Mechele and Melissa tell us about working the front lines of the Homelessness Crisis

Mechele Tebrake is community care worker who has 23 years experience working the front lines of the homelessness crisis. Melissa Schembri is a frontline worker who has been doing this work since 2018. There are over 2000 Londoners who are experiencing homelessness here in London and that number grows each and every month. People like Mechele and Melissa provide support to these individuals who are living rough. We talked a bit about this during our first segment - At a recent city council meeting, members of council were considering a number of policy changes that a group of 78 frontline workers say would have made their work harder and the lives of the folx they serve harder still. When council met to discuss the changes, These frontline workers filled the gallery too. This caught council’s attention and the changes didn’t happen. On top of the 2200 folx experiencing homelessness in London, there are another 83,000 individuals living rough across Ontario. As Londoners, we hear about and witness the homelessness crisis on a regular basis. Mechelle, Melissa and their colleagues are immersed in it every single day.