Episode 5: Gemma Ricker

 0:24  Adam Cresswell: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Winter Is Coming, a housing justice podcast. And this is a series where we are having conversations exploring how we go from housing crisis to housing justice in our communities. And we take the particular lens of where many of us in these conversations are [located]. The land that we're living on, which you might know now on your Google Maps as Kitchener-Waterloo, but this is the traditional territory for thousands of years of the Haudenosaunee, the Anishinaabe and the neutral peoples who stewarded this land long before with much more intention and care than us settlers have. That is the land that we're talking about. And we're excited to dive in this week with my friend and a fellow Camp alumni and Hub Community Network Sub-hub [home church] leader, Gemma Ricker, who is also a former staff at the Working Centre. And for those who don't know, the Working Centre is an incredible organization in kw that's been around for decades, serving the street involved community, working alongside those who experience housing insecurity. And they've been doing amazing work for quite a long time. And Gemma has been gracious enough to come on and chat about her time at the Working Centre and her experiences. So, Gemma, thank you for being here this week. Thanks for making time to be here.  

 1:57   Gemma Ricker: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be on the podcast.  

 2:01  Adam: Awesome. We're glad to have you. And we've are talking in this series about housing justice, and when we talk about housing justice, we use that phrase to kind of express how this is a kind of large and sprawling problem that we face that isn't contained simply to soaring house prices in market, real estate or mortgage rates. It's not specifically contained to one region, and it's also not specifically contained to just those folks who are street involved, because, as we talked about in our episode with Kirsten Wright, this crisis is a threat to growing poverty at many income levels. And so. we talk about housing justice to explore how do we not just get roofs over people's heads, but how do we move towards a society, communities, cities, neighborhoods, provinces, and whole countries that really have housing enshrined as a human right? And you have been working in the past couple of years at the Working Centre. Tell us a little bit, how did you get involved with the Working Centre originally?  

 3:21  Gemma: Yeah, so I graduated from my undergrad in 2021 and I studied peace and conflict studies. That's what my undergrad is in. And I really enjoyed my program and took a lot of courses in Social Development studies as well, because that interested me. So…I took a course called Homelessness and Public Policy and I took courses on Environmental Justice, Trauma and Healing. So, using a trauma-informed approach. I had a little bit of, educational background, sort of, in the field. And when I graduated, I immediately started looking for a job because it was the middle of the pandemic. And I know that lots of people, once they finish their undergrad, maybe take some time off to do something else or travel or something, and it was in the middle of a lockdown, so I didn't have that opportunity.  

Adam: Not a lot of great travel opportunities, not a lot of backpacking through Europe opportunities in the last couple of years. [laughs] 

4:17  Gemma: [laughs] Exactly! And on top of that, I didn't really need a break because I'd been sitting in my room for the last eight months doing school online, so I'd already been at home so much. I actually ended up getting the [Working Centre] job like a week after I graduated. I didn't have any time because I felt like I was also ready to get out of my apartment. So anyway, I graduated and I immediately started looking for jobs and I was interested in working in the area, I was interested in staying in the KW area. And I found this job posting, that the working Centre was hiring for supportive housing workers. And I was a little bit familiar with the Working Centre. I knew that they ran the soup kitchen, St. John's Kitchen in Kitchener, but I'd never been there, I never volunteered there. I'd never actually interacted with the Working Centre otherwise in any other way. I had just heard the name before, but I didn't know all that much about them. Anyways, I got this job, and I didn't know very much what I was stepping into. So, I worked in their supportive housing, which we'll get into kind of what that looks like. I worked in the supportive housing for a few months and was working on the night shift there. So, I would get on my bike at eleven o clock at night and bike down University [ave] off the campus, and [head to] work. And then I bike home at seven o clock in the morning. It was like a really interesting experience. And then after a few months, I had the opportunity to move within the Working Centre to working at St. John's Kitchen. And that's where I spent the last year working. And so I worked at St. John's Kitchen for a year after that. So that's how I got involved in the Working Centre.  

 6:05  Adam: So, like you said, directly out of your undergraduate, like, a week later, you were diving in. Wow, talk about going from the world of academia in post-secondary and then diving right into what some of us in, liberative Jesus traditions might call the ‘incarnational’ or other people might say ‘right in the thick of it’, ‘in the trenches’, ‘on the front line’, in a very lived, experienced, practical way. You went from, I guess, not only academia and studying, but the end of your [university] career. And there was the pandemic. And so, like you said. [You’re] in your apartment, finishing school. [Sitting] at a laptop and then going right into kind of the front lines with the Working Centre, working alongside folks who are street involved, are housing insecure. What was that shift like, going from the laptop [and school work] into the Working Centre?  

 7:09  Gemma: Yeah, so it was interesting because it was like going right from theory to practice. I had just been learning about this stuff, but just in theory, I was sitting in university. I was sitting amongst people who were not dealing directly with the housing crisis, with homelessness, with the opioid crisis. I was sitting amongst university students who had housing, and I was learning about, for example, how to use a trauma-informed approach in any type of work. And then when I started at the Working Centre, they started to train us in how to use a trauma-informed approach. So, I was using that stuff that I learned in school directly where I was working. I did take it right from theory to practice. I don't remember being too big of a transition, even though we… had all been at home for a long time, just before I started working there, it was pretty natural just to jump back in and start being around people and working in housing and being around people all the time, like, every night, every shift. It was pretty exciting.  

