Unsilencing Stories

Ben: Episode 7: Housing, Finances & Resources

Unsilencing Stories Season 2 Episode 36

In this episode, you'll hear Ben talk to Lucas Akai and Esther Cheung about his current living situation and the need for supportive and low-income housing. Ben also tells Esther about his overall confidence in his work and the prospects for future funding.  

This episode was recorded on November 22, 2022.

Caitlin Burritt  00:00 

Thank you for listening to the Unsilencing Stories Podcast. We are in the midst of a public health crisis. More than 32,000 people in Canada have died from fatal opioid overdoses since 2016 according to Health Canada. Previously, this podcast featured interviews with bereaved people in smaller towns and communities in BC and Alberta who have lost loved ones to fatal overdose. In this phase, we're sharing interviews with seven harm reduction workers, also known as peers, in different parts of BC.  

 

Caitlin Burritt  00:27 

The BC Centre for Disease Control Harm Reduction Services defines harm reduction as support services and strategies that aim to keep people safe and minimise death, disease and injury from high risk behaviour. Peers face a lot of challenges. This has been documented by many researchers including Zahra Mamdani and colleagues in BC. In their 2021 paper they outline significant challenges peers face including financial struggles, difficulty finding housing and stressors at work. We wanted to explore these themes with peers and find out more about their experiences and share this information with the public. So we conducted multiple remote interviews with harm reduction workers and invited them to talk about the stressors they face.  

 

Caitlin Burritt  01:06 

Please note this podcast contains information about substance use, overdose death, grief, trauma and stressors that peers face and this may be distressing to listen to. The podcast is part of a research project led by Aaron Goodman, PhD, faculty member at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, BC, and conducted under the auspices of a grant known as the Chancellor's Chair Award. I'm Caitlin Burritt, a researcher with the project. A number of researchers including Giorgia Ricciardi and Chloe Burritt, who happens to be my sister, and a number of students have played key roles in the study and you'll hear many of their voices in this podcast.  

 

Caitlin Burritt  01:40 

In this episode, you'll hear Ben talk to Lucas Akai and Esther Cheung about his current living situation and the need for supportive and low-income housing. Ben also tells Esther about his overall confidence in his work and the prospects for future funding.  

 

Esther Cheung  01:54 

How's your week been? 

 

Ben  01:55 

Well, barely begun, but pretty uneventful. I suppose. I'm having trouble as usual, getting the handy person to show up and finish the job that they're supposed to be doing. But you either have to pay a whole pile of money or you have to wait for the people to get around to doing the job. I think on the [bleeped] it's a little bit especially like that, obviously, more to choose from in the city, but I'm counting on friends for the most part. 

 

Esther Cheung  02:34 

Yeah. Friends for, for the repairs, or? 

 

Ben  02:38 

Yeah. 

 

Ben  02:40 

Well, actually, this person I, I get the most out from lately, I was introduced to more or less by my friend who just passed away who was helping with repairs. This guy was originally introduced to me as a roofer. But he never ended up doing the roofing job. And when he gets around to it, he's good at what he does and he has a pretty broad repertoire of talents. But he's embroiled in all kinds of other things that tend to keep him away for stretches of time. So he promised to be here a couple of mornings ago and hasn't been in touch now for over, over a day. So I don't know what's going on.  

 

Esther Cheung  03:25 

Got it. 

 

Ben  03:27 

 There's actually a warrant out for him. So he might be in jail. 

 

Esther Cheung  03:33 

Does that happen often? Where, do you get worried about them? If they?  

 

Ben  03:38 

Oh, of course. 

 

Ben  03:41 

Yeah. He's a really sweet guy. And I don't know he was in some kind of high speed car chase a few years back. So he's also been through a messy divorce, which... Anyway, that's what's going on for me. Waiting. 

 

Lucas Akai  04:03 

Waiting, waiting. Today I was thinking we could kind of go more off the list of questions. And I don't know if you have questions in front of you, but we'll be going over the section for inability to access and/or refer individuals to resources. So maybe  the first question is, do you experience challenges when it comes to referring individuals who work with the resources in the community so that could be housing, it could be safer supply, any form of resource or support really? 

 

Ben  04:32 

Well, recently, I've probably mentioned we've had issues with getting peers paid in a timely manner. The overall resource options are fairly limited. So anyway, one thing we've prioritised with our grant money is paying local peers in a In a best practice manner, and I think that should certainly include paying on, on time, preferably on the day of whatever event we're holding. So previously, prior to COVID, it was pretty straightforward to pay people at the event, and just recently, since the CAT team coordinator changed, the fiscal agent, for some reason has wanted to be getting each individual participant invoiced separately, and, or something along those lines anyway.  

