In this episode of the podcast, I chat with Meghan Sheffield, a friend and co-conspirator living in Cobourg, Ontario. For the first issue of the Novitas magazine, Meghan shared an intimate and beautiful article about her experience working with her community to support a growing unhoused population in her hometown.
Meghan and I talk about a lot in this episode: grassroots versus agency support, de-stigmatizing what it means to be unsheltered, unpacking her experience providing on-the-group support, the impact of the rising costs of living on the current homelessness crisis, and more.
We mentioned a few different organizations in Cobourg and Guelph that I wanted to link:
Green Wood Coalition uses a community model of caring to walk alongside people living with poverty, mental and physical illness, drug dependency and disability. You can find out more about them on their website at https://www.greenwoodcoalition.com.
Hope House Guelph increases the well-being of vulnerable adults, youth and children through the provision of immediate relief and ongoing support. They operate and advocate on the belief that poverty, food insecurity, inequality, health and community are all interconnected. You can learn more about Hope House on their website at https://www.hopehouseguelph.ca.
You can support this project and podcast by becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack.
If you have a person or project who you think is doing really awesome work in their community, please recommend them by emailing me at kel@novitasmag.com.
TRANSCRIPT (please excuse the typos)
Intro: Welcome to Novitas, a podcast exploring stories that show us how to live outside the capitalist paradigm towards collective liberation.
Sometimes when I talk about these stories, I like to think of them as potential solutions to the problems of capitalism. But other times, certain stories don't feel like solutions at all. In the case of the homelessness crisis we are currently facing in late-stage capitalism, it's hard to imagine what a solution might even look like.
Homelessness is a complex and multifaceted problem that is tied intimately with mental health, financial inequality, class struggle, and more. My guest today is Meghan Sheffield, a friend and co-conspirator living in Coburg, Ontario. In the recent issue of the Novitas Magazine, Meghan shared a beautiful and contemplative piece about her experiences supporting unhoused members of her community. Her piece honestly shifted my perspective. And
I was so excited to speak with her about her story directly. We shared a wonderful conversation together, but only later did I realize that the audio didn't record very clearly. So I ask your forgiveness, dear listener, but I couldn't bear to re-record. And I think when you listen to our conversation, you'll understand why.
Kel: So, Meghan, thank you so much for being here and taking the time to chat today. Did you want to start off by giving a brief introduction of who you are and a little bit about your piece in the magazine?
Meghan: Yeah, sure. Yeah, thanks for having me. My name is Meghan Sheffield and I am a mother of three and also like a lifelong writer and that has been the bulk of my like fairly freelance heavy career has been in writing and I started off in newspaper journalism like right at kind of a moment when I was like oh wait newspapers are really dying and since then have yeah had the opportunity in so many different ways to explore, research and talk with so many interesting people in a variety of mediums.
And yeah, I live in Coburg, Ontario, just right on the north shore of Lake Ontario. And it's a small town. It's about 20,000 people. It is also the county seat. It's the biggest town in our region. I would also just sort of situate the place where I live because it's so relevant to my piece in the magazine. Yeah, because of so many of those factors, the housing crisis has hit really hard here as in so many other places. And I think that here where I live, it has been a real... It has signaled major changes in the community, even because this isn't, you know, visible poverty, people visibly living unsheltered is not something that was common before just a few years ago.
Kel: Yeah, for sure. It's really interesting. I think so we just relocated back from Owens Sound down to Guelph. And when we talked to a lot of people about, you know, what what's going on with the city, how things changed and everybody, everybody mentioned homelessness as a critical thing that has changed within the last kind of five years of us being gone. And I think you're right, because it is visible in a way that it wasn't before. Like you knew there were homeless encampments around, but they weren't front and center. You knew there were people that were unhoused but you didn't interact with them on a daily basis. So it was largely an invisible problem and now has become a visible problem. And it's interesting because coming from Owen Sound, there's also a homelessness problem there. And so I think it's just kind of showed me that it really exists everywhere. I think reading your piece in the magazine really opened my eyes to the fact that this is everywhere and it's happening in a lot of our towns and cities. These days, it's much more of our friends and our neighbors and people in our community that aren't able to afford housing anymore.
Meghan: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it really is. It's people who are from here and people who I went to high school with and my, you know, my neighbors who used to live on the same block and now don't have housing. Like it's it's really, it's close to home. And I think there is this mythology that people are coming from elsewhere and that often comes up like if there's like discussion of increasing resources or increasing services, people will say no, no, it will attract people. And it's like - We don't need to worry about attracting! There's plenty of people with needs right here.