 8:16  Adam: You talked about, specifically what we're looking at here, and what a lot of your experiences were around supportive housing. And we've talked a little bit so far on the podcast about this idea of the housing continuum and that the continuum stretches all the way from what we might traditionally look at as those who are living on or close to the street, street involved folks, (what we might have, in the past called ‘homelessness’) all the way to the other end of the continuum, where there is market real estate. And so [that’s] the idea of somebody getting a down payment and being able to get a mortgage and buy a house. But in between both those phases of the continuum are these other phases. And housing justice wants to work to get people further along that continuum. Although in housing justice, we would have a lot to say about how market real estate and that end of the continuum needs to change. But in between those who are living close to the streets and those who are able to own houses, we have these other phases of the continuum; Including emergency response, emergency shelters, supportive housing, accessible housing, affordable housing, transitional housing. So, you have had experience then, working in supportive housing. Can you help us as listeners and as me, because I’ve said lots of times, I'm not an expert in this… What is supportive housing? What does that look like? How might that differ from something like an emergency shelter? And how might it differ from something like just market real estate, housing?  

9:54  Gemma: Great. Yeah. Yes. Let's get into it. So supportive housing can, I think, look like different things. It can. It's, I think, quite a broad, umbrella term. So, it can look like different things in different contexts. You've talked about on this podcast before, on your previous episodes about how we need to have multiple different solutions. There's not one solution to the housing crisis. There needs to be multiple different solutions. And so, this is one solution. And it's not the solution for everyone who's dealing with housing insecurity, but it is for some. So that's why it's really important for us to consider all sorts of different solutions. In this case, what supportive housing looks like… and maybe I'll to talk first about why it looks different from a shelter, or how it looks different from an emergency.  

Adam: Yeah, sure. 

10:43  Gemma: So, an emergency shelter is somewhere that people will go at night. And if it is a true emergency shelter, say one that's like opened up in the winter, you have to be there by whatever time it is. Eight p.m., nine p.m. at night. You get your bed if you get there in time. If you don't, you don't get a bed. You stay there for the night, and then in the morning you pack up all your belongings at eight in the morning or whatever time you have to leave, and then you leave for the day. And then you get back in line at night and you hope that you can get a bed that night too. And that is an emergency shelter. You don't leave any of your possessions there. There are often lots of rules around what you can and can't do in the shelter. [Things that many don’t allow include] substance use, pets, couples. You've talked a little bit about that before. So, there are lots of barriers to people accessing emergency shelters. In this case, the idea behind, and I'm going to call it UA, and that stands for University Ave or University Avenue. So, the building that the Working Centre is using is on University Avenue. So that's why we're saying UA. 

Adam: Got it. Right.  

Gemma: So UA was opened in October, ah, 2020. And the idea was to have a space for people to live, for an especially vulnerable population of people who couldn't or wouldn't otherwise access shelter. And it can be hard for some people to imagine why people would choose to live on the streets instead of sleeping inside in a shelter. But there are lots of barriers to shelter, so I kind of made a little list of some of the ones that came to mind. So, some of the barriers to accessing shelter is that people can't have pets so that's often their life companion, you can't bring your pets into shelter.  

12:30  Adam: Steph [Stretch] talked about that in her experiences as well [on our podcast]. For people listening; the idea of “What would you do if your pet was not able to come with you?” People have to think about these things, and it's easy for us, those of us who have shelter, to just think about, maybe when I go away for a weekend, who's going to watch this [pet]? And so that's a really good point that people don't think about. What do you do when you have these members of your family, but they are not not able to get shelter where you are getting shelter? 

12:59  Gemma: Yeah. legitimately, where are you going to leave your dog or your cat? Are you going to leave them on the street? Are you going to tie them to a tree overnight? Yes. legitimately people will choose to stay on the street because they actually have nowhere to leave their dog first in a safe place.  

People also aren't allowed to stay in couples in shelters. Everyone has their own bed. I think Steph Stretch mentions that as well. But also, it might just be a men's shelter or just be a women's shelter. If you're there with your family or with your partner, you can't stay together. And that's not always people's preference,  

Adam: For sure.  

Gemma: Also, lots of people just think that they're not safe. People's things get stolen there, and they just don't feel safe staying at shelters. They also [have] really rigid hours, so people have a lot less freedom to come and go as they please. And if you're someone who's living in housing, you have the freedom, and you may not think about it, but you have the freedom to come back to your house as late as you want and leave as late as you want in the day. And that autonomy is something that I've always taken for granted.  

Adam: I'm sure everyone does.  

Gemma: Yeah. The fact that you can just leave your house anytime and come back anytime, and you don't have to worry that someone else is going to be in your bed and take your spot is this amount of, like, personal autonomy that you [and I] have that you don't get if you stay in shelters. I heard… I feel like it was a local politician or someone was saying and they were like, well, “people should just stay in shelters. That's the easy solution.” But it's not an easy solution., For that person saying that [they’re not considering] that you can't come and go as you please. That you have to be there at a certain time. That it's really, really prohibitive. So, yeah, that's another reason why people may not choose to stay in shelters.  

Adam: Absolutely. 

