. That policymakers, and again, Jayne in this episode speaks so brilliantly to it, but we've heard it throughout the season. Policymakers need to learn how to listen and not just talk about what they think needs to happen or work with academics around that, but really listen and build trust and resource what's already happening and that we all have a role. In my case, I get to work with you and Jordan and others to create a podcast. ⁓ Anyone listening to this podcast can share this podcast and talk about what it means for them. I've seen some great examples of that already this season. You can join advocacy groups. If you're a woman or gender diverse person who's experienced housing precarity, please be in touch with the PAN Canadian Voice for Women's Housing. We'd love to support you to use your voice. So Linda, that's like my perspective after, you know, deeply diving in over this last three seasons. So can you tell me a bit about what you want people to take away from this season in the context of the bigger project?
Linda
Yeah, well, I can say ditto to a lot of the stuff that you just said. I mean, I agree wholeheartedly. But what I think is so important and something that I've taken on since being part of this project is to share the stories, to talk about this, to be inspired to make a difference, to talk, as you mentioned, to policymakers, make them listen in your communities, you know, make this a conversation with friends. Like we need this to be top of mind, push forward a path for change because as amazing as this country is, we can't forget the people who need us. I've always been so proud of the kindness that I feel Canadians have no matter where they've come from because this country is made up of incredible people from all over the world. That's what makes Canada Canada. And, you know, in order to move the dial forward, we do have to unite on this and we have to see the importance of having a home because as I said earlier, it's a human right, in my opinion, and we need to find homes, livable homes. Giving people walls, someone, know, said it's not just the walls, but it's to hold inside that warm and welcoming space for people to have dignity and to feel loved and seen. so, you know, I think just summarizing everything I just said there is talk about this, make it part of conversations because it's so, so important for those that are struggling each and every day to find home.
Andrea
Amazing. So we're closing out this season and I thought the best place to end is always where we began and that's with the voices. And so I wanted to bring back some of the voices we've heard to let them speak to what they've learned from their experiences, what they're fighting for and what they want us to remember.
Linda
Couldn't agree more.
I thought, I cannot let this happen to any other female, any other Indigenous female. I've got to be able to talk about it. I've got to be able to explain. I've got to be able to say, this is not how we're supposed to be treated. We are matriarchs. We are the life givers. We are the pillars of the community. You can't just go willy nilly evicting us, you know? That's my thinking.
When I think actually about what makes a home, I think part of it has to do with the things that we put in it, in the spaces we create, bringing those pieces together. But it also is the people we visit with. When you say someone's only part of something and they're not a whole, it actually erases this really huge part of who we are. And so I had this moment of like, I'm not part of something, I'm actually a whole someone.
Just seeing all of those people come together to help us to become a family again is something that helped me feel safe and loved and valued and seeing that I was worth being among these children again. I just really, I want them to see what's strong and not wrong, right? And I think that that's been my motto for a long time is I want you to see how strong I am and not, and not what's wrong with me.
Because so many times even how the systems are set up when you think about the pick counts or how we do things like that or how we build our applications or things that we do when people are applying for housing or for services, they always want to know how broken you are.
So there's been some progression, there's been some regression. There was never a time when it was ⁓ the golden age, absolutely. But I think that we need to tell one another's stories a little bit more because I do believe that humans are naturally, they have empathy.
There's a certain kind of storytelling that is really important in building not just empathy but in building policies that can help address disparities and marginalization that we sometimes forget about.
I think we need more ways to hear about what people are trying to do so that we can all get connected around it. And, you know, when I was at CCC, it was sort of like working at a notice board. There isn't that kind of notice board there anymore. I'm sure people are out there coming together to work on things, but we need to have a better way of finding out what they are and how to assist them. We always have to remember that social return is such an important part of whatever we do.
Our money is the same as anybody's money. My money doesn't look different because I love this woman called Donna. Love was love, just like money's money. If we work the way that liberal democracies work and we deal on merit alone, I am to get the type of job that I am qualified for. And then we meet all the stumbling blocks that come with that. They came to the Canadian dream that was sold to us. Come to Canada.
be a citizen in three years, you can get good jobs. No, it's not broken. And I think admittedly we need to stop saying it's broken. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do. Our role is just our main mission and vision is to create a safe space for African women and their families as they come into the region, you know, to help them in this, you know, resettlement journey.
and this ⁓ phase of their lives, knowing that there will be barriers and challenges for newcomers as they come into the region. You know, our hopes for, as African Women's Alliance of Waterloo region is that housing in Canada becomes truly inclusive, accessible, affordable, and adequate. And where women, black women in particular, don't have to constantly worry about or putting their families on compromise in safety and dignity.
I'm hoping that there will be security, not just for the women, but also for the future of the children. And also a future where we don't have to, as black women and gender diverse people, to fight extra battles just to have a stable home, where policies that are made at the highest levels reflect our realities.
and where our children can grow up the security and peace of mind that comes with stable housing. Well, a lot of the time around our kitchen table, we feed our own. We put our resources together and we feed our own. And so, you know, like my mom used to teach us, if you have a slice of bread and Miss Mary across the street don't have any, because my mom had five children, she says, instead of cutting it in five, it in six and make sure Miss Mary have a piece. That's literally the motto for our country.
