Safe, stable, and affordable housing is an essential ingredient to a healthy life. How can we work upstream to ensure that all young people have a safe place to live?
According to the article below, there are 30,000 to 60,000 youth on Canadian streets on any given day.
"The survey builds upon the rafts of data documenting the adversity that leads to homelessness, violence on the streets and the tremendous difficulty leaving that life. Young people have to swim against the current to move from poverty and marginalization to housing and a good quality of life."
"There is one clear and incontrovertible truth, however — the number of young Canadians on the streets is growing. And the longer they are on the streets, the more likely they are to die, be victimized, become mentally ill and addicted, and the more difficult they are to engage in services.
The solution involves better attention to mental health in schools, child protection services, and the criminal justice system — the places through which at-risk youth flow. We need greatly enhanced support for the many community organizations providing youth services on the thinnest of financial margins, and we need system-wide solutions that better address health, housing and employment."
Click here to read the rest of the article, "Rising youth homeless is a crisis we mustn't ignore," Sean Kidd, Toronto Star, May 12, 2014.