Gemma: And then on top of that, most shelters have a no drug policy, and that's a really big barrier for people. If they can't use or bring their substances inside, they won't choose to stay inside. And then on top of that, people will get service restrictions from shelters. So potentially, if they find you using inside, they'll say you're restricted for a day, or you're restricted for a week, or if you get in the fight, you'll be restricted for a week, and then you can't come back. If you're restricted from the emergency shelter because you're using, then you have nowhere to stay that night, potentially. So, these are all reasons why people would choose not to access shelters. 

Adam: Right. 

Gemma: The vision, I think, behind UA was that there would be a place for people who couldn't access shelters or wouldn't access shelters to have a place to live. So this type of supportive housing, like I said, it's kind of an umbrella term, and there's lots of different types of supportive housing. But this type of supportive housing was specifically for this very vulnerable population. Most people who live in UA are using opioids, not everyone, but most. So, it's a very specific population that they're serving. And supportive housing means that it's staffed 24/7. So I said before, I was working on the night shift, we had three different shifts and there's always staff on site. That's what supportive housing needs in this case. And it means that also, in this case, there are also other resources on site. So, this building opened up and people can access their beds there. And one of the differences from an emergency shelter is that people actually have a room there. Like housing. You have your room and you can come and go whenever you want, and you always have that room, and you don't have to wait in line and wonder if you're going to get a bed that night. Once you have your space, you have it, and you're allowed to have pets in the building as well. And there's couples that are living in the building that would get rooms beside each other so that they can use those two rooms however they want. That really brings down some of the barriers. So, it's staffed all the time. You have your own room that you always have, you can come and go as you want. And then everyone has a key to their own room, so you can leave all your possessions in there as well. You don't have to be moving them out every single day, and you can leave your stuff there. And there are also services that people can access on site. So, some of the services include a nurse there during the day, so people can access some at least their preliminary health care or get referred on to the type of health care that they need. So they have a nurse on site. They have sanguine, which is a harm reduction organization on site for a few hours each day. So sanguine gets people safe supply, so that means needles, pipes, tinfoil, anything that people need to be able to use their drugs safely. Lutherwood, again, when I was working there, this was true. Lutherwood was coming in every week. Lutherwood is a housing organization, so they would come in to help people find more permanent housing. You have outreach workers from the working Centre on site also trying to help people find more permanent housing. And there was also the Job Cafe happening so people could get jobs just either helping out in the kitchen or helping to clean the bathrooms to make some money. So there was also work for people on site, and there was meals, so people were accessing all of their meals there as well. So in this case, that's what supportive housing meant. There's lots of things, lots of other services to access on site. So it makes it a network of support for these folks, as well as being staffed. 24/7.  

18:57  Adam: When you talk about the blessing, and that this is my word, the blessing of being able to have your possessions in particular be able to stay in one place I think that's really important for us to appreciate. Things that we take for granted. Those of us who haven't been targeted by housing injustice in the same way or have had the luck not to be targeted in the same way, to think about what it means to not have to pack up your things every night… or as many shelters have to, to deny certain things being able to come in that space. And when you said the idea of people being able to have their own keys to their place… I think about the dignity piece. That’s something that I would want for myself. That I would want for my friends and my neighbors to have that dignity of saying, this is your place with your stuff. This is your key. And then on top, to know that there are those supportive services, I think that's really important for us to recognize and to not take for granted. And to know, as we talked about in the episode with Steph, the people who are running these emergency shelters, they're doing incredible work in the kind of limited way that an emergency shelter can operate. But we have so often in our political discourse and in our perception of “how do we tackle the housing crisis”, we've settled for the emergency response being the solution. And of course, it's not to say that these emergency shelters are not doing incredibly valuable work. And it’s not to say that the people working there and volunteering there aren't doing incredible work, but just recognizing that it's a very limited scope of folks who can access that effectively and even the ones who access effectively, it's not a long term solution. So, to be able to look past emergency shelters, which is one phase of the continuum, and to look into… to create visions and create programs for supportive housing is really, really important for people who have barriers to even accessing shelters in the first place. And those who can access real networks of support…. We see people actually start to rise, through community, up out of those challenging situations.  

 21:22  Gemma: Yeah, and to that point about having not having to pack up your possessions… I worked at [the Working Centre’s St John’s] kitchen for the past year. When you work in supportive housing, the nice thing is everyone who you're working with has shelter. So that's great. But when I worked at the kitchen, lots of people who aren’t housed [are invited to be there while we’re open. But at the end of the day, everyone starts packing up their things. And some people have spread out during the day, being able to put their stuff down or decide to reorganize their things. And I have seen the wildest contraptions of people. They'll have like two backpacks on their back, and they'll have this trailer attached to their bike and they load all their things, it's very precarious and they bike away and you're really carrying all of your life's possessions around with you and it's really exhausting. [But every day that space has to close] And I remember during the winter, the working center had a winter emergency shelter. 

Adam: At St. Andrews Church in Kitchener.  

Gemma: Yes. And it's not too far from the kitchen, which was really, really great that people could go in between the shelter and the kitchen and always have the opportunity to be somewhere warm. So, we had a similar population of people who would stay at the shelter in the night and then in the morning when the shelter closed, the kitchen would open. Sort of at the same time, people would come to the kitchen, stay there during the day when we closed, an hour later the shelter opened. So, it's sort of this continuous care, but people still had to move and they didn't have a permanent place to stay. And I just remember at the end of the day asking one lady, reminding her that we were closing and asking her if she can start getting her stuff packed up because we were closing soon. And she had been, I think, napping on the floor because sometimes it's hard to get a good sleep in the shelter. And she just sighed and said “It's always get up and get out, get up and get out. It's always pack your things and get out.”  

Because every 12 hours she's being asked to get up and get out and move to the next place, and then move to the next place. And it's so mentally and physically exhausting that it just really, really… Yeah, that just really broke my heart when she was saying that, because it was exactly true. And it just speaks to the importance of supportive housing where you're able to stay there twenty-four seven and come and go when you want.  

Adam: Yeah, again, it's hard for us to for us to wrap our heads around the toll that takes on people emotionally and on people's bodies to be constantly on the move like that.  

You also talked about in the [Working Centre’s University Avenue] supportive housing, people have the ability to have safety and support systems around those who are [actively] using substances. Can you talk a little bit about for those who might be new to this? And again, because there's lots of folks who might be listening and they say I'm not an expert, I just know that I want to see people be able to be supported and be housed. But they might wonder why is it important to be able to care for and actually provide space for people who are using substances? Can you explain a little bit about why it's actually important to provide those things rather than having a policy of saying “if you come here, you're not allowed to use any substances”. Why is it important that we actually support people who are in the midst of lives where their substance users.  

Gemma: Yeah, great question. So, it's no secret that Canada is in the midst of an opioid crisis right now, to say the least. It's just so very serious. And between January and March this year so earlier this year in 2022, 21 people were dying a day of an overdose death. So, we can see that the drugs that we're seeing now, particularly fentanyl, is so potent and so addictive, so harmful that it just has a grip on people's lives. Like, we haven't necessarily seen drug use have that type of grip on people's lives before. So, I was listening to a speaker the other day and they actually had a really good explanation. It was someone who used to have an opioid addiction himself. And this was, I think, a really good and explanation that resonated with me about how strong the grip it can have on people. So, he was talking about he lived in downtown Vancouver and he was going through withdrawal in a park. And he just explained that going through withdrawal is like the worst pain of your life. Your head hurts, your mouth is dry, your whole-body aches, everything hurts. You are feeling anxious, and you can't even believe how much anxiety you have. Literally, everything is in pain. You're just laying on the ground feeling so sick, like the worst flu that you have ever had. Picture the most sick you've ever felt in your life. And you know that $10 will make it go away. It really resonated with me because I know that when I feel really sick, I will do anything to make the pain stop. You just don't want to be in pain. Like you said you would go to the drugstore and buy any flu medicine that they had that you would take that would make this pain go away. So, yeah, just imagine that. And you know, if you just go down the street and spend $10 on a dose that you need, it will all go away. So, this type of addiction really has a strong grip on people's lives. And I just think that it's really important to remember that people from all walks of life have opioid addictions. And it's not just one type of person. There is so much stigma around it.  

Of course, there's a lot of stigma around drug use, but just because people use drugs, it doesn't mean they don't deserve housing.  

So that's why it's just so important to support people who are using drugs and support them in a way that there's no expectation that they stop using. We used to have, I think, there were a lot of policies in places that said first you have to “get clean” and then you'll be eligible for housing. And “get clean” is not really a term that we want to use generally, but yes the term accompanied the traditional attitude [that before people are housed they must overcome addiction]. And this led to a spectacular failure of results. 

Adam: Yes, absolutely. 

Gemma: And so, we have this… philosophy now that's called, housing first, which means first you house people and then they can access other supports that they need once their basic needs are met. But also, on top of that, I really believe that we have to house people with no conditions. Like, there should be no conditions of… “you have to be going to aa” or “you have to be seeking treatment”, because some people are not ready for that. And it doesn't mean that they don't deserve housing and it doesn't mean that we still shouldn't work to support them. So I just think that's the reason that it's so important to provide housing first… I know that some people might feel uncomfortable with that and they might think:  

“Well, they should just be able to go to a shelter where they're not allowed to use [substances]. What's the problem with that? It's not good to use anyways.”  

But you see… I personally don't understand it if I haven't had an opioid addiction. If I don’t [live with that addiction] I can't truly understand it. But addiction is just so all-encompassing from what I have seen people experience, and it's just so intense [to be living with addiction] that it's just not that easy. You can't just say to people, well, you should just go to a place that says you can't use substances, because people will then choose to just sleep on the streets in that case. And then they die because they're using substances alone or they're freezing to death.  

Everyone deserves housing no matter what. 

