(Tom) Hello and welcome to an all new Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

You know, each week we bring you stories that celebrate Southern Arizona and this week is no exception.

But we also hope to showcase all members of our community equitably.

And this week we'll show you one group that's especially vulnerable to the hardships that have been brought on by the housing crisis.

So please stay tuned.

Sister José Women's Center provides refuge and hope to many women in our community who need it.

(Guest) The cost of living has gone so high.

You can't afford it.

We do what everybody else does.

We seek shelter.

(Tom) Meet a comic book artist who puts his life story into the panels.

(Lino) I think what I was missing as a child, the loneliness, the lack of belonging, really paid off in this moment of like making the zines.

(Tom) Our desert plant series continues with the Desert Hackberry.

(Adam) It is a great screening plant.

Its foliage is dense.

(Tom) And a local flea market unlike any other.

(Vanessa) Floozy Flea really encourages you to just like be as eccentric and like crazy as possible.

(upbeat music) (Tom) Sister José Women's Center fosters a sustainable future for women of all ages experiencing homelessness.

Staff and volunteers stand by the women of Tucson with unwavering compassion and determination.

Next as our series, 'Where to Live' continues We show you how with the help of donations and grants, Sister José's offers life altering support and resources to its guests.

[MUSIC] (Woman 1) I had been living in a place for five years.

The owner of my house decided to sell the duplex property.

And the new owners gave everybody in those two places 28 days to get out.

And because I lived from check to check with the full-time job, I made enough to pay bills.

I don't have enough money to find housing now.

I was sleeping three days in my car, two days in a motel room.

You know what I mean?

Working full-time, running out of money.

(Nicola) Unhoused women are a hidden group because they hide to keep themselves safe.

Especially in Pima County.

Over the last few years, it's just skyrocketed.

(Woman 1) I have never been homeless before this ever in my life.

Like I said, I was afraid.

I was sleeping in my car.

I didn't know what to do with myself.

I didn't.

I didn't even know what I did wrong.

I think to myself sometimes it was me.

But I don't do drugs.

I don't drink.

I work five, six days a week.

I'm looking for a second job now.

I'm trying and I still can't find a place to live.

Nobody wants to let me in because I don't got the money.

I'm a 7-Eleven worker and I was working and a customer came in and told me, "You don't have to be sleeping in your car.

You don't have to be doing all this, Christine.

You work too hard."

And they told me about this place here.

And I came up here one morning and I seen the line and I see the people and I cried.

I was scared.

(Nicola) I walk into the center some mornings and I look.

And every chair is full and women are standing and other women are waiting to get in.

It's just unbelievable even though I know it's happening every day.

(Penny) Sister Jose's is a local homegrown organization.

Our founder is Jean Fedigan and Jean's been a powerhouse.

Our creation story starts with Jean out one night on soup patrol.

So they're at the men's shelter one night passing out soup.

And Jean quite innocently asks, "Where do the women sleep?"

And she was met by silence because there wasn't any place.

And she wanted to open up a shelter for women.

And two weeks later, they had a place downtown in a small chapel.

They had a coffee pot and they had blankets and they opened the doors at 8 p.m. And the first women came in.

They would do that during the cold winter months and then they would close.

It just became so obvious to her and to those other volunteers that that was not enough.

How can we help women change their lives so that they can become housed?

[MUSIC] (Nicola) We're serving over 200 women a day, many days.

We've had women here in their late 80s.

We had an 87-year-old woman who was blind.

How can a woman be on the street who can't see who's 87 years old?

(Kevin) There are women's shelters.

I won't tell you where they are.

We want them to be safe.

And there's not enough beds.

We see more and more elderly.

This is a new phenomenon.

As people's retirement and social security, if they have it, is a fixed amount.

And as housing prices skyrocket in this amazing fashion, the elderly get the brunt of that impact.

(Penny) I used to be able to help women find apartments that would be $350 a month.

That would include utilities.

That is impossible today.

(Woman 2) The cost of living has gone so high.

We can't afford it.

So basically because we can't afford it, you know, we do what everybody else does.

We seek shelter.

Well, I'm trying to get a room here because the HUD, especially subsidized housing, is difficult to attain.

(Penny) There's no apartment to rent because the vouchers now don't pay what the market value is of their rental.

So why would landlords even want to do that?

They can get more by trying to rent it to a person who's paying out of their pocket.

(Tia) We currently have a 42-bed shelter where women can come in and they always start with a week-long shelter stay.

They can come in on Tuesdays or Fridays.

Our center opens at 9 in the morning and women can come and sign up for showers, get a hot breakfast, get emergency clothing, do their laundry, and get a lunch when they're leaving.

They can stay inside throughout the morning just so that they aren't out on the street in the extreme weather.

We also have, after noon, a time where the women can rest.

We give them mats.

