Episode 9: Joe Mancini
What does the situation look like right now in Kitchener Waterloo, a problem happening all over our country right now and beyond
00:22 Adam Hello everyone and welcome back to Winter is Coming. This is a podcast all about how we go from housing crisis to housing justice. And we are talking specifically about this idea, this term Housing Justice, as a way in this series to talk about the complexity and nuance to addressing the housing crisis that isn’t isolated simply to lower market retail prices or mortgage rates and isn't specifically isolated to things like emergency shelters, but it includes things like affordable housing, supportive housing. We've talked in the series about intersections of Safe Supply and the systems of housing and with local and provincial and federal legislators as well. So we talk about housing justice as a way to say ‘how do we get to the point where housing is truly enshrined as a human right’ as we all want it to be. And so today we are talking specifically with Joe Mancini from the Working Center, one of the founders of the Working Center which does incredible work in housing employment and in responding and addressing poverty in Kitchener Waterloo region as we know it now on our maps. And of course that is the traditional territories of the Haudenshonee Anishnabe, Neutral Peoples who stewarded this land for thousands of years. And so we are going to be really diving into what does the situation look like right now in Kitchener Waterloo and how can we extrapolate that into understanding that this is a problem happening all over our country right now and beyond? So Joe, I'm super grateful for you to be with us today. Thanks for joining us.
Joe Thanks for having me. Yeah.
Adam So as we start maybe just as a little intro, we don't have to go too in depth because people can Google it too. But can you share a little bit about what the Working Center is, what its mission is and what kind of work you do at the Working Center?
2:38 Joe Sure. Well, we're 40 years in now and the original idea was to respond to poverty and unemployment. But really over time what we've built is an infrastructure of an, infrastructure with the ability to respond in a bunch of areas. And those areas are access to food, employment, helping people with income supports. Then we have all these community tools like bike shops and cafes and thrift stores. And then of course, there's this giant work around homelessness. So there's all kinds of ways to describe the Working Center. But probably every day more than 1000 people are using different parts of its projects. So it's a real response.
3:38 Adam Yeah. And again, when you throw the figure out of 1000 people, again, we're talking about one geographic region in kind of the five one nine (519) as some affectionately call it, in the Kitchener Waterloo region. And so we're not talking about 1000 people over the country or over the province. We're talking about 1000 people just here in our neighborhoods where we live.
4:01 Adam Yeah, those are more intense relationships than, say, five years ago. Five years ago we would say people, 1500 people would walk through the Working Center every day. So we use the word walk through because people are using the thrift stores and cafes, St. John's Kitchen, the Employment resource center. But things are, I would say, looser and more structured as a fuller community. And the Working Center really has functioned as a community that helps people to live with less money, builds relationships between people and projects in a way that isn't about a bureaucracy but is about a community. And so the 1500 people walking through the Working Center is really appropriate. But now it's more intense when I say that thousand because there's 80 people living in a housing dorms in Waterloo, 100 people at the King Street shelter all 24 hours. And the resource center is almost as busy as it's ever been. The cafes aren't open right now because we just haven't gotten back to those. But we will soon. But St. John's Kitchen is just full brimming with people every day.
5:31 Adam Hmm. And can you talk a little bit about specifically looking at an example of St. John's Kitchen because we love to be able to give glimpses for people of again, this alternative way of doing things, not just housing, but how it's integrated into food support programs. As this example, can you talk a little bit about how St. John's Kitchen works?
5:54 Adam Yeah, again, so almost I'm finding myself having to describe two different ways St. John's Kitchen back in 1985. It really was a place started this way and really became a place where we took surplus food from the community. When you talk about justice, we talked about it in terms of taking surplus food from the community, involving people who were going to partake of that food and producing it and serving it and cleaning up after. So it was a community of people who needed a meal each day and participated in making that meal possible. So we used to have very little staff at St. John's Kitchen. It was a real community effort among people living in rooming houses, people on disabilities. And that concept of producing a meal and serving it communally was a pretty neat thing. And that went on. But 2010, the drug crisis started really affecting the space in new ways. By 2015 it was quite severe year the effect and the pandemic changed it once even more. So. And so it's a little different right now because of that changed reality.
7:24 Adam We've talked about the statistic of in the last two or three years that folks who struggle with housing and security, folks who are living close to the streets in KW has tripled. Can you talk a little bit about how and yeah, I think you kind of already have started to, but can you talk a little bit more about how you've seen that impact the work right there on the ground in relationship with folks who are experiencing this?