 29:54  Adam: Yes. And I think that's the thing, too… I think you said it really beautifully: One, we should be housing people without conditions. Two, just because someone is using substances does not mean that they don't deserve housing and support and life. When people callously dismiss [living with addiction] and just say, “well, they should just go to the shelter,” or “they should just stop using” phrases like “they should just get it together.” Well, even if you want to take that stance, the result is people are dying. The people, like you said, are going out, they're sleeping outside, they're either dying of overdoses or they're freezing. And so, I think about how you and I have both worked at summer camp. And we when the kids come to camp at the beginning of the week, we usually do a swim test so the lifeguards can assess, you know, what's the swimming ability of each of the 50 kids here? And we don't just say, well, either you can swim or you can't come to camp at all. We put in structures and support pieces to make sure that everyone is able to be there and so it's safe. And to take the metaphor a little further, if we have kids and we think, well, they should “just learn to swim”, you don't just drop them in the deep end and say, “well, figure it .” because they're going to drown. And the idea of telling people [struggling with addiction] and saying, well, you, on your own have to do the the incredibly hard work of overcoming this, when… I mean, people who are in the top 1% of wealth, who struggle with addiction, they relapse multiple times. [The wealthy] require rehabilitation facilities, [the wealthy] require programming and health care, and that still is not a clean and easy road. So, the idea that there's still an attitude out there, that folks who are targeted by poverty, who are struggling, like we said, to even find a shelter, to even find food, to find community, that they're somehow magically going to be able to overcome what the incredibly wealthy struggle to overcome even WITH all those services they can access and afford is just absurd. It's really important that we stop the kind of the backwards approach of saying, well, you just have to either get clean or you're out on the street. Because the result is these are people, these are our neighbors, and they're dying when we take this approach. And so, I just think that's a really important thing for us as neighbors, as citizens, as activists, as people who are passionate about this to understand. You put it beautifully. Everybody deserves housing. Everybody deserves care. We should be housing people unconditionally.  

 33:03  Gemma: Yes. Like you said, even if people have every resource in the world, they still have an extremely difficult time working through their addiction. And even if they have every resource and all the money in the world, maybe they'll still never work through their addiction. So, expecting that from people who don't even have their basic needs met is obviously ridiculous. But yeah we need ask ourselves why people who are using opioids are affected so strongly from the house housing crisis, right? Like people who have had housing, who then fall into this addiction are not able to pay their rent and ended up on the street, and then there's nowhere for them to go, there's no shelters for them to go, there's not enough supportive housing, or they're not allowed to use if they're in some of these spaces. So, this is why it's really affecting these people and why it's a specifically vulnerable population of people who don't have housing, I think.  

And just to speak a little bit, if I can, about safe supply.  

Adam: Please do. 

Gemma: I was recently reading, and I would recommend this book to everyone, “Overdose” by Benjamin Perrin. He is a Canadian researcher, so it speaks specifically to the Canadian opioid crisis. And he talks in his book about how so far, from all of the research that we've done, we can see that rehab doesn't work for people to get off opioids. Rehab being this traditional model of like, maybe it's a live-in model where you go away for three months or six months. It is an abstinence model. And so you don't use, and then it's totally abstinent and then you don't use ever again for the next three months, six months. And the reality that we've seen actually over and over again, as hard as it is for us to accept, and as much as we might wish that it did work that way… the truth is people relapse on opioids. You see, people lose their tolerance to opioids really, really quickly. So even if you don't use for a few days or a few weeks and then you use the same amount that you would use, again, that can be very harmful, and you'll end up overdosing. So, people lose their tolerance really quickly. So in fact, when people go to rehab and engage in these abstinence only models, they end up relapsing when they come out and it's actually more harmful. There's more overdoses and deaths and it's just not an effective model. And that was really hard to read and learn about because you want that to work, you want it to work and you want it to be an effective model. But again, so far, just in all the research we've done, it just really hasn't been. People are dying at rehab if they're able to get their hands on opioids and then use and then they're just overdosing in the rooms or they're dying after they come out. And again, there's not just going to be one solution of course, like the housing crisis, there's never going to be one solution. But there is. something that's come to Kitchener and models are being rolled out across Canada called ‘Safe Supply’. This means a few different things. There's one ‘Safe Supply’ model where people can access their drugs safely, basically as a prescription to them. And then they know that it's not coming from the street, so it's not contaminated. They know exactly how much they're taking. And then there's also programs and methods that feeds the need for having your opioids without giving you a high. And that is a way that we can help people - again, if they want to and if they're ready to stop using street drugs as much - because they'll take their methadone every day and then they won't feel the desire to use as strongly and they won't experience withdrawal. And that is really important because [withdrawal is intense]. Withdrawal feels so bad that people will do anything to continue to get their high. So, one: if you're taking methadone, you want to experience your withdrawal symptoms, which is really important. And two: you won't feel the need - again, from my understanding, - you don't feel the need to use your opioids more, which means eventually you can start coming off street drugs and then eventually, long, long term, you can start coming off your methadone and decreasing your methadone dose as well. And that can be one model that people have seen success with, in the past.  

So at UA, just to loop that back in, we had a methadone program there. I think at the time, we had maybe a quarter of the people who were living there who were on the methadone program. And so that was also one of the ways that we were working, to support people who were looking to beat their addiction.  

 38:05  Adam: I'm glad you did talk about safe supply. Because I think it's important for people who are passionate about this, about housing justice, to understand that the reality is that many people are either ending up living close to the streets because of struggles with addiction or enter into it during their lives that are living close the street. And we need to be able to respond in an actually effective way. And I think we're far enough now into being able to look back with hindsight, and particularly at places like the United States and in Canada too in the 80s, what was known as the war on drugs, which we can now, without any serious debate, understand what a colossal failure it was, and how counterproductive that approach was. And in many ways, we're still continuing that counterproductive approach with how we think about housing. And so, for those who are passionate about showing up to city council meetings and public consultation meetings, it's really critical that everyday people understand the importance of safe supply. And as you're talking about it and understand why. And again, I would hope that we would just trust that the organizations that are working on the front lines know better than those of us who can sit back from our lazy boy chairs here and just say what we think should happen. 