They can take naps or they can just hang out inside where it's nice and dark and quiet.

We encourage them to figure out what services they need so that they can end up housed successfully.

Some of the women will move past that week and be in what we call the impact project, which is a longer time that they can stay there and the case managers will work with them to figure out their next steps.

(Woman 1) I would walk in crying and they just made me feel so welcome.

And they're helping me now save up money so I can have that money to put for the applications because the application fees are 3 - 400 dollars just to put an application in and then how are you supposed to pay first month, last month's rent, keep food in your mouth.

You can't do it.

There's no way on one job.

And that's how I ended up here.

(Penny) This is hard work.

It's really hard work.

It's lots of personalities, lots of struggles, unfortunately, a lot of mental illness that we deal with and it can take its toll.

But when we have a new shift of volunteers coming in every day.

And they bring with them their compassion.

All their skills, all their experiences, they show our guests that we are a community who cares about them.

And again, it's those women putting out a hand to other women.

(Judie) I mainly sit at the front desk and take messages for people and greet our guests when they come in and see how we can help them with a meal.

I'm from a very privileged background relative to so many and knowing that there are other women out in the streets makes me feel like I need to give back.

(Woman 1) This is a house full of women and nobody even does any chores.

They do it.

The people here, they come and volunteer for us.

We should be thankful to them.

You know what I mean?

Be thankful because there's nobody out there to open their hands to you when you've got nobody and they did.

I had nobody in they're here for me.

(Nicola) Our volunteers allow us to say yes to so many more women.

(Penny) So our volunteers really help us remember our mission and remember that what we're doing is the right thing even though it's the hard thing.

But it's never so hard that we can't do it.

(Woman 1) They've helped me so much in just two weeks.

I've only been here two weeks and they're offering me a free housing for three months to not pay nothing to save up all my checks so that way I can afford to get in a place and live again as a full person.

You know?

(Nicola) We have to look at going from temporary housing to permanent housing and for a lot of the people we serve it's permanent supportive housing.

(Jennifer) Current expansion plan is we are adding adding more sleeping spaces so we're going to be adding about 13 more beds as well as making some of our current sleeping beds areas larger to accommodate people who are in wheelchairs or walkers or our guests that have pets that need to keep them in kennels.

On top of that we're adding three more showers including a handicap shower as well as two more bathroom stalls.

(Nicola) The funding we receive from the city is really critical so we can support the women that we serve.

(Jennifer) We got a grant from the city to cover the cost of the expansion so we're very very grateful for that.

It is currently ahead of schedule.

(Woman 1) Look what they're building in there to put more women in here.

You know how hard it is to take care of grown women?

A house full of grown women?

All in one room for three months at a time you know what I'm saying?

We're like cats.

[LAUGHS] (Penny) We have to really look at it as a community, as a nation, as to what our priorities are and that we need to really put the focus back on providing that safety net.

(Nicola) We need to decide that we're done having unhoused people because this can't go on anymore.

The numbers can't continue to increase.

We have to end homelessness.

(Tia) And hopefully one day we won't have to be in business anymore because people will be housed.

(Woman 1) And they deal with it every day these women do.

They deal with it every day and they still come here every day with a smile.

So yes I'm blessed.

I am so blessed to have met them.

(IN UNISON) One, two, three, GIRL POWER!

(Tom) Lino Arruda is a Brazilian transmasculine artist, graphic novelist, and activist.

He has a PhD in literature and he was awarded a 2024 Arizona Commission on the Arts Grant for Research and Development.

His work depicts trans and queer culture through monstrous embodiments that stretch beyond the highly gendered notion of human.

[Sound of Motorcycle, Astral Visions by Flor de Nopal ] The portrayal of a queer experience can be going on a bus, can be going to a restaurant, eating some things.

I really wanted to portray more of our experience, which is something that was lacking in media.

Film would represent like, lesbianity or gay people as like, just normal people with straight culture, but that have this like, different sexual activity or like, different romance, but everybody's the same.

I was not interested.

I was like, okay, what is our culture?

What are we creating?

So that really was like, I gotta draw this comic because I think a lot of people is gonna relate to it.

So that was the first time that I ever drew a comic.

And then from that, I started really thinking in comic.

[ Se Siente Master by Flor de Nopal ] So my name is Lino Arruda.

I am originally from Brazil.

I was born and lived all my life pretty much in a smaller city in S ão Paulo, Campinas My mom is an artist.

My mom's girlfriend is also an artist.

So I've been really surrounded by that because she really went out of her way to like, teach me and my sister of painting very early.

The first time I got to Tucson was through a Fulbright scholarship during my PhD program.

I came to the Institute for LGBT Studies, with the University of Arizona.

And I was researching different kinds of zines and autonomous publications made by trans people in Latin America.

In the comics community, there just aren't very many queer and trans comics.