 

Ben  05:58 

They haven't made the funds available ahead of time. And we're trying to rectify that by creating a separate bank account for our project. Actually, it would be shared with the CAT team, but I would have signing authority, so I wouldn't be depending on CAT team to make it available. So that's supposed to be happening this week. But it's still a little bit up in the air. So we've had some feedback that people are still waiting for payment from a recent workshop, that wasn't our workshop. But it took almost a month or about a month for the last participant to get paid for the workshop that we did recently. And I certainly appreciate having someone else be responsible for that particular piece of work.  

 

Ben  06:59 

But hopefully, that'll all be a thing of the past in the next short while. As far as housing goes, I guess, you know, we're dealing with our own housing, kind of drawn out housing crisis is just, the house that we live in is is showing its age more and more and I don't really have the capacity personally to maintain the building myself, and it's really larger than we need for the two of us. So I guess at this point, we're, you know, ideally looking for somewhere else to live. But as is the case pretty well, everywhere in the country, or certainly around the province, it's very challenging to find, especially supportive or low income kind of housing.  

 

Ben  06:59 

But as far as how it impacts my ability to reach people and support people. It's disappointing that as this other person is supposed to be a peer expert, I guess, has some kind of certification programme for people, I'm not sure what's involved, but to be able to call themselves a peer experts. And I guess they obviously count that title in other contexts, but they are only doing the work within the hours that they are paid to do it, which again, they're they're paid a little bit better than peers are typically paid. So it's disappointing that they can't, especially when it's, you know, a handful of people make extra time or just get it done in a timely fashion. So I mean, obviously, these people are often homeless, and so tracking them down can be an issue, which me seems to me to indicate it would be more effective to just get it done on the day.  

 

Ben  09:12 

So just been in touch with my parents about that. And apparently, they'd be happy to cover the extra cost of renting a place if we could find a place. So I;ll have to take out a bit more seriously at this point. But I don't know as people that have been out in public as far as drug use goes, it's adds a little bit of complexity, shall we say to the challenge of finding housing, although hopefully, well it remains to be seen how much how much that plays a role, since we haven't actually applied for anything or other than just the supportive housing, which is more or less designated for people in that kind of situation. So I guess my partner is turning 60 this year and is senior citizen by that measure. So that widens the scope of potential supportive sousing some extent, but although there are additional seniors residences under construction are slated for construction.  

 

Ben  10:31 

I don't, I don't know, I haven't had any word back as far as the one place we've applied to. But it is very challenging to get the attention of the local housing outreach people. And I don't know, there must be other other people, besides to one guy who's apparently sick with COVID again, currently, so I have to look into that for my own sake, as well, so. I think it's challenging across the board as far as whatever kind of resources you're looking for, I guess we have pretty good food, food bank programmes here. Pretty exceptional Food Bank programmes. But 

 

Lucas Akai  11:14 

And you mentioned, actually going back and of course we've talked about this before, is the issues around that last event that, you know, is that something that's now starting to have a lingering effect on attendance or the presence of peers showing up or? 

 

Ben  11:30 

Well, we've had to postpone a workshop we had planned for last week. And at this point, we were considering doing something next week. And I guess, my fiscal agent has suggested if it was later in the week, that might be a safer way to go. So I think we'll, we'll try that. And unfortunately, both of the volunteers that do peer outreach for the OPS and the supportive housing in our community are also sick with pneumonia currently, so I don't know how easy it's going to be to get people to be aware of the event and short term. So that might, might make it harder to count on the kind of attendance that we had last time. But we'll have to encourage people to pre-register, and then we could cancel it, if people don't sign up ahead of time, be one way to go.  

 

Ben  12:44 

I, I certainly hope it doesn't have a lingering effect, I think people, especially at this time of year are going to be pretty desperate for additional resources. So they'll probably want to be there if they, if they can. And given that we should be able to pay on the day this time, I would hope that we can count on a few people to show up for sure. But just getting the word out is going to be an extra challenge. But I guess we can take that on ourselves as far as that goes, instead of relying on other people to do that for us. 

 

Lucas Akai  13:18 

And so you mentioned how, with some of these, these peers attend these workshops. The fact that they're unhoused makes it a bigger challenge for getting payment at a later point in time. Does it also have an effect on your ability to build relationships with these individuals? And maybe there's a lack of consistent face-time with individuals or? 

