New zine highlights the hidden stories of housing issues in Halifax

A new short-form magazine is highlighting the "hidden stories" of people who are struggling to find housing in the Halifax area.

The zine, called Hidden Housing Stories, was launched by the group Apathy is Boring this past weekend.

The group, which has chapters across the country, works to get people aged 18-30 involved in democracy and civic engagement. 

Vinn Elliott, a student at Dalhousie University's school of social work, is an ambassador with Apathy is Boring's RISE group in Halifax.

On Monday, Elliott spoke with CBC Radio's Portia Clark on Information Morning Nova Scotia about the new zine.

Their conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

There's so many issues to be unapathetic about. Why did your group, in this case, decide to focus on hidden housing stories from young people?

It's really amazing, really. We get the opportunity to come together ... and hash out all these different ideas that really matter to us if we're coming from Halifax.

It seems like the one thing we all were really, really interested in was housing, and there seems to be ample reason for that because right now the climate of houselessness in Halifax is unbelievable and it's something that really truly needs to be addressed.

Some of those situations are in our face, but Hidden Housing Stories is focusing on people who we don't hear from as often. Can you tell us a little bit more about that focus?

The idea of Hidden Housing Stories is kind of a double meaning. Hidden houselessness often means, in social scientific terms, houselessness that goes under the radar, so people who often do not access resources and therefore they're not counted in surveys, they're not counted in statistics, so often they're unfortunately missed.

The other side of the double meaning is that we wanted those stories that — due to stigma — often aren't discussed, but yet are extremely real experiences with houselessness and we just wanted to bring those to light.

Listen to Elliott's full interview on CBC Radio's Information Morning Nova Scotia:

If it's hidden, how did you go about finding those people?

We wanted to make it as non-oppressive as possible, because research can often be seen as a tool of oppression. We wanted to make a call out to allow people — under whatever anonymity they wanted — the ability to share their own stories on their own time and at their own comfort level and compensate them for that.

But before that, we had a community consultation where we allowed anyone who wanted to come be a part of this information panel … they could [be] a part of the zine as well and share their stories when published.

What kinds of issues did they raise or share?

So many. There was one family that, for example, every time they went to look for applications and stuff like that, they were finding themselves with application fees, which everyone should know is illegal. You can't have application fees to apply for an apartment.

Then, for example, when they went and actually saw some of these properties, one of the things they saw was that their kitchen floor was covered in maggots and yes, it's horrible. A tenancy right is that landlords have to make sure that the space is up kept for sure. 

That's another thing too, is that our zine is also full of tenancy rights and so that's something that everyone can access.

You mentioned a moment ago that research can be seen as a tool of oppression. What did you mean by that? Like even getting these stories?

Often when doing research, one has to be able to build trust and has to build rapport, and oftentimes when people are doing research, they're not even from the communities that they're finding research from, and they don't often look to build that trust and they don't have to look to build that rapport. 

But that's something that we really wanted to mitigate throughout this entire process, and that's why we really aim to be as communicative and make sure that everyone involved could be as involved and as supported as they felt they needed to be and that they were properly compensated.

How are these folks surviving without access to the housing that they need. Was that part of your research too?

Our aim for this zine, just as of right now, was people who are dealing with housing precarity, which essentially just means that they may not necessarily be unhoused at the moment, but at any given point in time — if not at the moment — they're always struggling with housing or that they're at risk of being houseless or they were at one point. 

So we didn't necessarily target the community of people who are houseless at this exact moment just because again due to the struggle that they may be dealing with at that exact time or moment that could have easily been seen as another tool of oppression. 

So we decided to pivot away from that and go to another group that may have had more of a capacity to give those stories, but also because sometimes recanting stories can be re-traumatizing, and so we want to make sure that who we asked were ready to give those stories.

Where can we find the zine?

Our zine is online. If not yet, then very, very soon, it will be a digital zine on all of our social media, so that's the Halifax RISE Instagram and the Halifax RISE Facebook.

But other than that, there's lots of copies at Venus Envy [in downtown Halifax], and if they're all gone, there will be even more at Venus Envy in the next coming days. 

I know that we just confirmed that we'll be having some at the Sackville Public Library and the many, many places we're handing them out is growing every single day. We're still updating it, but those are two guaranteed places at least, plus the digital one.