But let's assume that people are like me and they're an armchair quarterback who's always yelling at the TV and watching sports and telling them how they should be running the play or how the Blue jays should be pitching today, because that is me. [laughs] I will say it's really important that we understand why protecting safe supply and why caring and supporting folks who are living with addictions is critical to getting them on a path to healing and health and getting them on a path to being housed. So, I really do appreciate you kind of laying that out for us. What it looks like at UA, at the working Centre, and why it's important that we are there, not to judge, not to try and take an approach that is just going to end up with people going alone onto the streets, but actually is a way to keep people in the community and inside places that have those supports.  

 40:45  Gemma: Yeah. And it's just really important to pay attention to the experts and pay attention to the research. I'm not a professional or a full expert on methadone and safety, but there are people out there who are. And as you were talking about the war on drugs being a total failure. I think this book, again it’s called “Overdose” by Benjamin Perrin, is really, really excellent. Because Benjamin Perrin used to work for Stephen Harper while he was in government and actually helped roll out the War on Drugs program [during that time], to uphold that ideology in the Stephen Harper government. And he was a full, full believer and supporter of the war on drugs [approach]. And when he finished working for Harper, he became a professor at a university and he went back to Vancouver and he saw: “Wow, people are just dying at a more incredible rate than before. What's going on here?” And started to dive in and do his own research and ultimately by the end was convinced that he had been totally wrong. And had even caused a lot of harm in the policies that were rolled out. But that means he's able to speak very genuinely to the research he's done on the opioid crisis. So read that book. 

42:08  Adam: Yeah, we'll put a link to that in the description. I think that's a great recommendation. Can you talk a little more, as we kind of move on here about what life was like in UA? I know particularly just from friends and other folks… Kiegan Irish, who was part of the Hub team for many years, worked at the Working Centre and as did many other camp and Hub young people. And I know that the Working Centre just has a really beautiful approach of understanding their reciprocal relationships with those whom they work alongside. And not this hierarchical model of “here's the staff” or “here's the saviors” and “here's the folks that are clients”, but really understanding reciprocal relationships. Can you talk a little bit about what life is like at UA while you were there, what that experience was like and maybe some key things that you took away from that experience. working in supportive housing there?  

43:22  Gemma: Yeah. So that's great. I think that the question really is, like, what does it look like when you take 70 people who were living on the streets, sleeping rough, many of whom are people who use drugs, and put them into one four story building with 70 rooms? And it's a unique university dorm building, by the way. Like, that's how it's set up, I believe Wilfrid Laurier University used to rent it as a dorm building for their students, but because it was COVID, students were online and the building went up for rent, and WLU wasn't renting it because the students were working from home online. So that's what it's set up. Like, if you kind of want a bit of a visual in your head. Four floors, and everyone has their own room, and then there's dorm style bathrooms. I wasn't there right at the beginning. I started working there in April 2021, and they opened in October 2020. It sort of had a honeymoon period where everyone was like, “Whoa, whoa, this is amazing. We have a place to sleep and we have keys to our room, and we can come and go when we want.” And then it got hard because living in close proximity is hard, and living in community is hard.  

And then after a few months, when I started onboarding, I remember being told we're building a bit of a backbone in the community, a bit of some central pillars that are sort of pulling the community together. And we're kind of bringing ourselves together and figuring out what this is going to look like and what it looks like for people to live together. When I was working at St. John's Kitchen, I was talking to someone who was still working at UA and asking her how things were going, and she was saying how they were sort of in a phase where they were able to start supporting people to move on to more permanent housing. So, UA is much more permanent than a shelter. But the Mancinis [who founded and lead the Working Centre] I remember them saying actually advocated that when they were doing that big homelessness population count, I believe in September 2021, that these people were still counted [among that]. Because they did not have permanent shelter. Like, this wasn't like a permanent housing. So, these people are still considered not housed, because it's a transitional housing. So the goal is still to help these folks who are living in UA go on to even more permanent housing. So now they're in a role where they've actually sort of stabilized enough that they've actually been able to help people move into more permanent housing. So those are some sort of the phases, I think, that they saw. And it was wild and crazy working there, and it was also fun and beautiful. And it's just like being in any other community. Lots of people don't get along. It's a 70 person, about 70 people that are living there. Not everyone gets along, and some people get along really well, and some people barely come out of the room because they don't like to talk to people. And some people hang out in the common area all the time because they always want to interact with people. And in that way it was just like any other community that you see. Yeah, exactly. I think that what I learned there actually was, or at least what was sort of reiterated in my mind, is the importance of having a community.  

We actually had a resident move out. He had the opportunity to rent a place with some friends of his in a way that he was able to afford. And he moved out at that time when I was working there. And we were like, “This is amazing. He's getting permanent housing.” And it definitely was good in a lot of ways, but he kept coming back around because he was lonely in his new housing. All of a sudden he was living in a place where he had a few roommates who may or may not have been there all the time, but then that's it. He was in the house by himself, and he was used to living in a building with 60 or 70 other people that he could visit with all the time if he wanted. Like people who had become close friends, people who were close friends, a family even. Like, we have, siblings and couples and stuff living in there. And so, I think that I really learned about the importance of community because it showed me that literally every single person needs community. And it can be a really hard thing and there can be a lot of problems. It can be very imperfect, but people still need a sense of community and sense of connection. 