 

Ben  13:40 

Yeah, well it's, also it's we're spread out across quite a long stretch of highway here. And we do have our own vehicle. But well, I understand that they just dismantled the tent city in [bleeped] the other day. So those people have moved further into the woods, I guess, and further away from any kind of emergency help or, or support in the physical environment. And I guess that is going to make it more difficult for everybody to get what they're trying to get accomplished. Haven't. I've only heard that for one person, but I think it's probably true, although what I understand is the case to, legally, they aren't allowed to do that.  

 

Ben  14:39 

Unless they have somewhere for the people to go to live. You're not supposed to disrupt these kinds of encampments, as far as the Supreme Court has said. They're supposed to be left alone, but I guess municipalities as we were talking about last time, aren't, aren't always that considerate of the bigger picture, if they want to move people along, they just get on with it. So we'll have to look into providing some kind of legal support, I suppose, for these people to be left to have whatever shelter they can manage to organise for themselves where they can, I mean, the landowner at the, at the place where the camp was happening was okay with people being there. So it's, it's pretty silly that they've been disrupted if that's what's happened. 

 

Lucas Akai  15:31 

And so you had mentioned just a moment ago, like, you've got some pretty sufficient food banks in the area, there is supportive housing to some extent, do you find that you're often referring individuals that attend your conferences to these resources? Or do they usually just appear for the workshop itself, and then not seek further assistance or aid or support? 

 

Ben  15:53 

Well, I think what we're mainly doing is letting people know that they are significant as individuals, they matter. And they, their opinion matters and their experience matters. And that typically, that encourages people to take the initiative to do what they need to do to look after themselves, in my experience anyway. So that seems to have the most impact. So I was wanting to redirect slightly, as far as what I was just saying about giving people a sense of self worth, I guess, by including them and encouraging them to share their experiences and their perspectives or priorities. One thing that's sort of come to light since the conference, there was a bit of conflict afterwards, between a couple of individuals that we're sort of allied to, I suppose, or friends with, on some level anyway, and as the process of funding these drug user led groups has shifted in recent years, and I guess the diversity or number of groups has increased and the amount of money available is not particularly large.  

 

Ben  17:25 

But so some people's minds, the limited resources is a source of, of conflict, which maybe is something that the powers that be are not especially opposed to seeing happen. I mean, they don't really want to respond to the needs of the drug user community so to speak, they would be happy to see more infighting amongst user groups and fighting over limited resources is one thing that does create conflict. But this particular instance of conflict has arisen due to the fact that as sometimes happens, some of the people that received funding in a particularly remote northern community, didn't actually apply themselves to the work of reaching peers, but just. They didn't have society status, they didn't have a fiscal agent, they just for some reason, in any case, they were just given the grant directly and spent it on themselves.  

 

Ben  18:33 

And this kind of undermines all of our efforts when that kind of thing happens. And it's easy to, in the middle of this kind of crisis, to feel like you're not doing enough, anyway. But I think especially in remote communities, just making it more evident that there is a place for drug users and a need for drug users to be able to express themselves and indicate for themselves what their needs and priorities are is, is really an invaluable kind of service to provide. And there's other places to get food, like we were talking about food banks and stuff like that. 

 

Ben  19:23 

 And sort of the more kind of tokenised kind of efforts to do something that seems like a more classic kind of social work-y stuff isn't necessarily as important as just letting drug users know that they're not morally bankrupt or they're not, shouldn't just be written off because of their lifestyle choices or things that have happened to them as a result of what is essentially an unjust drug war which is based on classist and racist agendas as as opposed to anything scientific or, or health related, which is often a misconception people have. But it's kind of the, an extension of colonial priorities from the, the old days, so to speak. 

 

Lucas Akai  20:15 

And so you mentioned the competitive nature of funding nowadays and that in this one incident, there was maybe a misuse of the grant provided. When this type of situation occurs, do you find that it forces you in your organisation, in the work you do to change or to approach things differently as a result, or to be more like, conscious of what's going on or make statements to separate from that type of?  

 

Ben  20:42 

Well, like I say, it's easy to feel like you're not doing enough and to blame, blame myself or blame ourselves for, for shortcomings. But an actual in this instance, it's helped me feel better about what we're doing, because the amount of money is relatively small. So the challenges that we face are pretty huge and the resistance is pretty great. And I think that, under the circumstances, especially in more recent months, we've managed to do some pretty significant collaboration with other groups, from other communities and, and successfully carry out some project goals that have, I think, really helped some people. If if a relatively small number of people are not necessarily in an ongoing way, but it remains to be seen, but I feel like I feel better about the overall amount of success that we've had, and in the length of time that we've been funded.  

