A Winter's Tale: Housing is a Human Right
- Mikaela Brewer
- Dec 9, 2024
- 8 min read
by Mikaela Brewer for The 44 North
Author's Note: This story, as you’ll see, takes place in the near future—late December 2024. Although we may not be able to bring it to life in full, we can in part. Please research local resources for your houseless community, such as shelters, food banks, charities, non-police mental health crisis response teams, warming/cooling locations, housing assistance programs, libraries, community centres, and second-hand stores (Goodwill, Value Village, the Salvation Army etc.). You can also give directly (for example, carry extra tampons/pads in your bag) or check your City/Town Hall schedule to attend public meetings/protests.
December 26th, 2024
Throughout December, we lean on stories of hope, kindness, and joy. They make us feel cozy.
Well, I have one of those stories to share with you, and it’ll need to be read aloud or passed around because it’s written in my journal. My instinct is to apologize for this inconvenience, but I’m told I shouldn’t apologize for what isn’t my fault. I don’t own a phone or computer anymore.
In my pocket dictionary, I looked up the word cozy. I was curious because common words often have secondary or tertiary meanings that deepen the colloquial use of them. Cozy does mean comfort and warmth; intimate and relaxed in the context of a conversation; and soft and insulating as a cover for something warm, such as a teapot. But it also means complacency or an offering of it.
Clearly, this made me think enough to write an entire story by arthritic hand. I suppose it’s that time of year, but here’s what I keep coming back to: comfort, warmth, intimacy, relaxation, softness, and insulation are beautiful, but not so much when coupled with complacency. Do you have an image of holiday coziness? I’m sure you do. And trust me, I don’t want to spill ink on it, but I do want to offer another view. Think of it like this: a new decoration doesn’t replace or ruin a generational one, it bolsters it. Here’s a new story for your collection to enhance the others, except, this one doesn’t conflate ‘saving’ people with offering them community.
On December 23rd, 2024…
I sat on the top floor of Comet Park’s playground equipment, at the entrance to the orange plastic slide. Squinting out its opening into a navy sky, it looked like a touch of cream had been poured into it—the clouds and fog were thick and noticeable, even after dark.
Comet Park sits atop a hill of public beachfront, layered with the residue of a pine forest (which I adored simply because you could always smell it). What was perhaps a glen was now a sand volleyball court and a gravel drive that doubled as a parking lot. Just behind the park, including its trees and trails, was a string of wood-panelled and stone homes and cottages. I love it, and love it that much more in December when the snow settles atop everything like fresh frosting on a gingerbread village. I sat at my lookout spot, patiently awaiting the season’s very late first snow to remind me of my son, who I hadn’t seen in ten years since the accident.
When Noah was seventeen, we were driving away from my husband. We’d sped up the highway about an hour North of the city, planning to stay in a hotel. It was 3 a.m. and still densely hot, the humidity like canned juice concentrate. I’d left behind my job, and Noah had been waiting in the car with his hockey duffel bag—no questions asked. Rick, my husband, had been physically violent for years, but it wasn’t until Noah walked into my bedroom one day—while I was covering a bruise with concealer—locked the door and told me we needed to leave.
Noah fell asleep quickly. I was driving too fast. The tears blurred my vision, and I swerved to avoid nothing but a trick of the street lamps mixed with salt. We crashed into the barricade. Noah was okay. And I was okay, save for a badly broken arm. But I was vulnerable. Especially to the painkillers they prescribed me at the hospital.
Rich never found us. Nor did he look, as far as I know. But I had other problems. I became addicted to painkillers, couldn’t work, and quickly ran out of money as Noah turned eighteen. He began staying overnight with his partner, Eric, and soon, never came back. I didn’t know how to reach him until he sent me a letter from a university on the East Coast, where he’d received a full academic scholarship in engineering. I didn’t even know he was so smart. We’ve kept in touch via letters, in many of which he’s promised to come home when he can financially support me.
Nobody can read minds, but I feel this is code for: “I’ll come home when I feel removed enough to leave again without feeling anything.” I’m not sure. I love him, of course. He’s my son. But I know why he left in the first place. I’ve tried to work and get clean, and I do intermittently, but it’s so hard in this world.
And thus, I’ve found a family of sorts. Beneath the cement Rotary Club canopy, here at Comet Park, we camp. We’re not blood-related, but we have plenty in common—everyone here is houseless, too, for reasons I wish I didn’t need to remind us of: domestic violence, lack of affordable housing, poverty, addiction and substance abuse, family conflict, access to healthcare, unemployment, discrimination, inequality, prior houselessness, disability, declining public assistance, trauma, and institutional discharge.