All of many one people, so we have to be one. Like we've gone so far beyond the boundaries of what's humane and it has to change. And that's what I see now. And I see so many people. This is the heartwarming thing, Andrea. There's so many people that are trying to do just that. And what we need is government to get behind them and to put limits on those that are acting out of order. They need some limits. They need a timeout. Black women have come through extreme traumas.
over the last several hundred years. And those traumas are still showing up, you know, in our households. And so, you know, part of my wish for policymakers is courage, but my wish for black women is more healing. The kind of healing that's going to help us recognize how the embodied aspects of everything our people have gone through, our ancestors have gone through, that we go through and we just...
move through the school systems and move through workplaces and you know like part of the economic structure of racism is telling very qualified capable people that they're lazy and that they can't do anything and that they're not competent and we start to believe that and then we show up with that anxiety and we project it on to other people and it really undermines our ability as a community to hold together.
And so I really have come to really appreciate how important healing is in our journeys and that that's gotta be a lifelong commitment for us. Yeah, well, know, it's, you know, necessity often makes people take their lives into their hands. It's amazing what a group of people who have shared goals, who have a shared interest can do and can accomplish when they want to take on.
the established order. And if you work together and if you're collaborative and if you're also willing to, you know, be troublemakers. And that if he told her what had happened just before she arrived, it would be like this monkey on her back. She wouldn't feel the same about herself. And so out of love, he never told her. But as a result, the community lost its history. Something really monumental, like nothing has been done like that before in Canadian history.
and hope to God it never happens again. But it's interesting how silence really extinguished this story. But we do a disservice to those who live through that and survive through that, or those who collapse because of it. We owe them something too. We do a disservice by pushing it under and making it seem like it wasn't that significant. It was significant. And ⁓ I feel like we honor our ancestors when we make an effort to remind a new generation.
what that path has been. I remind myself every day that every small step towards stability is a victory. Sharing my story and connecting with others gives me strength, and the vision of living with dignity and stability keeps me hopeful even in the hardest times. A home is much more than four walls. It's safety, stability, and a place where I can trust be myself without fear. It's where I feel I belong, where I can live with dignity, and where life feels settled.
Home also connects me to who I am, my memories, my identity, and my hopes for the future. Thank you for joining us for season three of She, They, Us. This season, we've explored how Canada's housing crisis isn't just about things that used to work being broken. The housing crisis is also about housing that was never built to work for many of us. And yet, across the country, women and gender diverse people like Marie, Pamela, Manik,
Carolyn, Jennifer, Jill, Fadila, Alvinia, Dara, Stephanie, Catherine, Sita, Edim, and Jane are imagining and creating something better. A place where belonging and safety aren't luxuries. A place that everyone can call home.
As we wrap up the season of She They Us, I want to use this time to share some resources as well as encourage our listeners, yes, this means you, to get involved. If you're a woman or gender diverse person who has been in the housing crisis but are feeling uncomfortable about telling your story, the Pan-Canadian Voice for Women's Housing can help. We offer various training programs to help amplify your voice. Learn more and sign up on our website.
PCVWH.ca. Training. Telling your story is one of the most powerful weapons we have in the fight to get action to support the specific challenges women and gender diverse people are facing. If you are ready to go, please sign up to speak at a City Council meeting, join a housing advocacy group in your community, or you can even meet with your Member of Parliament.
If you're not a woman or gender diverse person who has been in housing crisis, we still need your help. As so many of our guests said, we need more allies and we need that to be you. Share this podcast, use your voice and support others to use theirs. The last word this season is to the many people who have made season three of She They Us possible.
starting with the women and gender diverse people who shared so deeply of themselves with us in their stories, as well as the academics, researchers and community organizers who also gave their time to share what we know about the histories of households led by women and gender diverse people in Canada. Supporting the work of She They Us and the Pan-Canadian Voice for Women's Housing is always an honour for me, but connecting the work we do today back
to the long arc of battles women and gender diverse people have been fighting in Canada for decades and in some cases centuries has been powerful and deeply meaningful. And I am so grateful to the people I've talked to this season for giving those histories a voice. This season is our second one with Everything Podcasts. Thank you to Everything Podcasts for bringing She, They, Us to the next level. Shout out to Jordan Wong, our sound engineer.
Linda Rourke, producer and writer, Lisa Bishop, senior account director, and Jennifer Smith, the executive producer. Also, a big thanks to Reid Jamison and CVM, who generously provided some of the music you heard on this episode from The Pigeon and the Dove. We're on a shoestring budget and so grateful for their support. And my final two thanks. First, to my partners on the She They Us project.
Ange Valentini with the Strategic Impact Collective and the project coordinator, Monica Dang. And of course, the women and gender diverse people across the country who had the vision to create the Pan-Canadian Voice for Women's Housing and the tenacity to keep it going so that future generations of women and gender diverse people will not have to live with the violence and poverty and housing insecurity that far too many Canadian households led by women and gender diverse people have to deal with today.
I'm Andrea Reimer. Thank you so much for listening to this season of She, They, Us, a podcast from the Pan-Canadian Voice for Women's Housing. ⁓
Another Everything Podcast production. Visit everythingpodcast.com, a division of Patterson Media.