8:00 Joe Yeah, we could say in 2013 that the number of homeless was probably more like 40 to 50 individuals. And that was kind of demonstrated when the Out of the Colds closed down. And then, the next winter, the region kind of provided these warming centers. And so the idea from these warming centers was to just see, well, what was the actual number, what number did we need to respond? And so that was the number for two years. But as I said, by 2010, we were already seeing the drug issue at St. John's Kitchen. There is something boiling underneath that… the numbers around homelessness and the reality of the drug situation just were not really meshing in our minds. We weren't understanding it. People were hiding. When I say hiding, we know there is a building in downtown Kitchener where maybe 60, 80 people were living, squatting. And we found out at the end that was around 2016, when that building was emptied, that started telling us a whole different story.
9:33 Adam Yeah. The ability to understand that the Working Center and your colleagues there who work directly in relationship on the ground alongside folks who are experiencing this, that even for folks at the Working Center, that there could be moments of these kind of shock at how the problem was actually running so much deeper and widespread is, I think, really important for us to understand.
10:06 Joe Yeah, it's true. It really is. 2010, we were not writing about homelessness in the way that we write about it today. So that's 20 years later and ten years later yeah. It took those ten years of kind of being, to confronting the issue, seeing it in stark ways. And I think it was around, it was only around 2014, could even be later 2015, 16 where the drug issue (I think it was around 2016), the drug issue inside of St. John's kitchen around the washrooms was just causing tremendous problems, like this idea of finding an individual with a needle stuck in his neck in an overdose on the ground. That's a dramatic story, but it kind of, but this hadn't happened before, but then it was happening every day in terms of the use of the drug. So a group of people were using drugs more and more… in the meantime those drugs, it's not actually in the meantime, the documentation is that it was around 2015 where those drugs took a tremendous reduction in price and the distribution went sky high. And that's because this whole point of synthetic drugs being mass production. You could say it's cartels, but I don't consider it to be cartels. I consider it to be people who are very creative at making money and it's dastardly in terms of what their intentions are. But nonetheless, you have a little factory and you can figure out how to make the drugs and then you can make them at a large scale. You're going to make a lot of money doing it. It's kind of a sad reflection on society, but fact that these drugs are so addictive and they can be so cheaply made and made and you only need small quantities of them. The drug issue is on a different level than it was.
12:37 Adam And I think we've had a conversation in the last volume of our season with Gemma Ricker, who worked out of the Working Center and did some work in the University Ave housing and talking about the importance of safe supply and the recognition that this crisis is a reality. And we need to be able to house these people, house our neighbors, I should say, who are experiencing this. And so to also understand underneath the depth and the scale of the problem. And as you all were seeing at the Working Center to see the correlation between the crisis around drugs exploding as housing insecurity also went up, I think at the same time is a really key thing, I think for people to understand and then to then understand that to address and respond and support our neighbors who are experiencing housing insecurity, sounds like inseparable to being able to address the opioid crisis and the crisis of fentanyl and the drug crisis in general. Would that be fair to say that these are inextricably linked?
14:06 Joe They are linked. And I would say the reason they're linked is that previously the group that was homeless, say, in the 1990s, 1980s, alcohol was just part of their life. It was just assumed alcohol was the way people got by. And that is still true today. Except an even cheaper alternative are these drugs. And it's not like people are like, oh, I need these drugs. Drugs are, the need for drugs or need for alcohol, the need for any addiction is a reflection of a longing, a lost relationship, a lost ability to connect with society, to connect, to work, to connect to family, to connect with loved ones. And it's that loss, it's that inside the trauma experienced and the inability to process. And these are real human emotions people go through. People have often used alcohol. But right now there's a real cheap alternative, and it's called fentanyl. It's called crystal meth. And what I see on the ground is that if I go to the shelter and talk to people, not everyone, it's only maybe 60%. I don't know if that's the right number or not, but my guess is 40% are not on these drugs. They're homeless, but it's because they have a disability. And they're on disability, but there's no way they can afford any housing. They've lost a relationship. And the alternative is to be in a shelter because they can't afford to find a place to live. But there's another whole group that very much fall into those drugs, and it could be as high as 60%, and their ability to navigate is lessened by how deep they go into those drugs and how deep they go into those drugs sometimes is a reflection on how deep they need to avoid the trauma that's inside of them. Those are hard things. And we need counseling resources on the ground, we need psychosocial supports on the ground, and they're not there. They're nowhere to be found.
Adam Yeah, …
Joe …we do a lot of that work, but it's as outreach and it's like Band Aid, but the real work where someone can really reflect, is not there.
