Episode 17: The Lived Experience of Encampments

Written By Dagma Koyi

Part FOUR of ENCAMPMENT COMMUNITIES COUNT

This episode of Homelessness in Hiding: Our Youth Between the Cracks is part four of our four-part series about encampment communities. In this episode, we hear the stories of those actively experiencing homelessness and their closes friends and allies, straight from the encampment communities, themselves. Today, you will hear the real stories of real people from endless walks of life. People just like me. People just like you. People. People. People.

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Encampment communities have been around for decades, but the COVID-19 pandemic has complicated and proliferated their existence in Peel, Canada, and worldwide. At the beginning of the pandemic, the Region of Peel supported the increase in encampment communities, even promising that established communities would not be disturbed. Ontario, as well, was supporting folks by providing municipalities like Peel with emergency funding to provide folks experiencing homelessness with rooms in hotels and motels if they wanted them.

Now, however, in 2022, much of that funding–much of that understanding, that compassion–has run out. Let's talk about that.

About the Host:

Mya Moniz

Peer Support Leader | REST Centres She/Her

Mya is an independent youth and Former Crown Ward of the Peel Children’s Aid Society. She’s achieved an Honours Bachelor of Arts with High Distinction from the University of Toronto in English, Professional Writing and Communications, and Sociology. She also sits at the Senior Leadership Table for the Peel Alliance to End Homelessness as a youth with lived experience.

Mya believes there is great power in healing, growth, and catharsis through writing and storytelling, and she strives to help others tell their stories the way she tells hers.

 
Dagma Koyi
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Episode 18: Black Youth Still Matter | REST Centres and Youth Homelessness in 2022
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Episode 16: The Community of Encampments