I am an artist and a death doula and I have a background in libraries.

So I do a few different things with zines here in the community and that's how I know Lino.

I really appreciated the way that he approached storytelling in MONSTRANS and the way that he handled such like, sensitive topics with a good sense of humor.

LINO: This is how I start the book talking about this idea of like, being born in the wrong body but not through a transsexual lenses and more through a disability lenses, and how that narrative really doesn't serve disabled people, right?

The narrative of 'born in the wrong body'.

[ La Luna Pt.

1 by Flor de Nopal ] Growing up as a queer kid in Campinas, a small conservative town, not having a lot of friends and not being very immersed in the world.

So I kind of felt like I had to create my own world.

I think what I was missing as a child, the loneliness, the lack of belonging, really paid off in this moment of like, making the zines and having more people relate to it... ...and really building friendship.

I think those were like big moments for me to realize comics is something that I really want to do, but not necessarily as a career, but as an activist practice.

Zines have been historically used as an activist medium and they really promote stories that are untold and marginalized.

And I think that it makes sense that Lino started out making zines because that is really what they're there for.

And that's what a lot of queer and trans folks do end up making zines as a way to get their work, their stories, their experiences out in the world.

And so I think that the fact that like Lino was doing that, which led him to publish his own books, is like an amazing start to his career.

LINO: I started transitioning, so it was really hard to get mainstream books about transmasculinity.

So that was a moment that I was like, I need to read more about this.

I need to be more connected with other trans people.

And the zines were where I could find trans people talking about their own experiences.

My concern was how do you use human figures to not talk just about, say, abortion, not just talk about women, but also include trans men.

And also thinking about how the figure of the monster, why is that used so much by queer people?

Why is that a figure that is so interesting, so captivating, at the time so hard to pin down, right?

So transitional, so like something that you can never clearly understand is what a monster is, right?

{SOUND OF DOG GROWLING] Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, so verbal, he has a lot to say.

He has a lot of opinions about this.

Images of monstrosity or like animal bodies and hybrid bodies, because I think it does allow to like escape some of those ideas of who the human is.

I drew this comic that was something that happened to me.

It was about my life.

It was a piece about the last time I saw my grandpa.

And I also used the figure of a monster to represent that story.

[ Call on Me Master by Flor de Nopal ] I decided to do watercolor.

[LAUGHING] And, you know, comics take a lot of time and watercolor is not a very, yeah, forgiving, let's say, if you make a mistake, it's going to be there, so... That became my first book, "MONSTRANS", in which I tell a little bit of my own autobiography using monstrosity as a trope to talk about sexuality, to talk about gender, to talk about disability.

It won an award, what we call the Gay Oscars in Brazil.

[LAUGHING] It's like the award for best LGBT book of the year.

It took so long.

It was so immersive and it's a lonely process.

It's a very lonely process to create a book.

At the end, you don't even know if it makes sense to anyone.

Am I hallucinating this?

Right?

Yeah, that's kind of the journey.

[SOUND OF MOTORCYCLE, Call on Me Master by Flor de Nopal ] (Tom) Living in the Sonoran desert rewards us with many benefits should you choose to accept them.

And that includes growing native drought tolerant plants.

Now we're gonna show you one of those plants that provides food and shelter for wildlife and can act as a security hedge around your property due to its weaponized branches.

[Birds chirping] My name is Adam Farrell-Wortman, and I'm the Director of Horticulture at the Tucson Botanical Gardens.

[Birds chirping] This is the desert hackberry, Celtis Pallida.

It is a native desert shrub.

It is fruiting out right now.

And you can eat them.

They're a little sweet with a seed crunch.

They're high in antioxidants, calcium, and vitamin C. These fruits are also very important to fruit-eating birds and other animals, like squirrels or rabbits, when they drop on the ground.

it loses its leaves in the wintertime.

It grows to be in the neighborhood between 15 to 30 feet high, and can reach about 6 to 8 foot radius.

It is a great screening plant, as its foliage is dense from ground to top.

It makes a great plant to plant on the edges of your property, to use as a privacy screen, possibly.

The plant does have thorns throughout, so we don't usually plant a plant like this right next to our house or right in the middle of the yard.

But it's great for the side yards, and it's the type of plant no one wants to climb through.

The leaves are eaten by caterpillars of our native butterfly and moth species.

And then the flowers provide pollen and food for our native pollinators, birds, moths, butterflies.

They take much less water than your traditional hedging plants, because they're native.

You will probably need to add additional water depending on where you're living in Tucson, because they are native to more riparian zones.

That's areas where there's water flow, like washes.

There are some very straightforward reasons why you would want to choose a native plant over non-native species.

One is simply your water bill They're plants that don't mind you taking a vacation once in a while.

They don't need a lot of your intervention to be happy and healthy plants in your environment.