17:07 Adam Yeah, and we've talked about that's. Something we've talked about before is that there is a need for emergency shelters, but emergency shelters in and of themselves are not a way to solve, to get to the root and to start solving the housing crisis. So the ability to need to, like you said, have on the ground immediate solutions for people. And the Bandaids are important if you're bleeding, but that we have to be able to go deeper than that and respond in a more comprehensive way than that. Can you talk a little bit about what you see as steps that particularly in our communities, we'll use Kitchener Waterloo as an example, what are the steps that need to be taken, either at a legislative level, at a political level, at level of community organizations, places like how churches can support and how they can get on this, how are everyday people who are just saying, I see the problem around me, I want to be able to respond. What do you see as the work that needs to start happening? Because you're really hitting on the truth that, yes, this is not just about ‘we need to build more houses for people’, as so often gets bandied around as a narrative in the media. It's not just about a supply of housing issue and it's not even necessarily isolated to folks who can't necessarily afford a down payment. As you're talking about, we're going into there is a need for counseling services, there's a need for psychotherapy. What are the things that you're seeing as steps that we can take in the right direction to really address this? What's the work that needs to be done?
18:53 Joe Interesting. Well, you ask kind of two questions, in a sense, because there's structural, systematic work, and then there's kind of what individuals can do from their heart that changes society. So you got to, have to believe that that's a possibility. That's what most people can do. Most people can't come up with a million dollar down payment to start a housing project, although if that's possible, then that should be done. But in the meantime, a couple of landlords have approached us because they're getting older. They want to sell, and they've managed to keep their rooming houses as affordable. And so they don't want to sell this arrangement because they know as soon as they do, the prices are going to go are going to become unaffordable.
Adam They'll just get scooped up into an unaffordable situation.
19:56 Joe So then that, to me, is a reflection on society around how much do you need? How are we protecting our housing stock? When you went to school when I went to school, did we learn that we need to protect the housing stock?
Adam That's not a narrative I've ever learned about.
19:59 Joe Yeah, well, I think that should be a value of society, and we don't even have it. The value of housing stock is it going to affect my pension? That's a pretty crappy value for a housing stock. The value of housing stock should not be about, can I make more money off housing? It should be, how do we make housing affordable? If that's not a societal goal, then we get what we get. And sometimes I really want to say, when we, when we go into neighborhoods, as we have, and the neighbors get very upset, sometimes I like to well, I don't point out, but I would like to point out, well, you've bought into society. You love your million dollar houses. You know, you've participated and you benefit from that. But in the long run, who is that excluding by your gain, who, who loses?
21:28 Adam Yeah. And again, the posture of protecting housing stock to be able to keep things affordable, to make things more affordable, is just a completely different, completely different posture than we simply just need to build more. I think it's important to understand that it's not necessarily that building more can't that we can't build good things and build things in a new way. But as we've seen in, I think, both the federal and provincial response in Ontario at this point, is the idea that we simply need to open up to developers who are part of a system that has made things completely unaffordable and give them more license to flood that kind of system versus talking about how can we form relationships with folks who are either landlords or who are community members. Looking at what Kirsten Wright, in our episode a few weeks ago, talked about in investing in community wealth, in saying, like you said, if we bought in to community, how can we actually then invest more in that community and not a greater bottom line or a greater profit margin? And those are two. I think that, like you said, that's hard work to do…
22:47 Joe … but it comes out of the heart, so that's heart work. What forum in society does that? It's probably not at the Economics Club, but it would be in churches. So that's a great starting point, but what other forums do we have where that question can even be asked? So, I mean, we've structured society in that way. Do we ask it at our universities? I'm not sure that we do. I know it…
23:26 Adam And that's a great point because I think one of the places that we have heard from that is doing some of that work is Leadership Waterloo Region. And we had Kristen right on talking about systems of housing.
23:38 Joe That's true. They have been kind of I know I've gotten word on that, that they've been working on the issue, affordable housing.
23:40 Adam But again, even when we spoke in that conversation, folks who are in careers, folks who are in the working field tend to be the ones, as Kirsten talked in that conversation, who end up in that space. But I think you're right that when we look at both the public schooling system and our post secondary institutions, it is probably very few and far between where we're finding investment in that kind of learning.
You talked about, in the example of St. John's kitchen and the real kind of community, the communal spirit and culture that was really rooted there for many years. And one of the things that I've known having friends who have worked for the Working Center for a long time, I remember them explaining to me the idea of this culture of wanting everything to be in these reciprocal relationships. So an approach that is not here's a support worker and here's someone who's in need or here's a staff person and here's somebody who is experiencing homelessness. That might be the entry points where some people come from, but that within the Working Center, investing in reciprocity and reciprocal relationships and this kind of, this community aspect, is key to the work and I think the success of what you do. Can you talk a little bit about what it looks like and that approach of what it means to invest in these reciprocal relationships working not in a hierarchical form, but working alongside people who are neighbors, who are experiencing needs that they would come to the Working Center?