Kel: Yeah, for sure.
Meghan: And actually, it's important, I think, to dispel that myth by reminding ourselves and each other about the connections that people have in the place where they live. For sure. I do, and just as you do, people do not move forward because there's a promise of, you know, a new shelter opening up elsewhere. They overwhelmingly, human beings, want to be with the people whom they know and they trust and they have that network of relationships with. And that is overwhelmingly the case, regardless of your housing status, I think.
Kel: Yes, for sure. How did you first get involved with supporting unhoused folks in your community?
Meghan: Yeah, well, I should say that the support that I do or participate in is is totally like non-professional. It's totally on it on a neighbor-to-neighbor basis.
Kel: That's the best kind in my opinion.
Meghan: Yeah and I'm just like happy with that like this is just not um, it's not my industry and it's you know and I understand that there are yeah there are people for whom this is both their paid work and unpaid work and you know there's just like a whole... you know, it's just really important that there be structures and safety nets that are well funded. And I'm not necessarily part of that. You know, and so I would say, like within my family, I have family members who do work in kind of like community building and you know across class and community outreach, street level outreach and harm reduction right in my family and so you know it's not stretch for me to connect with some of the same folks but a couple of years ago there was a sort of like a political campaign within the municipality to - it was called Shelter in Peace - to ask the municipality to have a moratorium on enforcing bylaws against camping in light of the fact that there weren't enough shelter beds.
And so that and that actually, just to back it up a little bit more, that stemmed originally from a roundtable meeting, a community-wide conversation, kind of like a listening circle where each person in the room got to speak on the topic, I think it was on the topic of homelessness. And folks who were unhoused came, and folks who were housed, you know, there was like town councillors and Green Party members, and I don't know, it was just like a pretty wide cross-section of the community who turned up together to talk about this and talk about, some people had ideas, some people had experiences, some people had fears and campaign to advocate for Sheltering in Peace came from that community conversation.
And during that meeting, I was sitting there and, you know, listening and it was actually at that meeting one of the people who was currently unhoused sharing his experience. I realized we went to high school together and he's sitting beside a town councillor who we both went to high school with.
Kel: Right.
Meghan: And there was something like there was something just like really, yeah, it hit me, of the things that we discussed. And yeah, the connection, the real human connection, the way like, oh, we all started at the same place, same high school. And yeah, it was so hopeful to all be in the room together and ideating that way. And also they came in a personal level. So that was a real gap, a gap in my experience of just like being in solidarity, you know, standing at a podium at the town council meeting, you know, next to someone who was like sharing her experience of being unhoused and yeah that was, I would say that that was like a pretty like critical turn of events.
Kel: Do you remember who organized that meeting? Was it municipality or someone just interested in like, was it an organization that started the meeting?
Meghan: Yeah, it was definitely not the municipality.
Kel: Right.
Meghan: It was an organization called Greenwood Coalition. My dad is actually the executive director so that same way it allowed listening and each person to have a chance to speak.
Kel: I think even having everybody in the same room is such a rare experience, so that we can remove this kind of othering that happens. You mentioned having gone to high school with, you know, these were people, these were your peers. And when we think about people that are unhoused in our communities, we often do this kind of big "othering" where they're not us, they're not my friends, they're not my people, they're not my community, they're other people, right? So bringing it back where everyone can be in the same space and listen to each other means that we're breaking down those barriers of like this is a problem that I'm far removed from to like this is a problem that's happening in my community to people, to members of my community, right?
Meghan: Yeah, that's so right and yeah in that timeline like between that to the very different spirit of a municipal council meeting - in between that, it was like a week or 10 days, a young man in the community who was unhoused died of a drug poisoning in a bank vestibule. And he was also someone I had gone to public school with. And there was a kind of like community organized grassroots memorial event held for him outside that bank with candles lit and so many people donated flowers from their yard to just decorate that space for him and it was a real... people speak about that loss and that memorial to this day. And so then, you know, that was again another galvanizing thing. It's like this is just so urgent, the need to address what's happening in our community and how it's like really affecting people's lives. And yeah, so that also, you know, the community kind of carried that into the council meetings from there. Despite all of this like real need, real emotion, real connection on the community level, the municipal response unfortunately was just not interested in trying to come up with real solutions.