 

Ben  21:57 

And I think the likelihood of carrying on with the funding that we're getting so far is is pretty great. I guess, it's going to require ongoing, significant participation from few, not a huge number of people. But you know, half dozen or more committed people, if we're going to get society status, we need to have a board of directors and that sort of thing. And as far as our personal circumstances go, those aren't really furthered by that particular development, because that would mean that we would have to apply for our jobs. Essentially, if we created a board of directors, then we would be answerable to them.  

 

Lucas Akai  22:43 

And so you, you've of course mentioned the competitiveness of seeking funding, that you're the only one person in your kind of area to do that. With the amount of groups that are now forming across BC, do you find it more difficult to secure or maintain your funding? 

 

Ben  22:43 

And so that's all kind of daunting in in, in that sense, but there isn't really anybody else likely to step forward to fill those particular roles in this area. For us, personally, we've had just step up and take more personal responsibility for moving things along in our local area as it just wasn't otherwise happening, really, I guess, some, the other, the other main activist person who was responsible for initiating the overdose prevention site originally, moved. So there hasn't been anyone else with that kind of initiative in the, in the neighbourhood to take on the challenge or to seek funding, let alone receive funding, I guess. 

 

Ben  23:48 

But we've hung on to it to do the work that we were intending to do, and so we haven't spent it as quickly, there's still quite a bit less from our initial grant. And then we have the additional 1/3 of the year already granted for the coming year. So we have as far as the funds available to us, the amount of funding that we are still in possession of, more or less is, is still plenty to carry on doing the kinds of things we've been doing so far into the foreseeable future. 

 

Ben  23:48 

No, I think that, I guess, I haven't heard if the amount of funding overall is likely to decrease or increase in the, in the next round, but they already just went ahead and extended the funding for a third of the next year. And we're about to have a project review. So we're in, we're just wrapped up year three and moving into year four. So we got involved about halfway through, and I think we're pretty well positioned to carry on with that likely to receive the same amount if, if nothing changes between now and then.  

 

Lucas Akai  25:14 

And so you'd mentioned society status. I believe we had talked about that very, very briefly in our first week of conversation, but is that something that you're feeling pressure, maybe from like other organisers, to pursue? Or does it open? Or what type of doors does it open if you do receive society status? 

 

Ben  25:33 

Well, it would, first of all, double the amount of funding available to us. And from, from the source that we're already receiving funding from. But it would also increase the options for funding from other sources. So, you know, it could, it could have a pretty massive impact as far as that goes. I, you know, I don't know how much additional responsibility we're really likely to want to take on ourselves in any case, but it would be great to see other people come forward to do additional stuff. There's plenty that needs to be done. And I guess, funding is usually specifically allocated for specific goals. And so that's, I guess, we need to be either inspired ourselves to take on other more specific goals or other people in the community would need to indicate that they're motivated to do that kind of goal specific work and apply for said funding. But. 

 

Lucas Akai  26:48 

Okay. And so maybe on an average case, how large does provincial grants usually get in terms of financial support? 

 

Ben  26:55 

I guess, $80,000. I mean, the, the funding that we applied for was $40,000 for society status group, and $20,000, for new groups like ourselves, although we've been around for a long time, we don't, we're, I guess they're called new or burgeoning groups or something like that, emerging groups. So the next batch is maybe going to double that. I guess the money that we got was kind of leftover funding from the earlier a couple of years, for groups like ours. So I guess this is the next round of full year funding, they're talking about $80,000 per group.  

 

Lucas Akai  27:31 

And so, kind of staying on the topic of this grant competitiveness, maybe do you want to explain further, like, how it's determined which group gets what funding or is it pretty standard across the board? I know, you mentioned years in terms of... 

 

Ben  27:43 

Well, I was surprised to hear that they were even, they even would consider funding groups that had no fiscal agent. But I guess, I guess it still allows them to show that they're reaching out and including more people in more remote communities. We didn't have any trouble finding a fiscal agent, but we've been on on the scene for quite a long time, as I say. So we've had connections in that world for a long time and other people probably aren't so fortunate, as far as that goes. One major challenge is just finding a space to accommodate groups.  

