🏠 From a Tent in November to Kingston's Housing Committee and a Council Run: Kevin Smith

In November 2021, Kevin Smith spent a night in a tent tucked behind a Kingston Walmart while a snowstorm blew in through the walls. He was 24. A few hours in, he found himself wondering what he had done in this life to deserve it.

Five years on, he sits on the City of Kingston's Housing and Homelessness Advisory Committee. He co-wrote a song about that life that has been watched close to 19,000 times on YouTube. And this fall, he is on the ballot for council in Kingscourt-Rideau.

I met him at the Rideau Heights Community Centre to find out how he got from one to the other.

Kevin Smith grew up in Cornwall, Ontario, and moved to Kingston in 2021 for college, with an eye on business, music and digital media. When those plans changed, he stayed.

"The original plan was see if I like it after three months," Kevin told me. "Within two weeks, I told everybody I love it."

What won him over was the crowd. "I'm from a small town. I'm a very social guy," he said, and Kingston has a lot of younger people.

His parents still live in Cornwall, and most of his extended family is in Ottawa.

Kevin told Michelle Dorey Forestell of the Kingstonist in December 2025 that he had been homeless every year since 2020. His hardest night came in November 2021, not long after he arrived.

He was 24, and he had set up a tent behind a Walmart, in a stretch of long grass and trees that has since been cleared. He chose it so no one parking nearby would see him, and so police would not tell him to move along.

Then a snowstorm hit, and the snow kept getting in until the tent was barely any shelter at all. "A tent in the winter doesn't work very well," he said. Three hours in, he remembers thinking, "What have I done in this life to deserve this?"

Food was easier to find. "In Kingston at least there's a lot of places for free food," he said, and when he was homeless he went to almost every one of them, "just to make sure you're eating."

Kevin carried the idea for a song and its video for a few years before the words came, in November 2024. By January 2025 he had lyrics but nobody to turn them into music, so he posted in the Kingston Ontario Community Facebook group, hoping someone with a basement studio would answer.

Steve G did. He is a country songwriter and an army and first-responder veteran from Plaster Rock, New Brunswick, who now lives in Bath and helped found the Kingston chapter of Music Healing Veterans. After their first meeting, Steve surprised Kevin by taking the early lyrics to Michael Hanson, a founding member and the original drummer of Glass Tiger, who runs Radar Love Records.

Hanson produced the track and wrote one of its lines, which makes him a co-writer alongside Kevin and Steve. "I almost fainted in excitement," Kevin said of the moment Steve told him.

The song is sung from the point of view of someone living in shelters and on the street, and includes the line, "You may think it's easy to put me in a mould, but I'm just out here fighting off the cold."

Wayne Benjamin of Fabrikated ProjeX directed the video, shot in January 2026 from a concept he, Kevin and Steve worked out together. There are no actors, just the three of them, and the bathroom scene was filmed at Steve's house in Bath. It ends with Kevin smiling, having found a home. "That is the most realistic part of the video," he said, "because every time I've been homeless and got a place, well, I was excited."

The song debuted with a release party at Time Out Bar & Bistro on December 13, 2025, and Radar Love Records released the official version on February 23, 2026. The video has close to 19,000 views, and the song will be on Steve's next album.

Watching someone else sing his story was "very rewarding," Kevin said. "I was very proud."

The Housing and Homelessness Advisory Committee gives Kingston City Council advice on housing and homelessness. It is not council itself. "Everything we pass has to be approved by them," Kevin said. "Otherwise, it doesn't happen."

He joined after seeing a City of Kingston Facebook post in October 2024 looking for people with lived experience. "At first it started out as a joke because I didn't think I'd get on," he said. Two months later, he was on.

The committee meets every second month, in the afternoon, and each meeting comes with about 90 pages of reports. Reading them is part of the job, he said, "so you're not in the meeting going, 'What are we talking about?'" Much of the work is lining up funding for housing to bring to City Hall.

Asked what the committee has done, the first thing Kevin mentioned was community bonds. They let residents and local organizations invest in affordable housing projects and earn a modest return, with the money staying in Kingston. City council backed exploring them in 2025, and the City is now working with Tapestry Community Capital to see whether they can work here. They already have in Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa and Haliburton.

Kevin has been on the committee for almost two years and enjoys it "very much." His term ends in November, and he hopes to be reappointed.