[Birds chirping] (Tom) Tucson is home to the Gem Show, the notorious Fourth Avenue Street Fair and many other craft markets but there's one market you may not have heard of.

The Floozy Flea is an ongoing artisan market and it features the work of queer, women, BIPOC and disabled owned businesses.

[ CAT MEOWS ] (May) I had like musicians in this corner and then there was like, I had the whole backyard measured out figuring out like where each vendor was gonna go and yeah, this is where it all started.

♪ UPBEAT POP GUITAR SONG PLAYS ♪ (May) I think the first flea market probably had 12 vendors, um, and then it sort of grew to the side yard, to the front yard, and then I was like, it's too much to have at a house.

So now we have like 22 or more vendors.

♪ POP MUSIC CONTINUES TO PLAY (Lauren) Coming here has just been a really great way to connect with other artists and other people who like art.

Um, and it's definitely just a good creative release for me.

(Cece) I think it's really cool that something like this can come together with all these different people like, you know, artists that are coming up in Tucson and everything.

So yeah, I just wanna be a part of that.

(Noah) Here at Floozy, it just feels like home, I guess.

Like it feels like you can just be yourself.

♪ POP GUITAR MUSIC SLOWLY FADES ♪ ♪ ELECTRIC GUITAR STRUMMING PLAYS ♪ (May) Floozy Flea is an ongoing flea market.

It's for queer, BIPOC women and disabled owned businesses.

I wanted to start doing Floozy Flea because I've been doing, like, my own market since high school and I wanted to do that on a bigger scale and sort of foster community in Tucson.

♪ SYNTHY GUITAR POP SONG CONTINUES PLAYING ♪ (Vanessa) I'd only been doing markets for like, two months before Floozy Flea and I had done a regular, if you're from Tucson, like a true Tucson craft market.

Where, like, the stuff that I make makes people go, ugh.

[ LAUGHS ] And so it was really awesome to come to Floozy Flea and people be like, "Oh wow, that's so sick, I love that that says that," or like, "I love that color!"

Floozy Flea really encourages you to just, like, be as eccentric and like, crazy as possible.

And when people are going there, that's exactly what they're expecting.

I think from the get go from its advertising is saying like, no, we're different.

We have something else going on.

♪ SYNTHY GUITAR POP SONG CONTINUES PLAYING ♪ (Lee) I had seen posters for Floozy Flea way before May and I ever met.

I would see them posted up by my house on the street signs and I would always think, like, this is so cool.

♪ SYNTHY GUITAR POP SONG CONTINUES PLAYING ♪ We started doing Floozy Flea, I think because Bella and I, my bandmate, are both really focused on the power of community.

And something we center around is like, femme-oriented community or like, community that's being created by powerful women.

Tucson is a really [ SIGHS ] beautiful place that's growing really fast and tends to be very open.

But there's still a lot of spaces that are like, really dominated by like, This cis community and by men.

And like, that's a valuable space, but we were very attracted to like, a space that's like, for people like us.

♪ UPBEAT GUITAR POP SONG PLAYS I keep wanting to vend at Floozy Flea because it honestly feels like the only place where, like, I can really get my art out there.

Doing Floozy Flea, I just found my people and that's what makes me come back every single time.

It's just like, making 20 new friends.

I get like, 20 new Instagram mutuals and I'm like, oh, okay.

And then it just keeps going from there.

♪ UPBEAT GUITAR POP SONG CONTINUES ♪ (Lee) So being at Floozy Flea for the first time was my first genuinely like, real experience seeing youth in Tucson.

I was very freaked out.

Everyone was so cool.

To be very honest, I'm very intimidated by like, just like, the power of this community.

And when I see these like, figures around me, I'm like, wow.

This is crazy that like, these are the people who live around me.

So it was inspiring.

I think that's a good way to put it.

And like, meeting people like May, and just like, you see their art and what they create and there's like, all these people making things and like displaying who they are through personal fashion.

I felt like overwhelmed and amazed because it was something I didn't even know was here that is fostered by May.

♪ UPBEAT GUITAR POP SONG (May) I think I forget to like, to check in with myself, like how different it is from where it started.

Um, but it's been going on for like a year now and I'm just, um, yeah, I'm proud of myself and what it's become and all of the vendors who have contributed to it too.

♪ UPBEAT GUITAR POP SONG (May) I think the core of Floozy Flea is people just being vulnerable with each other and understanding of one another, like loving each other.

That's so corny, but I feel like that's the heart of Floozy Flea.

[ CROWD CHEERING ] (Tom) That last story was produced by our exceptional student associate Ashland Johnson, who's been running our social media and producing stories for us for the last two and a half years.

Ashland is graduating from the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona in May, and we will miss her dearly.

Ashland, we wish you the best of luck, but you're so talented you don't even need it.

Thanks for everything.

Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara, we'll see you next week with another all new episode.