 

Ben  28:28 

This is tied into the issue with municipalities we were talking about before, just having a landlord that's willing to rent to such groups, obviously, would make sense for the local, municipal governments or whatever, to try to provide space for that sort of thing. But often, they're opposed to that kind of development. So we didn't even bother asking for money for rent for a space. And I guess we could have and maybe will moving forward include rent, to allocate space in our own home to do that. But that would just be for office space for our own work as, as the main outreach workers. But to have a place where drug users can come to, to brainstorm for themselves and like currently, that's just happening in a coffee shop at the CAT team has been calling people to meet at on sort of bi-weekly basis in the last month or so. 

 

Ben  29:39 

So to some extent, there's support on in the local community and that sense of the particular coffee shop, being willing to provide that kind of space for a couple of hours, but even the supportive housing and OPSs, like we had briefly, had a space in the bottom floor of the OPS, and I'm not sure exactly what happened to that. Oh, it was an insurance issue, I guess that, that wiped that out. So I guess that would be something that would have to be would have to be factored into future funding applications to ensure that that didn't happen again.  

 

Lucas Akai  30:20 

And so are the funding applications, like you're planning to use money from a grant you've already received or is this separate from, like, the broader grants? 

 

Ben  30:31 

Well, we applied with mainly emphasising just periodic meetings and the the money to organise the meetings and provide payment to the participants as well as food and stuff like that at the actual meetings. So the other groups would include stuff like rent or whatever. And then other grants exist for more specific things, like we have received more recently a grant for this, this micro grant for printing clothing and stuff like that, which we're just about, not even halfway through that grant. But it's been well received so far. And I, I guess my impression at the conference was that we're not the only group that took that route. As you can see, maybe I'm wearing a nice hoodie, that's got the logo of another one of the groups that are funded through this CAI.  

 

Ben  31:46 

So I'm not sure if it's micro grant money that they use for that, but they found it somewhere anyway. And there were some T-shirts from Vancouver island group. So we're not the only ones that have been making clothing for, for our group. But I'm just starting to get an order ready for a batch of shirts, maybe long sleeve T shirts, or some sort of T shirt probably, I think is the next. The next batch of clothes, we're going to try to get out there by Christmas time, should be should be doable. It just took less than two weeks for the neck and face coverings that we printed to get produced, so. Kind of got that order in the works at the moment.  

 

Lucas Akai  32:38 

And so you mentioned that there was newer groups for without fiscal agents receiving funding, is something that is new to this year? You mentioned you were quite surprised by that. 

 

Ben  32:53 

Yeah, it's, I don't think this has ever happened previously, as far as the call for applications from, from newer groups. I think the majority of groups are still centred around the Greater Vancouver mainland area, and to a lesser extent, Victoria or Vancouver Island. So maybe 50% of the groups that have been funded so far are in more rural and remote parts of British Columbia. And we, at this gathering last week, think we had about twice as many groups participating as are currently funded. So we're expecting that many of those groups will hopefully apply for for funding in the programme. And so we'll be participating moving forward in our regular online meetings for BC wide-groups, which currently is about a dozen or 15 or so groups taking part in that. 

 

Esther Cheung  34:11 

As we wrap up here, just because we have five minutes, is there anything else you want to mention?  

 

Ben  34:17 

Mainly, that's what I had in mind was just this recent conflict that came up and the, I guess the surprise about groups without fiscal agents getting funding and groups getting larger amounts of funding from the federal government that didn't actually have society status. It kind of puts into perspective, my own work as far as how much we've been able to or willing to take on and I feel pretty happy with what we've managed to accomplish and I'm pretty confident about the ability to carry on at a similar pace, or even step things up a bit as far as.  

 

Ben  35:05 

I was able to get the funding, mainly thanks to another colleague in the movement that's works up north. But we've attended meetings together for a decade or more at the BCCDC and stuff like that and they were very kind in helping collaborate on our grant application. But I feel like we're not, we're, we're more on our own footing as far as getting more funding moving forward. I don't think we need to be so reliant on people with more experience as far as that goes, because of the successes that we've had and the confidence that we've built in the most recent round of our first time being funded as our own group, so I'm happy to leave it there, I think. 

 

Caitlin Burritt  35:58 

That brings us to the end of this episode of the Unsilencing Stories Podcast. To listen to more interviews in the series, please go to www.unsilencingstories.com. And if you'd like to share your thoughts on the episode, message us at unsilencingstories@gmail.com. Thank you for listening.