25:35 Joe Yeah, it definitely is inbred into the Working Center kind of style and approach. So the culture helps, works to perpetuate itself. But, for example, the King Street shelter is kind of just over a year old as a shelter, starting at St. Andrews, moving to Edith Mack (centre), and then now at this old Schwaben Club. So it's a new culture, new staffing, lots of staffing, a good. 20 people are on staff there running the three shifts, maybe even more. And Stephanie just did today, they did a morning Zoom session. People unpacking the work that they're doing. And Stephanie is reading.. Stephanie is amazing at taking notes. Nobody can take notes like she can still and still run a meeting. And Stephanie is one of the other founders, my wife of the Working Center. And we've worked on this (Working Center) together for 40 years while being married. But nobody can run a Zoom meeting and take notes like Stephanie, like, most people can maybe run a Zoom meeting, but there's no way they can take notes.
Adam (I struggle at doing both. So that I do find that I think everybody who's had Zoom over the last two years, every day, basically would have great respect for that ability because it takes a lot out of you to be on Zoom anyway.)
27:17 Joe Yeah. Anyway. She was able to write out verbatim notes so well, and we were just reading them. So what you get is individuals expressing from their heart the relationship that has been built. And the best relationships are from when you open your heart and hear the other person. So the people at the shelter are often in distress in the sense of the situation they find themselves in without housing. Just the survival nature of the reality, living in a place where there's a hundred other people, having your bed next to someone else and trying to make it all work. But every person is talking about how their heart is moved by a certain kind of openness to hear what another person is saying. Like seeing the karaoke nights kind of breaking out often, and then they can be kind of obnoxious, but at the same time joyful and to join in, that not to say, oh, why are people doing that? No, it's to be part of a community. But it's so much more than that. It's like someone who gets in a fight with someone else and then to spend time with that person, and like, not as the security, but as a friend to understand what's going on and the person, you're just unpacking people's realities and not standing above, but walking with. And if you do that, the fact is it's when we open our hearts that we find more joy, that we find a better kind of relationship. Then you don't go home to say, these damn people and what they are doing, they're making my job harder. It's, oh, I was part of a community. And that's one of the things so many people reflect after they get home, what an important job they've just had or that they've just done that. They've given people shelter, but they feel like they're participating with the participants of the shelter in giving shelter. So this is a sense of community. And so that does not happen if you create a bureaucracy with rules. So the shelter has barely any rules. And for 40 years, people have told us, you need rules, you need rules.
30:20 Adam Yeah, because as you say that, I feel like that would shock people and people immediately would go, well, there's no possible way that can work. So let's keep in mind as you continue here, you've been operating for 40 years.
30:32 Joe Yeah. The rules argument has been everywhere. Every project wants rules. And it's just not, you know, you just don't say, don't do this, don't do that. It's the opposite. It's just, well, how can we have fun together? How can we build a relationship together? How can we make this such that your anger, backs other people a lot less. And rather than saying, you can't be angry, but what good does that do? All that does is push people away. So most of our shelters, I have to say, St. John's Kitchen and all the shelters, we specialize in not pushing people away. We specialize taking in those who probably have been kicked out of very many places.
31:33 Adam Yeah, and we know that. We talked about that. That's an issue that comes up. And I've talked with folks, neighbors and folks who live close to the streets, who they live in that situation where during COVID they had the choice between a shelter where there was already an outbreak of COVID and one where they aren't able to go because they've been kicked out and aren't able to be there. And of course, I am very understanding for folks who are working in isolated shelter situations or who are purely staffed by volunteers that they're doing their best. But I think it's really valuable for us as community members, as neighbors, to hear what you're talking about, that A) creating community together is a whole different approach than a hierarchical one saying we're the people in charge, providing support, and you're the folks receiving it. And [B] that focusing on this posture of how can we ensure that we're not driving people away? How can we work through things? I mean, what you're talking about is, to me, the way healthy family units operate, which is when issues come up that need to be addressed, it's not through restriction or punishment that folks grow and flourish and that families grow together. It's through addressing and saying, ‘how can we all do better together’? And that's a whole different approach. And we could do a whole episode on too, on how we get away from bureaucracy. But those things in particular, I just think are really valuable for us to understand. That's a whole different approach that would shock people, saying we barely have any rules, and yet you see the success of that in your projects.
33:32 Joe And we wrote a book about that. It's called Transition To Common Work. And the title actually does describe that we need to transition away from the old kind of work and see common work as a different way of acting and contrasting common work with kind of bureaucratic work. Even volunteer work can be bureaucratic work.
(Yeah, absolutely).