Kel: That's really unfortunate because you feel like when you get the community momentum at the bottom that the municipality kind of has a duty to respond to that, but far too often I find that they don't.
Meghan: Yeah, it was hard and like, yeah, actually, and there was all of a sudden, again, like... Cobourg, Ontario is a very small place and in the weekend leading up to the municipal council meeting, there was all of a sudden like a fully funded Ontario Proud, which is like a far right movement, an Ontario Proud video campaign about "Cobourg wants to legalize homeless encampments".
Kel: Right.
Meghan: Then like, I don't think that was like representing a local movement of far right Ontario proud members. I think that was, yeah, that was being funded from outside the community.
Kel: Which is really unfortunate because they were obviously trying to set a precedent that like the the municipality can't possibly let this pass because then it will snowball into...
Meghan: Absolutely yeah and just like really stigmatizing videos that were used and like money, real money. And so as a result, walking into that council meeting, I've never before since seen such a presence of police. It felt like it was armed. There was police on the landings of the staircases leading up to the council chambers. I've never seen anything like that before since, like I say. Like it was so, which really sets the tone of what's, you know, the stakes of this conversation, like dangerous, rather than coming from a place of care or the human experience that is, you know, it is real and happening.
Kel: Yeah, and what a divergence from the previous meeting that where everybody had a chance to share and listen and be part of the conversation to one, whereas heavily policed.
Meghan: Yeah, literally. Yeah.
Kel: So since that meeting, obviously the municipal level government, are they doing sweeps? Is there homeless campments allowed? Is it just largely untalked about? I mean that's what it feels like in Guelph, where people talk about it and complain about the homeless people and the municipality kind of tries to provide like, certain options for people where they're, I think I saw last year where they like would tack a sign up to the tent and say, we're gonna remove your tent tomorrow. You need to, you can go to this place to get support or this place to get to support, which is may actually be what they need or maybe not what they need.
Meghan: Yeah, so that summer in 2022, that is exactly what the municipality started to do was, yeah, they like sort of upgraded their notice to vacate signage that they would tape onto tents and to include like phone numbers of resources.
Kel: Right.
Meghan: So, and at that time, the like survival camping that was only, you know, like just like a tent or two scattered here and there rather than, um, like a true, like kind of encampment with many tents. And in about a year ago, in August 2023, there was a pretty large scale closure of a boarding house that made a number, a larger number of people, you know, suddenly unhoused or unsheltered because, you know, some people who didn't necessarily pay rent there often, you know, would use the shower there or that kind of thing. So all at once a bunch of people were unhoused simultaneously because of a closure that was like a partnership with the Health Unit and the Cobourg Police, just basically they closed and boarded up this home, which is still sitting empty a year later. And at that time, Cobourg experienced its first larger scale encampment. And in the time since then, that encampment has moved to the former, it's like the grounds of a former youth detention center. And so it's provincial land that continues to be Cobourg's largest encampment and seems to be like, you know, not clear like who's responsible, who can do what, you know, what can be done about this because the town of Coburg, you know, parks bylaws, for example, don't apply on that land.
Kel: Right, because it's provincially owned.
Meghan: Yeah, that's right. And yeah, there's discussion whether the Waterloo ruling, which is like an Ontario-based charter case in like Waterloo closer to your area where it was decided that like because the land where folks were camping was the property of the same level of government responsible for providing adequate shelter which they weren't doing that the people were entitled to camp there.
Kel: Right.
Meghan: So yeah I would say like there actually is there's a lot of discussion about this. You were saying Guelph is not too much discussion.
Kel: Right that's really not fair. I think there is probably is a lot of discussion and there's a lot of things happening and I do know that there's some amazing different agencies that are providing support for people so I don't want it to seem as though nothing is happening. I'm just not very tapped into it and I find colloquially when we're talking in our communities often there's very hush-hush conversation and not like solutions focused conversation.
Meghan: Yeah I mean I feel like in Coburg at just about every level of, you know, community conversation, whether it's like the media, whether it's in politics, whether it's like the briefings from the police chief and the police services board, it is a constant topic of conversation. Oh, and among like the vigilantes, like there's been a real like citizen vigilante.
Kel: Like we're gonna end the homeless population by kicking people out kind of vigilante?
Meghan: Yeah, like Facebook groups in which people are monitoring the behavior of people who are unhoused or like, it's hard to just like, feel sometimes like a faith in humanity and a faith in the ability of communities to respond because you see that like some people are literally building community and finding friendships and finding purpose in like, hate.
