2024 Documentary
Congratulations –
99.3 County FM - Voices from The Shadows: Homelessness in Rural Communities
Winner’s Name(s): Dave MacKay, Phil Knox, Mark Rodgers, Astird Young, Wendy Measley, Jim JJ Johnston, Chuck Dailey; Andew Daily, Gillian Carson, Pat Larkin, Liz Simpson, Craig Mills, Lorraine Wilson, Cliff Prentice and Larry Richardson.
CJPE is a volunteer-run station serving Hastings & Prince Edward County (PEC) since 2014. PEC is a unique rural community in southeastern Ontario where the significant farming community is becoming gentrified with high-end hotels, vacation rentals, and restaurants due to PEC’s spectacular beaches, charm, and vibrant music/arts scene. This explosion of vacation rentals and rising real estate prices is proving difficult for many local residents to purchase homes and/or afford rentals.
Background
One of our volunteer announcers recommended that we examine the unique homeless issue in hopes of creating greater awareness within the community and government, and the charitable organizations that could help make a difference.
Our smaller community doesn’t have a system to easily help the homeless, unlike the larger cities’ resources and shelters. Many of our unhomed are ‘hidden in the shadows’ and while they aren’t necessarily living on the street, they may instead be couch-surfing, in tents or vehicles. Many homeless people have left the area to seek greater support in larger centres.
Tackling the Problem
We produced an eight-week documentary series (eight 30-minute episodes), narrated by the acclaimed, former CBC journalist, Wendy Mesley. Three of our volunteer broadcasters conducted 60+ interviews with the homeless and those trying to help them. Throughout the process, we wanted to give the unhomed a voice ... to respectfully tell their stories about how and why they ended up in this terrible situation. They were courageous in sharing their stories, and the process was emotionally taxing for the interviewees and our veteran interviewers.
Since airing and through our research, some announced infrastructure improvements suggest the documentary had an impact, and emotionally engaged our listeners as well.
Editorial Coverage
The series struck a nerve, highlighted by media interest in the critical issue of homelessness in our rural community:
- The Belleville Intelligencer: “The “Voices from the Shadows” stories are uplifting, surprising, and gut-wrenchingly hard to imagine for those of us who have never experienced such challenges.”
- The Picton Gazette: “The object was to build understanding and empathy but by no means are we pretending to be experts on homelessness,” said Craig Mills, GM, 99.3 County FM.
- Kingston This Week: “A powerful video was produced to introduce you to the series”. You can watch the video here https://youtu.be/IUlHBw6u8MI.”
Research
We conducted a benchmark (pre-airing) survey, followed by a post-airing study to help determine the impact of the documentary series:
- Respondents’ opinion that homelessness is a major issue saw an increase of 22% in the second survey.
- Lack of affordable housing was citied in both surveys as a big issue, followed by mental health issues.
- Survey 1: 67% stated that the waiting list for affordable housing is more than 5 years, jumping to 73% in survey 2.
- Survey 1: 8% reported they have experienced homelessness, with a measurable increase of 17% (survey 2).
Infrastructure Improvements
Local council and municipal staff have since implemented warming centres and are coordinating with food banks and food distribution.
Through provincial government funding, transitional housing is being established such as the conversion of the former Maples Retirement Home (Picton) to transitional housing.
Check out the award-winning submission: