Ending youth homelessness starts with preventing it in the first place, say advocates
High cost of living and less affordable housing means more people are at risk of homelessness
Newfoundland and Labrador youth advocates say the key to keeping youth off the streets, their bellies full and surrounded by community, is to focus on prevention services.
Jen Crowe, executive director of Choices for Youth, says her organization has updated its mandate from helping youth aged 16 to 29 to as early as infancy. That's because they want to catch as many people as possible before they find themselves in a crisis, she said.
"How do we work to ensure that they're not vulnerable in the first place?" Crowe said. "And the answer is we start by focusing on them when they are children and even younger than that."
In a previous interview, Crowe said there are 200 youth on a housing waitlist in St. John's.
With a cost of living that keeps climbing, she says many families are forced to choose between rent and food. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, she added, the definition of who is at risk of homelessness or food insecurity is expanding to include more people.
Youth are especially at risk of chronic homelessness, says Stephen Geatz, president of the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness. He says research from the federal government indicates almost half of the people who experienced homelessness had their first experience before the age of 25, with the predominant age being between 15 and 19.
"The good news is we now know a lot about what to do," he said. "We've got preventive interventions that have solid evidence for their effectiveness."
Melissa Power coordinates the school-based program Upstream Canada N.L., which currently has staff in four schools in the province where they identify and help youth and their families at risk.
"We all want youth to get their education and to be employed and to contribute to our society," Power said. "But for a lot of these young people, they are in survival mode. They're just trying to figure out their next step."
Figuring out the next step is where the program comes in.
If a youth needs help with mental health because they are suffering from anxiety or depression, the program provides them access to those services. If they need more food at home, assistance with getting to appointments, or support for family members who have lost their jobs, the program helps with that as well.
"The beauty of prevention is that we can really start that process early. But it requires, from my perspective, that that young person has what they need when they need it," Crowe said. "That involves embedding services like what we provide, but also so many other incredible organizations across this province, within the school system as much as possible."
Crowe says the approach should focus not just on investing in emergency shelters, but also on making housing affordable.
"Because we're in a state of crisis right now … the crisis response often feels like, well, we need to make sure that these folks have a place to stay tonight," she said. "But we need to also make sure that they have a place to stay in a year, in two years, in five years, in 10 years, and that they can build a life that makes sense for them and their family."
That means not only building more housing and making rent affordable, but also helping families maintain a steady income. Crowe points to the Canada Emergency Response Benefit provided during the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a drastic decrease in family and child poverty.
And when youth face a crisis — mental health issues, substance abuse, or family breakdown — these challenges intertwine, making the services needed to help more complex, Crowe said.
"We really need to tackle all three of those things: housing stock, financial security and mental health and other wraparound services in order to really address this mounting issue of homelessness."
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With files from The Signal