In the fall of 2025, after about six months without a home, during which Threads of Hope had been supporting him, Kevin moved into an apartment above Suits Nightclub at 46 Montreal Street, with help from Eric at the Salvation Army. A month later, on November 26, fire broke out in the building. Kevin was on the phone with Erica, also of the Salvation Army, when it started. "Her reaction was, 'Okay, I'm gonna hang up now. Get out of the building,'" he said.

He was treated in hospital for smoke inhalation, CBC News reported. The Red Cross covered hotel stays for the first 72 hours and the City paid for a motel after that. By early December, Kevin was in a hotel in Gananoque with his two puppies, Princess and Shelby, not knowing whether his guitar had survived. "It was terrifying," he said of the fire. "But the community support afterwards was great." Joe's M.I.L.L., the free instrument lending library at the Tett Centre, offered him a guitar, though his own turned up undamaged.

Erica helped him find his next place. "It only took 28 days," Kevin said. "That's the shortest time it's ever taken me to get a place." Before that, his fastest had been three and a half months. One thing that helped: Conny Glenn, the Sydenham District councillor who chairs the Housing and Homelessness Advisory Committee, gave him a reference. They had worked together on the committee for more than a year. "That's called a good working relationship," he said.

Kevin volunteers around the city. At the Kingston Canadian Film Festival, he scans tickets, supports events and works the red carpet crowds. "If you have social anxiety, don't do it," he said. "I love to be around big crowds." In 2025, he was on screen there, in Doom Boogie, a horror film shot around Kingston. This September, he was on the crew at the RoadTrip Music Festival in Springer Market Square.

On Wednesday nights, Kevin plays in the Kingston Mixed Pub Dart League, which moves between pubs around the city. "I'm quite the sharpshooter," he said. "I score often."

He has been a Kingston Frontenacs fan since he moved here in 2021. Cornwall had no OHL team to follow.

At home are Princess and Shelby, littermates he found through a Kijiji ad in Peterborough in November 2025. "Normally you don't do two of something at the same time," he said. "But in this case, it was either both or none. So I said both." Princess is the troublemaker, and this summer she made it into Pupvote's Cutest Pets of Summer 2026 photo book.

His go-to poutine is from Smoke's Poutinerie: pulled pork, onion ring, or the classic. He likes it enough to have a poutine tattoo on his forearm, done at Mutiny Tattoo.

Five years after that night in the tent, Kevin's name is on the ballot. He is one of three candidates in District 7, Kingscourt-Rideau, in Kingston's municipal election on October 26, 2026. The others are Michael Judd and the incumbent, Brandon Tozzo.

Running had been on his mind for about a year, and the fire decided it. "After the fire I didn't like the response," he told me. "People are just gonna tell you to be quiet if I don't run." He told Tori Stafford of the Kingstonist, "I believe that there should be at least one person sitting on city council in every city across the country who has experienced homelessness like myself."

Housing is at the centre of his platform, including faster placements for people who have waited longest for social housing, and turning vacant buildings into affordable units. He also wants more frequent buses and repaired sidewalks. The full list is on his campaign site.

Kevin told me he has worked on elections before: phone banking and checking voter data for MP Mark Gerretsen's 2025 re-election campaign, and working as an information officer for Elections Canada in that federal election. This time, he said, he has been at "almost every event the city has." "I know how to work a room," he said. "Let's see if I can win an election."

In the spirit of fairness, Kingston Spotlight has also written about Michael Judd, and an article on Brandon Tozzo is underway.

We ask everyone we feature to point us at a local business or organization they rate. Kevin named Central City Auto Sales, and Corey there in particular. "They've allowed me to use their office space," Kevin said. "Thank you to Corey. One of my biggest supporters."

Corey saw one of Kevin's posts in the Kingston Ontario Community Facebook group and offered to help. Central City is a family-run used car dealership at 787 Princess Street that offers financing for all credit situations and describes itself as autism-friendly.

In five years, Kevin has gone from a tent behind a Walmart to a home of his own, a seat on a City committee and a song thousands of people have heard. What stays with me is how many people turn up in his story along the way.

Sometimes he asked. A Facebook post looking for help with a song brought Steve G, who took the lyrics to a founder of Glass Tiger. Sometimes people saw the need and stepped in. Threads of Hope supported him through months on the street. Joe's M.I.L.L. offered him a guitar after the fire. Corey at Central City saw a post and offered him a desk. And more than a year of working alongside Conny Glenn on the housing committee meant a councillor's reference when he needed a new place.

If you are the one who needs help right now, his story is a reason to ask. And whenever you see someone who needs help, I encourage you to get involved, whether directly or by supporting one of the many organizations on the front line.