She They Us Podcast

Credits 
Produced in collaboration with Everything Podcasts. 
Host: Andrea Reimer 
Producer & Writer: Linda Rourke 
Sound Engineer: Jordan Wong   

Senior Account Director: Lisa Bishop 
Executive Producer: Jennifer Smith 
Project Partner: Ange Valentini, Strategic Impact Collective 
Project Coordinator: Monica Deng, Pan-Canadian Voice for Housing

Music: A special thank you to Reid Jamieson and CVM for providing some of the music throughout the episode. www.reidjamieson.com

Welcome to She They Us a podcast about making room in housing for women and gender-diverse people, brought to you by the Pan-Canadian Voice for Women’s Housing. 
In this first episode of Season 3, host Andrea Reimer and producer Linda Rourke introduce a bold new direction. For two seasons, we asked how to fix housing for women and gender diverse people, but what if the system works exactly as designed? This season, we uncover the deep history of housing in Canada through cultural and historical lenses. We begin with First Nations women and how colonization, land displacement, and restrictive laws shape access to safe housing. On Manitoulin Island, Marie McGregor Pitawanakwat shares her eviction story, fight for housing rights, and vision for homes rooted in Anishinaabe teachings. 

Guests: Marie McGregor Pitawanakwat, Chair National Indigenous Women’s Housing Network 

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In this episode, we continue exploring Canada’s housing crisis for women and gender diverse people. While many discussions assume systems once worked, the truth is that safe housing for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit households has never been simple. We examine distinctions among these groups and focus on the 80% of Indigenous people living off their territories, often without land, culture, or community. Pamela Spurvey, an urban Indigenous woman and Sixties Scoop survivor, shares her journey through displacement, addiction, and reconnection. Monique, a Métis Two-Spirit person, reflects on identity, belonging, and the toll of unstable housing.

Guests: Pamela Spurvey (Urban Indigenous woman, Treaty 6 — Beaver Lake Cree Nation), Featuring Monique Courcelles (Métis & Two-Spirit)

This episode asks: Did housing ever truly work for women and gender-diverse people in Canada? After exploring Indigenous experiences, we turn to settler women, beginning with White women and their complex relationship to the “free market.” Andrea speaks with Dr. Carolyn Whitzman on how women shaped early housing despite restrictive zoning and gendered norms. Jennifer Smith shares her family’s struggles with mortgage discrimination across generations, and Jill Kelly highlights how community-driven credit unions opened doors for women and queer couples. Together, these stories reveal how gendered assumptions about money still shape housing access today.

Guests:  
Dr. Carolyn Whitzman, Adjunct Professor and Senior Housing Researcher, University of Toronto’s School of Cities 
Jennifer Smith, CEO and Founder of Everything Podcasts 
Jill Kelly, Former long-time General Manager of CCEC Credit Union

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Andrea speaks with Stephanie Allen about how urban planning and real estate practices have displaced Black communities and created steep barriers for Black women. Elvenia Gray‑Sandiford shares decades of frontline work with women escaping violence, revealing how Black women’s housing precarity is often hidden and ignored in policy. Dr. Fadhilah Balugu describes arriving from Nigeria to find her medical credentials unrecognized and now supports newcomers facing racism and unstable housing. Dara Dillon recounts the discrimination her family faced after arriving in 2020. Together, their stories show how racism continues to shape housing access. 

Guests
Stephanie Allen, Housing Advocate, research, and systems builder
Elvanie Gray-Sandiford, Housing advocate, community worker and founder of Harambe Alliance
Dr. Fadhilah Balugu, Executive director of the African Women’s Alliance of Waterloo region 
Dara Dillon, Caribbean-born, Canadian-based strategist, speaker, and system builder  

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This episode explores how racialized women have fought for safety, dignity, and belonging in Canadian housing systems built to exclude them. Andrea Reimer revisits early Chinese immigration, showing how policies like the head tax and the Chinese Exclusion Act created a “bachelor society,” separated families, and excluded women—consequences that historian Catherine Clement notes endured for generations. The story then moves to 1970s Toronto, where Trinidadian immigrant Ceta Ramkhalawansingh became a housing activist defending her student coop. Finally, architect Adeem Younis recounts fleeing war in Gaza, surviving homelessness, and now supporting refugees facing similar instability. 

Guests
Catherine Clement, community historian, author, and curator excavating Chinese Canadian memory and history; Former executive at Vancouver Foundation 
Ceta Ramkhalawansingh, Indo-Caribbean city builder, feminist, and housing activist 
Adeen Younis, Palestinian architect, community developer, and settlement worker  

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The season finale focuses on Jayne Malenfant, a nonbinary researcher whose experiences with hidden homelessness and unsafe housing mirror the series’ core themes. Jayne explains how housing insecurity often goes unnoticed and how genderdiverse people, especially youth, are pushed into homelessness through family rejection, discrimination, and the lack of safe, affirming options. They also highlight communitybased supports—mutual aid, chosen family, and peerled housing—that provide care where systems fail. Andrea and writerproducer Linda Rourke close the season reflecting on stories of resistance and imagining housing systems rooted in dignity, belonging, and collective responsibility. 

Guests
Jayne Malenfant, non-binary research at McGill University studying the past, present and future of queer and trans youth homelessness through lived experience and radical imagination 

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In the Season 2 premiere of She. They. Us., host Andrea Reimer explores ongoing housing challenges for women and gender-diverse people in Canada. We start this season with some good news about Neha, a human rights-based housing review panel established by the National Housing Council. To understand why this matters so much, we will talk to advocates Arlene Hache and Stefania Seccia from the Women’s National Housing & Homelessness Network and Margaret Wanyioke, who shares her family’s harrowing journey to safe housing. We will also check in with Pan-Canadian Voice for Women’s Housing founder Janice Abbott.

