As season 3 of the Winter is Coming: A Housing Justice Podcast continues we sit down with Tony D'Amato Stortz, Author of "A Home of their Own: A Guide to Building a Tiny Homes Community", and principal founder of Better Street, whose team has launched 143 Tiny Homes in the past year. Tony shares his candid thoughts on how empathy and helping people can meet innovation not just in the tiny home communities he's helped to form, but in how we reach residents who are resistant to shelters and emergency housing in their neighbourhoods. We also chat about how to improve the national conversation heading into a double election year in Ontario.

This week Waterloo Regional Councilor and former mayor Rob Deutschmann joins Adam to give his perspective on the use of lawsuits against encampments and the Ford government wielding legislative power to attack people in poverty instead of attacking poverty itself. Rob also talks about why he won’t join those who call for the destruction of more encampments, and why Doug Ford’s decision to shut down consumption sites make neighborhoods less safe, and healthcare weaker.

In part 2 of Adam's conversation with David Alton of SDCC we dig deeper into what it means to re-frame our ideas of 'risk', and what allyship can look like by challenging unjust housing systems. David also challenges us to think about who is profiting from homelessness and why they think waterloo region just might be exceptional in its approach to housing. 

As we kick off season 3 Adam is joined by David Alton of Social Development Centre of Waterloo region. In Part 1 of our 2-part conversation, David shares their experiences as a facilitator of lived expertise for SDCC going from working on housing in a city like Toronto with the backing of google, to transitioning to grassroots work and emphasizing community dialogue and lived expertise. David shares their insight on what the wealth and influence of a big tech company can’t do and why corporate top-down approaches won’t work without real community engagement.

We’re joined this week by housing systems engineer Kirsten Wright as zoom out and look at housing on a systemic level. Adam and Kirsten discuss the emergence of the “Sharing Economy” and how a more inter-dependent society can transform housing for the better. We also look at the underside of this development, and the ways in which large corporations exploit a sharing economy to create a deeper divide in wealth and housing

This week we're joined for the second part of our 2-part conversation with Dan Driedger of Beyond Housing, as we get deeper into how Beyond Housing manages to stay financially sustainable while also building affordable housing. We also chat about what it means to create community fabric, and the stories of success Dan has seen amidst the challenges of the current state of housing.

On this week's episode, we begin part one or a two-part conversation with Dan Driedger the director of Beyond Housing (formerly called Menno Homes). We hear how and why he went from a successful career in the for-profit industrial sector to a full-time role working for an Affordable Housing non-profit. Adam and Dan discuss Beyond Housing's work supporting the unseen victims of the housing crisis.