Canadian doc Someone Lives Here seeks tiny shelter from the storm of homelessness

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For many Canadians, the arrival of COVID-19 in 2020 brought with it an urgent reminder of how precarious and ever-changing our realities can be. The first year of the pandemic saw social resources and infrastructure designed to assist those experiencing homelessness strained beyond the point of critical mass, especially in Toronto, where supports were already failing to achieve sustainable change for individuals. As the year continued, encampments throughout the city’s public parks became more prevalent and more densely populated.

Carpenter Khaleel Seivwright noticed the ways in which the city, then under mayor John Tory, was unable to care for its unhoused residents. He left his full-time job to dedicate himself to building small, insulated “tiny shelters.” Emerging as one of the pandemic’s folk heroes in the wake of the ongoing failings of public health and government bodies, Seivwright says his tiny shelters were informed by a harm-reduction ethos and offered a direct and immediate intervention into the reality of living unhoused.

The undertaking – both poignant and maddening – was captured by filmmaker Zack Russell for a new documentary, Someone Lives Here. After earning awards on the festival circuit, including top prizes at Hot Docs and the Vancouver International Film Festival, Russell’s tender and urgent film is receiving a limited theatrical release this weekend in Toronto and Vancouver.

The Globe and Mail sat down with Russell and Seivwright to discuss the ethical and political demands of documenting a crisis, the importance of individual action, and the future of the tiny shelters project.

Khaleel, I know that you were approached by several filmmakers who wanted to make documentaries about your work. Did you have any hesitations when Zack approached you?

Seivwright: I initially just said “no” without taking that much time to think about it. It was something I found to be uncomfortable. But he was persistent and kept asking to be involved in some way, so I asked him to help me make a how-to video about building the tiny shelters. It was great working with him in that way and, after that, it made sense to go forward with the film. As things were developing, the idea of having evidence captured by filming seemed like a valuable thing to ensure that things don’t disappear, as so many other questionable things that have happened have.

Russell: I’ve never made a documentary before and I was surprised [by the fact that] there’s a great cost to being filmed. I don’t think that ever goes away. If there’s a camera on you, it takes something from you. I appreciate that now in a way that I didn’t before filming.

Zack, can you talk about your approach to filming the houseless folks and encampment residents? It feels like the ethics of that informed the artistic choices in the film, and vice versa, in a very human way.

Russell: The more I got to know what it was like to live in an encampment or in a shelter, the more I saw how the media interacts with the people who live in these places, and the more I was nervous about what I was doing and wanted to recede as much as possible from the filming. It was more about helping someone survive, which is a very different activity than just filming someone.

People always have a lot of questions about filming the unhoused but, like with any marginalized person, there is no hard-and-fast rule. And there’s a multiplicity of reasons why someone would or wouldn’t want to be filmed. It’s about relationship building – the relationship has to be more important than the interview.

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Along those lines, Khaleel, there’s a sense that you’ve designed and built these tiny shelters with similar intentions, of privacy and self-sufficiency, and informed by your own experience of homelessness.

Seivwright: Just before I moved back to Toronto, I lived in a community in B.C. where I built something very similar to [the tiny shelters]. That was what I lived in while I was in this community and moving around between different spaces. It was also when I got the idea to use my own body heat in the structures. When I moved back to Toronto, I saw people living in tents in a way that I had never seen before – it seemed like every park had an encampment. Building these tiny shelters was something I could do to help someone and, also, something I considered having to use myself. The only thought I had at the time was, “This will stop people from freezing to death.”

Zach, something I appreciated about the film is the way that you were in this role of witness. Witnessing the city bureaucracy that keeps people in inhumane situations, the way that legal and civic systems were weaponized against Khaleel, the violent forced evictions of encampment residents. How did you approach that role?

Russell: I think that the lens I chose to witness these people and this issue – which is really the lens of Khaleel and his project – is one of great hope. It bucks against that future-lessness. The only way to witness these horrors is through revolutionary action because, otherwise, what are you doing besides wallowing in misery? I feel like the spirit of the tiny shelters and the spirit of Khaleel is the spirit one needs to have in order to be a witness like that. It’s not this self-flagellating position of wondering how we got this way as a society.

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Khaleel, there’s a point in the film where you’re on the phone with your lawyer, navigating the charges the city has put forth, and you say “I’m not someone who considers myself an activist.” Has your stance on that changed?

Seivwright: I continue to not like the word “activism” because it makes it seem like an extreme, abnormal thing to do. For me, I was just doing what I thought made sense. I’m currently working as part of a non-profit called Two Steps Home. Our intention is to build transitional housing in the form of cabin communities for folks living in Toronto. It’s a continuation of my work with tiny shelters, and I don’t know if that makes me an activist. It’s just what continues to make sense.

There was a screening of the film at an elementary school where a young kid asked me, “Were you thinking about changing the world when you were my age?” I was like, “No, not at all!” As a kid I was doing the stupidest things and not thinking about the world at all. And what I answered was: Don’t make changing the world the ultimate goal for your entire life. Do what you are interested in; do what you can actually put your entire self into and not have any regrets about. If life is worth protecting it’s also worth fully living.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

Special to The Globe and Mail