But common is hearing the other, and can we hear the other? That's kind of not the way our society is developed. So we have a long way to go. But I mean, the Gospels, they kind of say that. So like, can we have a gospel society? That's certainly the roots of the Working Center and so we still try and live it, but I can tell you it's still living. It's as vibrant today as ever, and that's kind of neat.
34: 44 Adam When you talk about the idea of making that connection to Christian spiritual tradition and that word gospel.To me as someone who comes from that tradition and continues as a youth minister to work in that tradition. It's a beautiful alternative to what so many people probably would have heard in Media or of what it looks like for a gospel society, in terms of that, often that is just immediately implied to be right wing, Christian fascism, as we certainly see. And so I just love the idea of being able to challenge that with an alternative idea of what it means because a lot of folks listening, not everyone, but a lot of folks who listen here come from the United Church world or different Christian contexts. And so to make that connection, I think is really important for them. And this idea of common work. Can you go even a little more into what that examples of what that looks like either in the Working Centers context or what would common work look like for folks who find themselves working for municipal government or who find themselves working for a business or folks who are just community members? What is common work and investing in that as an individual or as a group, an organization, what does that look like for people beyond the Working Center?
36:10 Joe I think it, Common Work, lives in any kind of environment where there's less bureaucracy, where individuals, it's not that individuals control the means of production, it's that individuals participate at a kind of a complex level with the different ways to produce things so that their work is not alienated, so that they're primely involved in the structure of the work. It's often that the structure,e it's just that the hierarchical thing is turned upside down. The leader should be servants. And then you hear how people want to work. It's the assumption of the common good, that anyone who takes a job, they want to take a job, to do the best they can. And that only happens if they have a voice. And then you have to be able to listen to that voice. And sometimes it doesn't, you know, sometimes those things can be in conflict, for sure. But it's the working out of those, like if you get a clique within a common work environment, that clique can undermine the common work. There's no question about that, right? So this is not about cliques. This is not about one group against the other. This is like the common group actually working together to create a kind of work. And so then, you know, how that translates into government is, you know, into a bureaucracy itself. They got a long way to go. I have no idea.
38:13 Adam Yeah, and that that's fair. But but even just on an understanding that the need to remove hurdles of bureaucracy as the approach, I think, is important for people increasingly bureaucracy at all levels.
38:33 Joe Here's a great example. The Bylaw people of Kitchener and Waterloo in particular, have educated themselves, have involved themselves in the homelessness issue and have made decisions around these encampments. And they've made decisions not to intervene. They've made decisions to be on site, to learn who the people are, to talk to the people, to build relationships. And they've changed as a structure. The Bylaw people ten years ago were not like the Bylaw people today. I'd love to name names the woman who's running the Kitchener Bylaws, she's amazing, what she has done. And she's really transformed the structure of work. So within a bureaucracy you can do that.
39:36 Adam I think that's so hopeful for people to hear, because literally nothing can send shivers up anyone's spine like saying bylaw officer and I lived in Toronto for a long time and I delivered furniture. And so we immediately hear that, and you immediately think, oh my gosh, I got a ticket parking our van somewhere. (Joe, they’re following me) Yes, exactly. So I think that's a beautiful example for people of saying, even enacting the work of bylaw officers can shift an approach. And that again, to me, it goes back to this common theme that's run through this whole conversation of the community and reciprocity of having relationships be at the forefront, can change even what would seem to be the most rigid or restrictive work, something like bylaw officers. And that to even be able to say the example that compared to ten years ago, the work being done now in that respect has improved, I think is really important for people to believe that things can change and that we often think we would need these big gigantic shifts. And of course, we do want to see big, gigantic shifts in like we talked about the systems of actually how we protect housing, how we produce. But that on a local level, on a very almost granular level, that important shifts and good shifts can happen with how bylaw officers approach folks who are living in encampments,
Joe… But those bylaw officers have to be supported by the community and, you know, on all kinds of levels,
41:35 Adam Talk about what that, what that looks like.
41:38 Joe Well, you know, they have to have some confidence that the outreach workers are, you know, are helping to resolve the situation. I mean, let's face it, tenting in on Roos Island isn't like a long term viable strategy for Victoria park unless we decide that it's actually a site for condominiums as opposed to being a public park. So then for the bylaw officers to not be heavy handed, they need to work in cooperation with the outreach workers to get good information to feel like different levels of government are making, like, for example, the region of Waterloo, we've opened the King Street Shelter, and we got it up to 100 people, and they opened the Y. One that had been closed for no good reason finally was reopened. And now we're planning finally, the House of Friendship is opening up after a year. Yes. So these are very concrete steps that help say, okay, well, okay, we don't have to resolve this problem. It's not a great idea for Roos Island to be an Encampment, but let's take a long view. Maybe next, maybe a year from now, we'll know a lot more information around how well this has worked, what other things can we do?
43:20 Adam And having again having the collaboration with outreach workers who are in relationship and trusted by the community again to me speaks to an approach that has folks who are experiencing homelessness or experiencing living in Encampments being able to be part of determining what is and having the agency determine what are solutions that I need. What are the solutions that we need, and what does our future look like? As opposed to a decision handed down seven levels away that simply, essentially deports people from where they are? Exactly. So that's a whole different approach.
44:03 Joe Yeah. And in fact, by law, that's what they've been doing for the last seven years. And they said, we're getting sick of this. This is silly. We use a heavy handed approach, we displace people, and they go somewhere else. What's the point of that?
44:30 Adam Yeah. And I mean, whatever works to wake people up, even to just say this has not been effective. And I'm sure the folks who are experiencing this and folks like the Working Center, who are working alongside those people could have told them that many years ago. But the fact that there at least has been a shift now to me, is a really important thing, because as we've heard from people who listen to these conversations and to the series, and the situation seems so grim to the point of nadir, and there's so much despair around. Can anything get better? And so I think it's really key for us to not say that just this creates all the solutions we need. But I do think we need stories and examples as community members on it, like you've shared, about how we make heart shifts and how even on municipal levels, how municipalities, how local, for lack of better word, authorities can approach things in healthier ways, in more effective ways, in more caring ways. And not to get trapped into the sense that we're just lost forever. And there's no solutions. There are things that we can do to change. And I think these are really important examples for us to know.
45:46 Joe And so I think it would be worth adding to that, just with a longer kind of story. So, summer of 2019, we presented to the city of Kitchener. It's a group, can't think of the name, but there were 250 people who are homeless that we could count. So you can see them on the street. This is very different, very different than anything we've seen before. At minimum, let's get some more shelter in place. Come (April 11), November 11, 2019, November 10th big snowstorm is coming. No shelter anywhere. What are the 250 people going to do? We were at mass at St. Mary's. We asked Father Toby if he would consent to let us use the basement. He did. November 11. Um, Stephanie did an amazing job organizing this. The shelter opened at St. Mary's church that night in the middle of the snowstorm. Really? But it nailed the issue. It said, shelter needs to be open. We live in Kitchener. We live in southern Ontario. November, you can expect snowstorms. How come the system hasn't figured out that we should have shelters open before December 1? Really? So that started us on a thing. And then we had, like, 250 different individuals that lived in that shelter. 125 people a night. It was pretty crazy. We said ‘we have to keep going’. After two weeks, we rented a vacant, Tim Hortons, and turned that into a shelter. And we just kept it going. And until we were saying, until you get your shelter open, this is what we're going to do. And not only that, but the shelter you're planning is only for 40 people, and we can identify 100. And, yeah, (triple that) 125, 200 people. So we kept that going. But it was pretty exhausting. We did close it down at the end of December with the promise that they were going to do this and that, mostly that. They gave us motel rooms.
48:38 Joe And so then COVID hit and it wasn't any better. It was really bad. That first month, people on the street and services not open and things, a whole encampment started taking shape around St John's Kitchen that was happening even before the pandemic just got worse. By the summer, there were probably 50 to 70 people living around the property of St. John's Kitchen, an encampments. Summer 2020 region came up with, they said, we've identified a building at University Avenue in Waterloo, former student residence. The region said they would rent it and other groups turned it down. We went there mid August and we said the next minute we would take it, we would operate it. We submitted a budget to the region. We had it filled October 1 and we filled it with people from, who were around St. John's Kitchen, essentially, and people who are in motels. Nand so that's what’s been going on, you know… U1
50:03 Adam … that's University Avenue house.
50:05 Joe Yeah, yeah. But it's pretty important kind of initiative out of nowhere. That's been a painful journey, let me tell you. So trying to figure out staffing and scheduling and 24 hours work, but it's also been a meaningful journey to provide those 250 spaces. Those 250 spaces doubles the shelter system in Waterloo region. Wow. October 2019, there were 250 spaces. Right now, just from what we've done, we've added 250. So we've doubled it. And that old number was developed over 20 years. Now the region has put it into it's, (increasingly putting some of these projects, like the UA project,) into its operating budget because there's just no other choice.
51:13 Adam Yeah, just as a highlight for folks. If they haven't listened to the episode that we recorded with Gemma Ricker, who worked alongside folks at University Avenue, it's a really great listen because she also just talks about the community that was formed there as well.
51:30 Joe She talked about common work, didn't she?