It’s interesting to me how few belongings we carry, as if a cruel way to obscure how much we carry inside our bodies. And even so, there’s something about our little community that friendship can’t quite capture; unparalleled tenderness, mutual respect, and spiritual generosity.
The other day, we found a full advent calendar in the park’s trash can. Since there are twenty-four of us living here in the encampment, we each ate one of the soft chocolates. There was no countdown to anything for us—nothing to warrant leaning into an exciting lead-up—because a devastating hourglass had just been turned over at dusk that evening. My heart sagged in its cavity.
From the homes behind the park, the lights of Menorahs, Yule logs, Christmas trees, and Kwanzaa’s kinaras saturated the spaces between the chilled fog. Amongst this tease of warmth, along the street where the houses stood and duct-taped to the wooden park entrance sign, was a three-day eviction notice citing twenty-one bylaw infractions (discarding debris, camping, and damaging the land through bodily waste).
Last year, the provincial Superior Court determined that if indoor shelters aren’t available, it’s unconstitutional to prohibit encampments on municipal property. We’ve been told twenty or so beds will be added to shelters, but to tell you the truth, so many things have been stolen from me in shelters. It feels easier to protect myself outdoors.
Our Housing and Homelessness Justice Network shared that the city is only legally justified to evict us if these beds can accommodate our needs. But no one ever asked us what our needs are.
People say we’re dangerous—that we’re a risk to children, families, and the elderly. I know we need to be mindful of our waste, needles, and paraphernalia, but there’s such emphasis on how very safe people feel unsafe around us. How we’re an eye sore tainting their image of cleanliness and safety. How ‘crime’ is exclusively applied to acts that are inevitable in a system that denies people their basic needs. Who is considered dirty? What’s that quote from Wicked I keep hearing? “The best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy.”
Kicking us out doesn’t fix anything. It disconnects us from each other and where we’ve found community support and services. They may even send us to jail. Overdose risks will increase, and layers will be added to our trauma. Why not stream resources toward social housing that’s non-market, rent-geared, family-centred, and accessible to people with disabilities and complex needs?
I feel policed and punished. Perhaps you know these things, and like me, don’t know what to do. But then,
on December 24th,
it was late afternoon, maybe 3 p.m., and we were exhausted by fear. Sitting in a circle, trying to come up with some semblance of a plan, we decided around 3:30 to sleep on it for a bit. Of course, we hadn’t slept the night before, so we curled up with each other for warmth beneath the trees.
Waking up from a nap had never surprised me so much. It must have been after 5 p.m., but the insides of my eyelids were such a bright orange that I had to open them immediately. Was everything on fire? I took a deep breath, checking for smoke, and smelled nothing but pine. And warm food?
Although I’d contemplated never opening my eyes again, I’m so glad I did.
I peeked out the opening of my tattered tent. The playground and surrounding trees were decorated with endless colours of string lights. The teeter-totters were covered with pots and plates of steaming food. Full winter sets hung on plastic hangers from the monkey bars—hats, mittens, scarves, snow pants, and coats above pairs of boots. Board games were set up on picnic tables. Music played from speakers perched at the tops and bottoms of slides. The baby swings were filled with boxes of spare diapers, and stacks of hand sanitizer and menstrual materials were collected beneath the geodome climber, now covered with a bed sheet for privacy. Faux candles flickered everywhere they could possibly be nestled. Seven tin garbage bins had been gathered to create a flower—or perhaps a snowflake—in the corner of the park, awaiting any clean-up.
And the folks from the homes nearby were still setting everything up!
I stood and tentatively inched toward the energy. A young man, about my son’s age, came over and reached for my hands.
“We saw the notice on the park entrance. The least we can do is give everything we can spare. And then some.”
I opened my mouth to speak but didn’t know what to say.
“You don’t have to say anything. Come get warm and have something to eat. It’s pretty cozy over here. We’re going to figure out a plan, together.”
I smiled with a brightness I didn’t know I still had, and my cheeks must have flushed because suddenly, I felt as if my freckles had turned to ice. I glanced up. It was snowing ever so gently.
“About time, don’t you think?” The man smiled and squeezed my hands.
I nodded, and couldn’t wait to wake everyone else.
I know this doesn’t happen everywhere. It has to be executed safely, of course, and during the winter months, children don’t use the play equipment. But this story was a miracle, and I wanted to share it with you because I think miracles have a misconception. They aren’t always solutions, and we mustn’t relegate them to ‘fate’ or that which falls upon us. We can create them. These folks did.
Create one. Create a few. In an often isolated, disconnected, and self-centred world, you’ll find helping others might help you, too.
This story is inspired by the ongoing attempts to evict residents of homeless encampments in Barrie, Ontario, but is relatable everywhere:
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