Local activist, politician and academic Michelle Bilek has called Mississauga home even before it was named in 1974.
But she hasn’t always had a roof over her head. The first time she was homeless, Michelle was only a child.
“My mom grabbed me and my siblings, and we left my father in the night.”
For months, the family bounced between a shelter and staying with family. In the 1970’s, reprieve from “domestic violence” was a new topic for media attention – the suburbs had far fewer supports than Toronto.
Dedicated to social justice, Michelle has had a strong community presence for decades which has led to saying the quiet part out loud – “Sharing stories is one of the best ways to help people feel less alone – and to make it clear to those in power what poverty looks like.”
For Bilek, this meant gathering and sharing stories of those who were afraid to speak, putting data onto narrative, and moving policy to budget funding.
Michelle’s dad struggled with mental health and addiction. Stigma and lack of supports prevented him from receiving treatment until much later in life.
“I think [my dad’s] traumas and my experiences of that led me to get into psychosocial work,” Bilek says. “So I could learn a lot more about treatment options, as well as what he was seeing, thinking, and feeling.” Bilek earned a Bachelor’s of Arts in Sociology from McMaster University with honours. Later in life, Bilek went back to school, studying Women and Gender Studies at York University. She says she was able to get scholarships, had wonderful professors, and gained a deep understanding of gender-based violence, equity, stigma, and racism.
However, through most of her undergraduate education, she was once again homeless.
“Mom decided, I don’t know why, on a whim, that she would leave the post office, cash out her pension and go and run a restaurant,” Bilek says. It was fine for a while. But the rent was high and the mall was new, still finding its legs. “We lost everything. I was just starting my first year of university then, and we’re homeless again.”
Bilek worked at a hotel in the food service department, taking night shifts as often as possible. Bilek slept there when she could. She stayed in her car when she couldn’t.
“It was stuffed with all my stuff. I had everything I owned in the back seat and in the trunk,” she says. At the time, she didn’t consider herself homeless. The stigma, lack of resources, information, and understanding made it an uncomfortable idea that didn’t quite resonate.
“I don’t think I identified until one specific incident.” It was a winter evening and snowing. She’d had an afternoon class earlier in the day, and was sleeping before her evening class started at seven. A security guard came over, knocked on her window and woke her up. “You know classes are canceled, right?” Bilek says he asked. She hadn’t. “He glanced in the car and was looking at me, almost like a light bulb went off,” she says. “He goes, ‘you know, you can’t stay here like that. You can’t.”
She drove off and found a parking lot near a strip mall. She stayed there often until they managed to get back on their feet.
“Being homeless is a very busy job. Staying alive is difficult every day,” Bilek says. “I just don’t think our power holders understand that the system has failed people, and that’s why there are people on the streets.”
In high school, she’d been asked to research the political system and parties. She identified the most with the New Democratic Party (NDP) and started volunteering on campaigns, which continued through university and beyond. She ran for office under the NDP five times, and twice municipally.
“When I was talking about these issues, workers’ rights, but specifically around poverty and homelessness, it wasn’t unusual for people to say ‘what are you talking about?’” Bilek says. “People were at the peripherals. They were so ashamed, so hiding, everybody hid. No one spoke about it.”
Bilek held multiple community table and board positions focusing on poverty, spreading awareness, and sharing the stories that many were afraid to talk about. One of her boards oversaw federal funding initiatives in the community.
At a regional conference, she learned about a pilot project happening in Hamilton and Waterloo – quantifying the number of people experiencing homelessness in a given community. She says this was an important step towards visibility. “I don’t think at that time we did a good job understanding how many were poor, or on the social housing waiting list, or utilizing social assistance,” Bilek says.
In the time since, Bilek has further grown professionally, personally, and as an activist. She’s left full-time bureaucratic jobs, board positions, table seats, and not-for-profits as she figures out what change she needs to accomplish in the moment. Often, that comes down to what people truly need, not just what politicians think they do.
“Bringing the voices of people with lived experiences, centering them, not just not just consulting them, not just speaking for them, but centering them and embedding them within power-holding structures is the only way that we can actually solve these issues.”
Bilek says that people in power or positions of privilege may understand in theory that anyone can experience homelessness or poverty, but can’t grasp the realities of it. Or what’s needed to survive.
“Once you have to live that very busy life of trying to survive and being as creative as possible, you get a better understanding of why people do whatever they have to do to survive,” she says. “ I’m thinking of stealing food, of finding means to make money under the table, because if they can’t, they’ll lose their income.”
Because of her past work, Bilek has connections to a lot of power-holders. She knows everything from housing and construction planning to municipal barriers and bylaws. She says she knows the infrastructure side of things and the homelessness service sector to a tee.
She also knows how to make the most of her connections. “I take a tactical approach. Politicians don’t want to be attacked; what they want you to do is provide them with solutions,” she says. “There are times when you have to be aggressive too, because the rights of individuals are being trampled on.”
Bilek says that despite increased visibility and many activist efforts, things have gotten worse in many ways. “When I was experiencing poverty, when I identified and understood people who are experiencing homelessness, it wasn’t the catastrophe that it is today, the crisis level that is today,” she says.
“We have to really tell politicians, remind them that people may be homeless, but they’re also your citizens. They’re not a problem. You are the problem because you caused people to be in this situation.”