51:33 Adam Yeah, that it was a very hard journey. But that also what started to happen was, as you talked about the beginning of this conversation, real community started to form. And as folks were able to successfully transition out, there were even folks who would come back around because they wanted to continue to share in community with people that they had built community with and shared life with.
52:14 Joe Let me tell you a story of that, just came just today. I remember this summer, an individual, we've known him on the street for quite a long time. He's held out. I'm not just he's a real independent guy. Very doesn't want to be in a shelter. But I remember him getting arrested on Queen Street, seeing it happen. And it's just because he's just you know, sometimes people (and I have no idea if it was drugs or just like, the mental health) that he needs something. And his only way to express it is kind of in a bit of a crazy way. And then someone gets excited about that, calls the police. Anyways. I remember seeing him in the police car. Then he was released, and he was just so upset about it all. But he went away. He had a camping spot and anyways.. But he's been increasingly ill, and outreach workers finally convinced him to come to UA. This was just in December, he's doing really well. But this one story, the fellow who does the front door apparently was playing harmonica music and this fella came downstairs and he's kind of hanging around with them and then he says ‘Wait’. And he runs up to his apartment or his room and gets a harmonica, comes back down and there they are playing harmonica music together. That's common work in this context. A fellow who couldn't imagine himself to be with other people can now imagine it in a total different way. That's a common work kind of example. Like the fact that the front door guy has a sense of community to invite people into his world and then create music together. Yeah, most people don't think that as their job, but that is the job. That is work. That's work. So different kind of work than what we normally do. But he's doing really good work. Yeah.
54:40 Adam You would not, even the start of this conversation, have been able to link for me personally what is one of the ways that we get from housing crisis to housing justice… harmonicas, but the depth of what it means to be in relationship, to have open hearts to that. And again, this is an example of open hearts for everyone involved, for somebody who is able to serve and work alongside people out of University Avenue at the door there. But also the open hearts of someone who would have struggled previously to, like you said, even be there and then start to form these beautiful relationships. I think is just beautiful…
55:27 Joe ...And it’s beautiful for us because we just worry about this guy on the street, living, camping. And people's mental health doesn't improve when they're living in a campsite. [Yeah] Maybe this will be a chance for them.
55:50 Adam We're going to have to be able to chat with you again, Joe, because there's so many little branches of this conversation that I would like love to just dive down and explore so deeply with you, but sort of as we (Joe, did we hit an hour yet.)
55:46 Adam Yeah We're, around that. So for this conversation at least, just kind of come towards home … (Joe: Common Work and housing, how's that?). I've already written that in my notes. That and also the heart shift piece that has come up so often is so key. As we come toward the close here, can you just sort of give us one thing that you'd want people to walk away knowing about housing justice, right now when they walk away from this conversation? What's one thing you want people to know about? What do we need right now for that move towards housing and justice for people?
56:46 Joe I think on one level, I think of the very practical ability to create 1000 spaces for people. How do we do that? So that would be if we had a long, we didn't get to that, but it kept popping up in my mind. So I'd love to get to that. But given that that's not completely the reality, I think we're talking about changing hearts. So then we have lots of structural, we all can identify structural ways, in the way that we work, the way that we, in our places of work, in our homes, where we can encounter change. One thing that was coming to mind that I think is gigantic is that people on ODSP can now earn $1,000. This is very big so that you have your $1,000 on ODSP, but you can earn another thousand. What does that mean? How can we help those individuals earn that $1,000? Because by earning that $1,000, they can participate in society and also afford some of the rents. But at the same time, it doesn't mean that (does that mean) that society should just keep jacking up the rents for people? Somehow we have to get the rents, really, actually, I think, lowered to be more reasonable. The Working Center rents out 60 or something units for like $400 a month or less. So if the Working Center can do that, then I don't see why other places can't figure out how to do that. So the need to reduce rents is really very crucial. And at the same time we have to then think about in our workplaces and the way we work, how to kind of spread opportunities for people so that they have access to more money to afford the rents that are there. That's not a great answer.
59:01 Adam but no, it is. Because as I said, that's the whole point of the series and multiple hour long conversations is that this is not , we do not solve this or even an approach in a sound byte.
One last question, because again, I think it's important for people to have hope. I think it's important not to obviously be Polly-Anna-ish and just think everything's just going to magically get better. We have to be able to face the hard stuff exactly. We have to be able to look the hard stuff square in the eye to be able to work through it. But I do think we also need to be able to have bread for the journey, so to speak. What's one thing that gives you hope for the situation right now in a time when it is very hard to see that?