Guests: Janice Abbott, Arlene Hache, Stefania Seccia, Margaret Wanyioke

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One paradox of the housing crisis is that governments are good at creating complexity, but not at solving it. Ashley, a community advocate in North Bay, Ontario shares her struggle to afford housing despite full-time work. Journalist Frances Bula explains how decades of policy decisions and underinvestment led to today’s crisis. Former Chief Innovation Fellow for Canada Mike Moffatt reflects on the challenges of addressing complex problems within Canada’s equally complex federal government.

Guests: Frances Bula, Ashley Di Benedetto, Dr. Mike Moffatt

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In this episode of She. They. Us., we shift from federal policy to Vancouver, one of Canada’s most expensive cities. Jill Atkey of BC Non-Profit Housing Association, former mayor Gregor Robertson, and Lisa Guerin—who once lived in supportive housing and now manages it—discuss how local decisions, including a pause on new supportive housing, are affecting the health, safety, and dignity of people at the frontlines of the housing crisis.

Guests: Jill Atkey, Gregor Robertson, Lisa Guerin

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When women and gender-diverse people don’t have access to safe housing, and they face particularly high violence sleeping outside, where do they end up? We talk to researcher Jesse Jenkinson with Toronto’s MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions about the skyrocketing numbers of people accessing health care resources for shelter, the stress it’s putting on people and systems, and the shocking results for women and gender-diverse people.

Guests: Jesse Jenkinson

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In this episode, we explore the urgent need for trans-inclusive housing in Canada through the powerful stories of Jodi Gray and Martha Singh Jennings. Jodi shares her journey from unsafe housing to managing Aoki Ross House – Canada’s only supportive housing project for trans and gender diverse people – while Martha highlights specific challenges facing trans and queer newcomers experienced through her work with the 519.

Guests: Jodi Gray, Martha Singh Jennings

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In the Season 2 finale of She. They. Us. guests from all the episodes this season share their hopes and dreams for housing including Gregor Robertson, now federal Minister of Housing, who outlines an ambitious federal housing plan. We also meet Annika and Cheyanne from 100 More Homes Penticton who point the way to what community-driven progress for households led by women and gender-diverse people can look like. 

Guests: Margaret Wanyioke, Lisa Guerin, Janice Abbott, Ashley DiBennetto, Jill Atkey, Gregor Robertson, Annika Kirk, Cheyanne Fath, Arlene Hache

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When you think about the housing crisis what’s the image that comes to mind and who is in that image? We’ve been spending a lot of time in Canada talking about a housing crisis over the past few years but not a lot of time talking about what that means, or who it’s really impacting. In episode 1 we unpack who is losing in the housing crisis, the surprising winners and why you should care.

Guests: Janice Abbott , Nathan Lauster, Rowan Burdge, Alina Mackay, Victoria Barclay, Carolyn Whitzman

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For renters the housing crisis has been hard, and for women who rent it’s been harder still. We’ll hear from Hilary Chappel and Heather Hanninen Fairbairn about their experiences trying to hold on to housing and stay in your community when you’re on a fixed income and the rents keep going up.

Guests: Hilary Chappel, Heather Hanninen Fairbairn

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If it’s hard for governments to see the experiences of women in the housing crisis, it’s harder still for them to see the challenges women with intersectional identities have to deal with. We will talk to Alina Mackay and Victoria Barclay on the Finding Rooms for Families research project, and hear from Lori Deets and Khristine Cariño about their experiences.

Guests: Alina Mackay, Victoria Barclay, Lori Deets, Khristine Cariño

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Gender-diverse people in Canada face discrimination in many aspects of their lives and this all collides in a housing crisis in difficult and often dangerous situations. We will talk to Aaron Munro, a counselor and housing advocate for trans, gender-diverse and two-spirit people, and hear from Avery Shannon about what it’s been like for them to  navigate a world still coming to grips with gender diversity during a housing crisis.

Guests: Aaron Munro, Avery Shannon

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Trans women experience high levels of both poverty and violence, two of the biggest factors in determining whether you are likely to be in housing crisis. Trans and housing rights activist Susan Gapka shares her story of the long road she’s had to take to find a safe place to call home, even as she won protections and rights for others, and we’ll hear from Aaron Munro about how women’s organizations can provide safer spaces for trans women.

Guests: Aaron Munro, Susan Gapka

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You can’t talk about women, gender-diverse people and housing without talking about gender-based violence. But you also can’t talk about violence without talking about solutions for safe and affordable housing for survivors. We’ll talk to Cindy Chiasson from Betty’s Haven in the Yukon and Michaela Mayer at the Canadian Centre for Women’s Empowerment, learn about the experiences of newcomers facing intimate partner violence from Sara Eftekar and hear from Syreeta Moore about what it is like to have to make the choice between violence and poverty.

Guests: Carolyn Whitzman, Cindy Chiasson, Michaela Mayer, Sara Eftekar, Syreeta Moore

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Over the past six episodes we’ve heard about how much harder it is for women and gender-diverse people to find safe, affordable and appropriate housing. In the last two episodes of this series we will be looking at solutions that specifically acknowledge these challenges and show how women across the country have been mobilizing their resources to create change.

Guests: Carolyn Whitzman, Alina Mackay, Victoria Barclay, Irene Gannitsos, Carla Guerrera, Krista Pilz

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In this final episode we will look at the most powerful tool we have to make room for women and gender-diverse people in housing in Canada, and how you can find it and use it.

Guests: Krista Pilz, Melissa Campbell, Heather Hanninen Fairbairn, Lori Deets, Sara Eftekar, Janice Abbott

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