Adam: Yeah, I think, again, there's so many pieces that for those of us who have not had the same experiences with housing and security, with being street involved, with living close to the streets… There's so many ways, I think, initially we can look at it and just say, “ I can't even imagine what the needs are and what the experience is like”. And of course, in so many ways, we have to come with humility and recognize that yeah… there is lots we don't understand… like we said, what is it like to have all your possessions have to travel with you at all times, to be shuffled from in and out of somewhere every night? But at the same time, there's so many pieces of this that we can understand. As you said, what would we do without our communities? Whether that's family systems or friend units or those cells, those bodies that are around us, of people who know us, who we can go to, who we can just relax with. And the exhaustion, particularly for those who aren't in a place where they can get that,  either because of having barriers to accessing supportive housing or barriers to accessing community in certain ways. There's lots of reasons why those barriers would come up.  

Gemma: Yes.  

Adam: The exhaustion of not only having to figure out every day how you're going to get through that day, but to do it, to feel like you're doing it alone. I think it's really important that that's something that we can all identify with, of the need for community in our lives and the legs that it gives us to be able to move forward.  

 50:07  Gemma: Yes. Yeah, I've seen just from my past year of experience, I think that people often who are street involved hold even closer to their community than others because it's almost vital to keep you going. You need support when you're outside or your sleeping bag is wet from the rain…  You need a light. You hold closely to the people that are close to you. That's what I've seen just working at the kitchen and working at UA. But, yeah, it's totally imperfect. Like, it's a challenging thing, and it's challenging having all these different people living in the building together, but people who want to live there keep living there. It's really neat. I remember, it was someone from the working Centre who said this to me. The neat thing is that people at the Working Centre have been hearing for years, and we've maybe heard this as well, have been hearing for years, “oh, well, people live on the streets because they choose to live on the streets.” They want to live on the streets. If they didn't want to, oh, well, then why aren't they trying harder to get housing?” And just lots of sentiments like that. Like, “people who are on the streets, it's because they want to be there. It's they're choosing to live on the streets.” I've heard even people close to me saying that… And someone from the working Centre said to me, “it's been interesting because we have basically proven that people who are living on the streets when given housing actually stayed.” Like almost everyone chose to stay in housing when it was offered to them in a way that was low barrier or no barrier for them.  

Adam: Right.  

Gemma: There weren't all these other barriers for them about like not being able to bring their pets or not be able to stay with their families when there was no or low barrier housing offered to them. People stayed and they're still staying and they're living there. It kind of helps prove that people aren't living on the street because it's a choice. Maybe they feel it's their best option but it's not their most preferred option from what we've seen.  

Adam: And one thing that I know from conversations with other folks that actually speaks so much to what you just said... We know that getting people housed is one thing and sometimes the line that comes after that is “keeping people housed is a challenge”. But I think what it really speaks to is the fact that keeping people housed in the current systems that we have is the challenge. It’s not the people, it’s our systems that have a problem. But understanding that there are ways to rethink our approaches, our perceptions to housing, to supportive housing, to health care programs, to how we see our neighbors. Shifting our thinking and our methods is what we need to do. Because it is a challenge to keep people housed IF we keep taking the same approach to things that are not working. If we’re saying well eventually you just need to be able to work your way up to somehow afford a down payment on a mortgage in a climate where that is out of reach for people who already live in households that have multiple full-time jobs. So, I think that's a really important thing to recognize that when we talk about getting people housed and the challenge of keeping people housed, the challenge lies in the absurdity of continuing to take the same approach to housing that we have for so long. And we need to take heed of places like the Working Centre and the work that is happening. And I should say the community that is happening at UA, to understand and see how much we need to evolve our approach with housing and with the opioid crisis. We need to actually respond to what's happening. To what's really happening. And we need to actually take a look at what's working and what isn't and not just try and continue the same approach based on presumptions that have been completely disproven. And so I think that's a really, really beautiful thing to look at and to take the case study of UA and see, like you said, the success that comes. Not the perfect success, not saying that all of a sudden it is this perfect utopian society and everything works, and it's all one linear track to getting everybody into their own place… it's really important for us to look at the complexity, the messiness… But like you said, to recognize the beauty of the community that has taken place there and to recognize that there's not one size fits all solution to everything… but that this IS what it looks like to take an approach where folks who are street involved are able to speak to what their needs are and are able to have the dignity to have agency over their own path and to have a support system around that, that takes that into account and supports where they're at. So I think that UA is just a really beautiful example of how to really effectively respond in the realm of supportive housing. I commend the working Centre for trying something new. I mean, maybe they're not the first people ever or first organization ever to do something like this, but it does, like you said, it takes change. We're seeing problems that we haven't seen before in the opioid crisis and in the housing crisis. And that means we need solutions that we haven't necessarily seen before. 

Gemma: That's right. We need to look at, not just rely on our old, outdated presumptions. And it takes trying something new to see how it will go. I remember, actually, the job listing on Indeed when I originally read it, said: “This is a housing experiment, and we are just trying to figure this out as we go.” And that is really exactly what it was. I mean, they said right there on the job posting, this is a housing experiment. And that is what was happening. And what is happening, I'm sure, still. And there's always new things to learn, but it takes a new type of housing experiment, or safe supply. Before, people might have thought it was crazy to prescribe people their opioids.  

 56:55  Adam: Yes, it would have felt completely counterintuitive.  

