My name's Bryan Esslambre,
I was born on Montreal in 1988.
I moved to BC when I was 7.
Had the basic childhood, went to school and everything.
Went to high school out in Surrey, and that's where I found my passion for football.
And I was doing great things with it.
In my grade 12th year, my mother passed away, which had a very big impact on my life.
I started smoking a lot of weed, and it just led me down a bad path
to wasting money, not going to school and...
basically all of the wrong choices that you're told not to make when you're a kid.
And... I wouldn't change it, I would try and help other people from not doing those choices,
because I am where I am because of what I did, and it's made me who I am,
and I'm not ungrateful,
but I know that 5 years ago,
I didn't see myself staying in a shelter,
but I'm glad that I'm here than rather out on the streets.
It's honestly just a big learning experience.
I mean, who wants to be in a shelter?
They're not the worst living conditions.
I can honestly say that, from what I've seen, down on the downtown eastside [of Vancouver]
I know that you get your locker checked on every day.
If you have food, it's not allowed.
There are constant bedbugs.
Here they do clean it quite well,
but living in a place with 60 other guys
isn't really anything that people envision for themselves.
I mean, no one really thinks
"oh, no one's gonna have their own bedroom, no one's gonna have somewhere to sleep,
no one's gonna have their own food and be able to take care of themselves",
but the wrong choices can lead you anywhere.
Uh, my name's Trinity,
and right now I'm living in a transition house for women 16 to 24 years old.
I'm from Yellowknife, Northwest Territories originally,
and I moved around a lot when I was young.
Since I was 16 I was pretty much on my own.
And uh, I somehow made it to Vancouver like a year and a half ago.
And um, I was struggling with homelessness a lot,
and I was in and out of SRO's [ single room occupancies ] and shelters.
Like, a lot of the shelters had gotten shut down this year, so there was less,
and I found that it was really hard trying to get into a shelter,
and so there were a lot of times where I was sleeping in alleys and stuff like that.
And I finally found this place, which, uh, I'm allowed to stay here for a year,
until I can get up on my feet.
It's not as bad as the other places I've lived, it's actually pretty nice here.
The living conditions are... it's a clean place, there's no bugs, there's no rodents.
Um, my boyfriend that I'm with right now, we've been together for about a year,
and uh, he was also homeless on and off again with me a lot of the times.
Like sometimes I'd have a place and he wouldn't, or he'd have a place and I wouldn't.
Right now, he's staying at the Lucky Lodge Hotel, an SRO, which is pretty atrocious.
I'd say it's one of the worst places either of us have ever stayed.
Um, my name is Nick, I live in this shit SRO, Lucky Lodge.
As you can see, there's obviously no sink, no oven...
nothing really... circuit always breaks because what goes on...
because you can't have 2 things plugged in at once.
It just goes out...
there's like a huge insect problem.
What they should do is just tear the whole damn building down.
I came out of detox and I just figured, I wanted just a new place cause I was homeless at the time,
so I just got this place in literally one day.
Shouldn't even be here in the bloody first place.
They charge $10 a night for guests.
It's outrageous, considering it's $400 a month for this type of place.
It's an SRO so it's not covered under the Residential Tenancy Act,
so you can't just go to, like, arbitration and bitch at them.
It's not under the same act, it's a completely different tenancy act,
so they can get away with anything 'cause it's run like a hotel.
So the owners can make any rules they want, and they enforce it.
And the reality in the news,
they just look at the idea of an SRO as a broad generalization.
They just say "oh, that's low income housing, single residential occupancy,
a single human being could live in there"
They always use the words "could" and "live", like totally it's more like surviving in this dump.
It's a roof is what it is. A little privacy. That's it.
Um, I have been looking for quite a bit of work,
but it's listing this place as your address on your resume,
people immediately reject it just because it's a shelter.
So, it's not a hindrance...
but I do know that people would accept like a post office box better than a shelter.
I would be in a very different place if I had even just stuck with my sport,
but I'm trying to get back into it now.
I'm working on my education with the programs they have here.
And a lot of people are in my corner trying to make sure that I turn out alright.
Um, my hopes for the future is, y'know, I'll make it as an artist somehow, y'know.
Whether that be with painting or with film.
Um, and to also have my own place I could call home,
that y'know, I could have like family and friends over whenever I like,
and it's clean and safe.
I'm grateful that I found this place.
It was a nice place to find,
but I am looking forward to the day
that I can get out and then give back,
and hopefully help people not end up where I ended up.
[ Captions by: the Radical Access Mapping Project, On Un-ceded Coast Salish Territory, 2013 ]