By John Corrado

★★★ (out of 4)

The 2023 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 27th to May 7th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here.

During the pandemic, Khaleel Sievwright decided to put his skills as a carpenter to good use and started building tiny shelters for homeless people in Toronto. But these small wooden shelters, made to give those living on the street a place to sleep that would protect them from the elements, became a flashpoint in how the city deals with its unhoused population.

In the documentary Someone Lives Here, director Zack Russell follows Sievwright as he goes up against Mayor John Tory and Toronto City Council, who are trying to get the shelters removed on the grounds of them being deemed a fire hazard. Despite the city initially suggesting a partnership, they reversed course and decided to order the removal of the shelters instead, reaching a boiling point with the violent clearing of homeless encampments to the tune of $1.9 million.

This whole situation will be very familiar to those of us in Toronto. Russell’s film does a good job taking us behind the scenes of it, showing both Sievwright’s well-meaning reasons for building the shelters, and the indifference of the city towards the needs of the homeless. This includes the first-person accounts of Taka, an unhoused woman who didn’t want to show her face on camera but lends her voice to the film and provides personal testimony as to how one of the tiny shelters saved her life.

Russell gains access to Sievwright in his warehouse as he builds the tiny shelters, which are insulated and designed to be heated by a person’s own body heat. Sievwright comes across across as a down to earth figure who drinks beer and quotes Nietzsche, with his construction background and his own brush with homelessness inspiring him to build these shelters as a way to help. Sievwright received attention and praise from all corners for his initiative (including from Drew Barrymore), which made the staunch pushback from municipal officials more jarring.

Russell’s film very much unfolds as the story of someone who saw a way to help, only to get tangled up in a tense legal battle involving city bureaucracy and NIMBY protests by citizens who didn’t want homeless people in “their” parks (one woman from a nearby townhouse speaks openly to the camera about getting tents removed from public spaces, seemingly believing herself to be the hero of the piece). At an always engaging 75 minutes, Someone Lives Here is an important film that offers an on-the-ground look at innovative solutions to the homelessness crisis in our city and the barriers to implementing them.

Screenings: Saturday, April 29th, 5:30 PM at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema; Thursday, May 4th, 4:15 PM at TIFF Bell Lightbox 1. Tickets can be purchased here, and the film will also be streaming online across Canada from May 5th to 9th.