Kel: Yeah, and it feels like when it's not hate against this group of people, it turns into hate against this group of people or this group of people or this group of people. And it's just kind of never ending. And I am feeling disheartened hearing this, mostly because I would like to think that our communities are shifting into a space of more caring instead of more hatred, but I don't know if that's true.
Meghan: That's a tough one. It has become... I know what you mean. It feels like both are happening. And, you know, I turn to Joanna Macy's Active Hope a lot and you know she describes her vision for like the Great Turning like yeah it's gonna be like there's gonna be painful resistance and there's gonna be like building of you know new capacities for life. Dealing with these challenges for sure. Yeah and so both yeah it is both.
Break: You're listening to the Novitas podcast, and today's guest is Meghan Sheffield. We're exploring her experience providing support for unhoused folks in her community in Coburg, Ontario. As Meghan has mentioned, Coburg has been hit hard in recent years, as so many other towns and cities have, with rising housing costs, little support, and growing stigma against the homelessness crisis. Meghan shared her story in the first issue of the Novitas magazine which is now sadly sold out. Stay tuned for the second issue coming out later this year. You can get updates through the sub stack at Novitas.substack.com or on Instagram at @NovitasMag. And now back to the conversation.
Kel: So, as far as your involvement has been, and I think it's just kind of been like on the ground providing support where it makes sense to, what kind of strategies have you seen succeed and what strategies have you found are not so helpful? Because we have talked a little bit about the municipal level and some of the agencies that try to provide support for people who are experiencing homelessness, but maybe missing the mark. Do you know what I mean?
Meghan: Yeah, I think like the best strategies are like are the closest to the ground. And absolutely there's a role and an important one for agencies that are, you know, receiving good funding from government sources. And I think that even those agencies benefit from relationships with community members. And particularly people with lived experience, you can help them to help those agencies to offer what is really needed and what will really help them to meet their own goals as an agency. And you know, ideally improve the daily lives of the folks who are most in need. So, and obviously that's, that's going to change based on your place and based on the situation that people are in and whatnot.
Kel: So I recognize that it's unfair of me to say what solutions are working because it's going to be different for different people, right?
Meghan: Yeah, I feel like the things that, the things that work best are the things that care for all of the humans involved. Because even, you know, even like community groups are, like, when you're working together with other people, challenges arise and people go through things. And I think, like, I think what doesn't work on any level is for people to put their own needs and humanity to the side. I think the stuff that works best is the most sustainable and that means it is the actions and organizations where you can say, yes, take a break. You totally deserve to care for yourself. And we've got this and that's okay too because we got it you know we got it all.
Kel: Right, because if it's not sustainable then it's not going to work.
Meghan: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And at the same time, like, I think to have seen the stage, like encouragement about how much bolder could we be. And sometimes I think what that looks like is, is being like, can I really find my like Friday night social joy in this harm reduction outreach? Like, yeah, that can that be where I like, hang with some pals and get that like good positive input rather than going, you know, I'm way too tired. It's Friday night. I don't want it.
Kel: You know, I'm going to binge on Netflix instead.
Meghan: Yeah. And so yeah, like finding, yeah, like what is, what is that like overlap of like self-care and community care and also caring like, I think part of that conversation that sometimes gets dropped like as parents, for example, is like where my self-care, my community care, I also have this middle part where I'm caring for a bunch of other people.
Kel: Right.
Meghan: And you know, and that's the case for like almost everyone, right? Where we have family members in need and elderly parents or whatever the case might be. So holding faith for that in the framework of finding like sustainable ways to like connect and move forward and not burnout. I think like avoiding burnout at this point, you know, a few years in for me and much longer for many of the people that I'm connected with. Like it's a long, it's like, I think that a couple years ago I was like, if, if the municipality will do this, you know, like I think I, at some level was like...
Kel: We can fix it.
Meghan: Yeah. And I think that we're on a really long journey. Like the housing crisis, as we were it's so widespread, the financialization, like the ways that people have to profit is a real deterrent to solving the needs people have. And so, yeah, and I just want to say the other piece that like I think gets forgotten sometimes in this conversation is like there's the financialization, you know, and then there's also the people who are like have been working basically like paid off a mortgage and now because of like the total shortfall of overall care in our society, they're now relying on their actual home to to retire and be able to like basically have care in their elder years. So now you're like an ordinary residential home is worth $800,000 or a million dollars, the stakes in talking about, you know, community solutions have totally changed for very, very ordinary middle and working class folks. And so it makes that it's just like another element.
Kel: For sure. It changes the dynamic totally because the idea of affordable housing, like the idea of it is so unattainable at this point because of what's happened to the housing market. And for me who I feel really fortunate to pay a mortgage instead of paying rent, someday this house will be how I retire or how I support my kids or you know, all of those things. So you're right, we still need to, I need to make sure that my house maintains its value otherwise I'm out of luck like everybody else, right?
Meghan: Right, because elder care is also financial.
Kel: Yeah, for sure.
Meghan: Yeah. I actually read a story about a local habitat for humanity project here that was a new build, and it has a really cool solar, like, it's a real sustainable build. And they were seeking families for this to move in. Residents for this for this project and the income level was like in the realm of $100,000 and a lot of folks were really mad they were like hey like how can Habitat for Humanity do this? and it's like and also that that project is making homeownership possible because there are people making that income that can't afford that homeowner
Kel: Yeah for sure
Meghan: So if the goal is for Habitat for Humanity to make home ownership affordable and accessible, the baseline has shifted so much. But like, yeah, it's not because Habitat is suddenly serving fat cats. It's like the whole landscape has shifted.
Kel: And the price of building and yeah, and the mortgage interest rates and everything just shifts up. And it's funny because I, this conversation is a conversation I have frequently with people. But I hadn't made the mental link about how the, I mean, yes, it affects homelessness because we have more people experiencing homelessness with the rising house costs. But...
Mghan: when there was like a shift all of a sudden to like rentals being then sold to us all to into home ownership because of the increase.
Kel: Yeah, for sure. So there's quite a few different layers of the ways that it all interacts with each other. And you know, we talk about fixing the problem. And I think we'll probably see the problem get worse before it gets better if we see housing prices remain where they are, let alone get higher, which is also a possibility. And so as it goes with complex problems, there's not always simple solutions, right?
Meghan: Yeah. And like as folks have been unhoused, you know, in the basically, in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic. Now, some of those folks, they're going on, you know one year, two years, three years, four years that they've been outside. And it just, you know, that just like increases the need for support and the type of transition they need into housing. And so like, it's not, yeah, even the solutions need to be like really long-term because what we're doing right now, like what we're accepting on a societal level about, yeah, just like more and more people are being moved outside into survival camping are into daily trauma, you know, just like in a survival state day after day after day. Now that's, you know, compounding like, yeah, it's got to be like an all hands on deck response to that degree of need and I think that a lot of the response that we see is like, "Oh no, the business owners are concerned about what's happening downtown". And it's like, what's happening downtown is people are in active trauma. And, we just like, we just need better tools.
Kel: Yeah. And I hope, I mean, so I guess we can talk a little bit about some of the solutions so we end up on a positive note because it's been, it's a hard conversation to have for sure. And I know that there is... there are people out there doing really good work. The Greenwood Coalition, like you mentioned, is something that's local in Cobourg, and we've got Hope House in Guelph and other institutions that are helping provide support for people experiencing homelessness and then other institutions that are trying to rehouse folks as well. I know that we've got some like affordable housing builds that are happening, so repurposing old buildings and turning them into small units that are more accessible for people to at least make that transition from being, as you say, in a trauma response survival camping into something that's more stable. Do you have approaches that are taking place in Cobourg around that as well?
Meghan: Yeah, I have seen here, as elsewhere, an increasing interest in like creative housing alternatives. So, you know, sleeping cabins is one that has been tried like at municipal levels in Waterloo and in Peterborough. And that, you know, there is this organization locally here that is continuing to try to put together the pieces, bring it before the municipality, you know, look at zoning possibilities. And there's also like a tiny house organization that would be looking at home ownership but on a very small scale. And so I think stuff like that, like keeping that, like just that conversation ongoing with municipalities and with like the, especially like at the staff level to like keep, just like keep putting forth ideas. And I will say like, I think that levels of government, like they would prefer, not not individual, but the bureaucratic system would prefer that nobody challenged the boxes. It's simpler. It's simpler to just be like, these are the options that we have available. And to just like keep bringing forward new ideas, different ways of looking at what housing can be and like, you know, housing that can be safe. That's obviously like a shared goal of everyone, but maybe can be more creatively made so that it meets the needs of folks at various points on the housing spectrum. I think like the other thing that comes to mind is like the power of group chats.