60: 05 Joe Well, I take tremendous hope that the 100 people I don't know the people at the motels, admittedly, I don't see them, but I know that, but I do hear their stories and I know that they appreciate those rooms very greatly. But I know very well the people at UA University Avenue and the shelter and just knowing that they have, that there's a place that they don't have to be kicked out of, and that is their place. So creating 200 that's almost 200 spots of housing out of nothing is kind of neat. So I take a lot of hope from that. What's so hard about creating 200 more after that? You can see. I did tell you that it was a process. It doesn't just happen, but if you don't keep working on it and of course, Working Center is proposing to build 44 units at the old St. John's kitchen. I think that that's a really hopeful idea. And we're going to need more of those.
61:22 Adam Yeah. To be clear eyed about the fact that this is not easy and to be just as clear eyed about the fact that we are fully capable and possible of creating this is, I think, important because we get stuck in thinking the way it is, is the way it is. So I think Working Centers projects UA and so many of the examples you've mentioned are (hope for us).
61:32 Joe And so I didn't mention, though, we're building 21 units on Queen Street.
( Yeah, right. ) Which sometimes gets missed. But those 21 units will be for new Canadian women, especially women, but can be men, single men with children. We think we're going to fill them really quickly, of course. But it's using rapid housing initiative money. Come on. It's taken tons out of the Working Center to do that. And we could easily say, hey, we're already doing UA. Hey, we're already doing that shelter work. Hey, we already got people in motel else. But building permanent housing, well, like. Go for it.,
62:24 Adam Yeah I said last question, but I should say this. How can people support the Working Center and the work, the amazing work that you've only touched on just a few of so many things that are ongoing right now and over your history? How can people get involved or support the Working Center's work?
62:47 Joe Yeah, well, there's no question we live off donations. So, no, the region has funded us in these new projects in ways that have never happened in our 40 years, which is also very encouraging. But our newspaper, Good Work News, has a subscription group that it goes out to of about 13, 14,000 people. (Wow) And those are, you know what does it say? A subscription is a donation to our work. That means people who get that Good Work News have donated at least once to the Working Center, and we really rely on that group to help us so that donations are always appreciated.
63:50 Adam We'll post a link on this podcast. We'll post links to that and volunteering.
63:55 Joe We're a little slow on volunteering at these new projects, mostly because they didn't start with a volunteer structure, because of COVID and but it's starting to come through and, you know, and as the cafes and other things really ramp up, I think we're getting past the COVID hesitation stuff. There's tons of room for volunteering. We don't have 500 volunteers, but we used to, and we will get back to that.
64:24 Adam Good to know. If someone wants to get involved and volunteer, they can reach out through the Working Center's website,
64:46 Joe I think. (Adam: So generally you're not the admin for all of it? ) Oh, no. There is a spot. There is a spot. And the way that you do it, I'm remembering now, the different projects. You know, Marita's Kitchen, that's a commissary kitchen that's cooking 700 meals a day that are distributed. There's a spot there where you can so you don't go to a general thing. You would email to someone at Marita's Kitchen. So you want to volunteer at St. John's kitchen? There's a link to volunteer. Email someone at St. John's kitchen. You want to volunteer at Recycle Cycles? There's a link to volunteer. So there's specific links.
65:08 Adam Awesome. Inside the Working Center's website, they can find that. Yeah. Awesome. Great. Awesome. Yeah, I won't expect you to have the full URL right in front of you. (Joe: Well, I mean, it's easy. Www.theworkingcenter.org and obviously we'll include that and then somewhere it'll say volunteers.) Yeah.
65:35 Adam Okay, awesome. Thank you so much for this conversation, Joe and I do really hope we can talk again and I would love to have a follow up episode where we just kind of specifically dive into how do we get those thousand people housed and look specifically at that. But I think it's really valuable for folks to understand, and we've touched on it in a couple of other episodes, but to understand just the depth and comprehensive work that the Working Center is doing because it is important. For us understanding what are the alternatives to the system and the culture that we have now compared to what it can be and how we can actually solve this problem by being in relationship, by doing common work, by initiating hard shift and for people to take hope in the success that the Working Center has seen in working alongside folks and helping lift them…I shouldn't say that. That's kind of how working alongside people to help empower them to be able to overcome society. Yeah. And to overcome this. I really appreciate this conversation and you joining us today. Thanks for being here.
66:50 Joe Thank you. It's been fun. Thanks for all your good questions.
66:55 Adam Awesome. We will be back next week. We release on Tuesdays so you can check us then for another episode of Winter is Coming as we continue to look at how we go from housing crisis to housing justice. For winter is coming. On behalf of the Hub and Trinity United Church, I'm Adam Creswell and thank you again for being here. Joe Mancini, we will talk to you next time. Bye.