 56:58 Gemma:  Yeah, exactly. But it took some people to start doing that, to try a new approach - because our current approaches just weren't working - to see a change. So, yeah, I think this really that's what UA is. It's a housing experiment. And to wrap it around for us… it's just one solution. And there needs to be many different approaches and many different solutions to the housing crisis. And this is one that will work for some portion of the population.  

Adam: Yes, because everybody's needs are different and everybody's situations are different, and everybody's ability to exist in community differs the same way it does with those of us who live with neighbors down our street who drive us crazy, or other neighbors who we go over and watch a hockey game every week. Again, this involves understanding that these are our neighbors who have the same ups and downs with the community that we do. And Gemma, I think it takes a lot of courage and intestinal fortitude [laughs] to basically look at a job posting that's essentially saying, we're going to build the plane while we're flying it. And how many people would get into the plane that's still being built. And so, I'm really grateful for the work that you do. And for you to be just another example for us on this series of how to take kind of the learning and the theory into practice. And what I often talk about is when we're behind sort of the glass window and able to just be looking at things from a distance, to actually cross through that threshold, and to put it into practice, makes all the difference. And again, for those of us who come from a liberative Jesus tradition. We would say it is to live discipleship in that ‘incarnational’ way. To be able to be in lived experience in relationship is a really important thing. And my hope is as we go on with this series, we're continuing to highlight people like you who have taken the theory, the academic, the learning piece - which is where so many of us get to with something we're passionate about, especially with justice issues. And then we stop. My hope is that we can understand how can we get over from that first step and move into action. And again, it's going to look a million different ways as it has with Steph Stretch or Kirsten Wright who we talked with, or anyone else. It's going to look different as to how we actually take action and get involved. But to go from theory and learning to action, I think is a really important step that we all need to understand. And your courage in stepping in a week after you finished your undergrad… 

Gemma: [Laughs] I was ready to go! 

Adam: [Laughs] And going right into it the working side of things as the Working Centre themselves said, “we're figuring things out as we go” is really beautiful and really inspiring. And I'm really grateful for you being able to be here this week and share your story and share your experiences with the working Centre and with the amazing work that's happening at the community at UA. So, thanks very much for sharing.  

 60:16  Gemma: Yeah. Thank you. Can I say one sort of call to action?  

Adam: Yes, please do. Yeah.  

60:21 Gemma: So, if you're listening to this podcast, please write your elected officials. Call your elected officials, especially municipally…. I've realized that people who are against consumption treatment services or CTS for short, people who are against CTS and Safe Supply and harm reduction are doing those things, [contacting their elected officials]. And they are being loud and they are writing their elected officials. It's been happening in Cambridge especially. They've been trying to get CTS off the ground [in Cambridge] and they haven't been able to. And there has been a lot of pushback from the community. So, the [opponents] are being loud, but we need to be louder. People who are against this are speaking up about it and we need to speak up about it as well. They are loud and they are reaching out to their representatives and they are writing letters and they are making phone calls saying, “don't bring safe supply to our community. Don't bring harm reduction to our community.” We've seen it happen in Cambridge. I was actually doing a bit of research for something and I was coming across the meeting where they were discussing which location they might put the CTS in on the Cambridge City Council. And the people who wrote in that day - you can submit your letters to the council - were majority people saying, “we don't want either location. We don't want this in our community. We don't want this at all.” So, they are loud and we need to be louder. I just feel really passionate about that. Just please call and write and meet whenever you can. Meet with your elected officials and tell them that this is something you want, and this is something you care about, because people on the other side are doing the same and they're making their voices heard. We need to make our voices heard too. So that's my call to action.  

62:07  Adam: And again, a great reminder, even as we talked about this past week, election season, now federally, provincially and municipally has come and gone, but the work does not stop after we cast a ballot. In fact, now we have city councils, we have regional councils. A lot of stuff happens at the regional level as well. But that's right, the municipal level does have a lot to say over specific projects, where they go and over Safe Supply. And you've done a really great job, Gemma, for us, of painting the intersection with Safe Supply, with supportive housing and with Housing Justice. So that is a great call to action. Yeah, that's our hope and our challenge and our prayer to people that we would move from just podcasts, which can just be the idea of consuming information. We hope that this series is a way to help people get active and be informed so that they can be equipped to act. And so, I'm really grateful for your work, Gemma, and for you coming on this week. And I hope to have you back and chat more about the intersections that you've seen, especially with your background in the trauma-informed approach in peace and conflict studies and in housing justice. So, thanks for being here this week and thanks for all you're doing to help move housing justice forward and help move the needle from housing crisis to housing justice in our communities. Thanks for being here, Gemma.  

 63:43  Gemma: Thank you so much for having me. 

 63:46  Adam: Awesome. Well, we will be back next time with more from Winter Is Coming. And as we continue to look at this, we encourage you to check out organizations like the Working Centre, find out what they're doing, find out how you can support them. They have fundraisers every year, they need volunteers, they need staff, and they need people in their corner supporting the work that they do. And Cambridge especially also needs that now more than ever. So, find out how you can get involved, make your voice heard and help support these organizations that are living out housing justice and are doing amazing things in our communities. So, for Winter is Coming. Thank you for being here again, Gemma. I'm Adam Cresswell and we will see you next time.  

 64:47 Gemma: Thank you.