Anna Voskuil | News Editor
Featured image courtesy of Garry Knight on Flickr
While youth homelessness can be challenging to tackle, research involving York professors has aided in providing potential solutions to the issue.
Published last week by Stephen Gaetz, Faculty of Education professor at York, and president of the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness (COH); Kaitlin Shwan, senior researcher at COH; Melanie Redman, president of A Way Home Canada; David French, director of policy and planning at A Way Home Canada; and Erin Dej, a post-doctorial fellow with York, The Roadmap for the Prevention of Youth Homelessness provides social services, communities, key stakeholders, and government ministries and departments, with advisories on how these groups can help to achieve positive, long-term outcomes for young Canadians.
“One of the main barriers to making the shift to prevention is that up until now we have not had a shared language concerning prevention. The Roadmap for the Prevention of Youth Homelessness is designed to give us a way to think and talk about prevention,” said Redman.
“Communities and all orders of government are ready to make the shift to prevention, and this report provides practical tools to make that happen,” she added.
The book addresses six crucial prevention elements: systems prevention, early intervention, housing stabilization, structural prevention, eviction prevention, and the Duty to Assist, which builds from existing Welsh legislation. This potential legislation proposes that the Canadian government ensure young people are given advice, information, and housing-led support, in order to make their experience in homelessness brief, if not avoided entirely.
In addressing how the government would further their role in preventing youth homelessness, government ministries are encouraged to adopt a cross-departmental approach with those involved in areas such as child welfare, education, justice, health, housing, and many others. By taking this approach, it is suggested that the youth who are at risk for homelessness within public systems are better supported and identified, thus better ensuring permanent and cost-effective housing.
The report addresses the use of crisis responses and emergency services in the U.S. and Canada when assisting homeless youth, claiming: “The imbalance of investment in crisis intervention over prevention is highly problematic, especially for the well-being of the young people affected by youth homelessness.”
“While emergency supports are both necessary and well-meaning, they do little to effectively prevent, reduce, or end youths’ experiences of homelessness. “Relying on a crisis response is not only ineffective, but expensive, with the annual cost to the economy estimated to be $7 billion,” said Gaetz.
The Roadmap for the Prevention of Youth Homelessness provides data which states approximately 40 per cent of young homeless people had their first experience leaving home before the age of 16. As well, 50 per cent of homeless adults first encountered homelessness before age 25.
“We have a critical opportunity to actualize housing as a human right if we invest in the legislative and policy solutions we know prevent youth homelessness,” said Schwan.