Kel: Right.
Meghan: I mentioned that like just really quickly in the article. But it's like I and I will say in my article, I feel like I use the word "I" a lot. And I was like, I've been like, ug, that's just like too much because, you know, I do not do very much as an "I", but I can only write as an "I".
Kel: Yeah, for sure.
Meghan: And so and I think that like there is power in the network of being able to connect and so I am part of a Facebook group, a WhatsApp group, and then also like various iterations of that among formal organized more organization-y work and then also just like a few people to say... What was a call I got this week? Someone said "hey do you know if you're if you're taking someone up to get their belongings from the jail do you need to like call ahead and make an appointment?" or "can you just like drop in there and right pick up two people from the food bank i'm dropping them off but i can't stay right stay drive them home", you know it's like something as small as that... I don't know, I don't think that that's like a capital S solution but it's a type of example that I think, I don't know... I feel like we're still in the middle of the story, but I feel like it's gonna... that type of like close contact with each other, with my neighbors, with folks who are unhouse and folks who are housed. You know, that interweaving is the way that we can at least have like maybe better eyes to see capital S solutions with.
Kel: Right. It's foundational. That's the human connection part of it, being human centric in our solutions. So, okay, I got one last question. How do you feel that doing this work or being involved in this community has changed your perspective or your life?
Meghan: Oh, I feel like a little bit verklempt. It is... What I feel, and I think that this article I wrote in the magazine was a really beautiful outlet for expressing this, is I feel myself to be so much more interwoven with the place that I live. And it feels like almost like on an interspecies level, because it's like, what we share, my neighbors, housed and unhoused, like is this environment. And, you know, one of the things I talked about was that there's like a cooler at the edge of the sidewalk, at the edge of my lawn. And that place is also a Monarch Way station. So it's a place that, you know, we have milkweed growing and wildflowers that are pollinator friendly, and we like signed an agreement that we wouldn't use pesticides. And then there's this little sign that comes from Kansas that says this is a monarch way station. And then this is like, you know, a box that holds a cooler, and in the cooler is like water and or Gatorade and granola bars. And sometimes in the winter there's like hand warmers and, you know, it's like this resource station is happening in the same real estate. And that is like, I also want to add the cooler is kind of a mutual aid project. It's not something that I'm just like individually funding, but it is because it's like on our front lawn, it is like, I'm the one, I'm the tender of that. There's this real interweaving that I find hard to put into words, but feels like really deeply experiential. And I hope that that is what readers will take away from the article. Like that is what I really needed to excavate for my own self. And I was so grateful. You know, like, I wrote it in a time of really present, active grief, and to be able to like... and they didn't have capacity to write anything but that and this was what I really really needed so yeah. I'm so grateful for that opportunity.
Kel: Well I thank you very much Meghan like it was really beautiful um I think it was a really beautiful pertinent way for us to explore some of the really challenging issues around homelessness but also within the context of capitalism and individualism and like how we all personally hold this grief of the challenges that we're currently facing. So...
Meghan: that's so well said. And like, I think that there's like a lot of there's a lot of beauty. You know, there's a lot of beauty in this world and to be found in relationships with others and that's also part of why I invited the text in the magazine that came from my friend Jess, writing about her experience being unsheltered and the connections that she made with the more than human world through those experiences. And yeah, that the way that we all can interweave with each other is like, it's still there. It's still present, like despite like so many walls that were sort of... that we're all... well you know the stigma is so real the fear-mongering danger of people who use drugs the danger of people who are homeless and and yet...
Kel: They are people.
Meghan: Yeah! Actually, I just have friends. Yeah I just feel like so grateful to you for like holding that space.
Kel: It's my pleasure and I think um yeah the magazine is definitely richer for it so thank you very much for your contribution.
Outro: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Novitas Podcast with Meghan Sheffield and me, Kel Smith. I hope you've enjoyed this exploration into Meghan's experience supporting folks in her community experiencing homelessness. I want to thank Meghan for bringing her story to both the podcast and the magazine in a time where we really need to have more conversations to destigmatize and support folks who are unhoused during this crisis. If you're feeling moved to support this podcast, you can become a paid subscriber on the substack at novitas.substack.com. You can also check out the website at novitasmag.com or follow on Instagram at novitasmag. Thanks again for listening.
Grassroots Community Support During the Current Housing Crisis