Vancouver shelter for street youth gets $5 M

Vancouver's largest shelter and resource centre for homeless youth will receive $5 million in the next three years to double its capacity and maintain operational needs.

The money will allow Covenant House to create 32 transition beds and open a communal kitchen, lounge area and additional space for programs and services.

"Transitional housing can be the turning point for homeless youth," B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell said Monday in making the funding announcement.

"This project will get more young people off the streets and into a secure environment while they get the help they need to plan for healthier futures."

The privately-funded organization, with 22 existing beds, provides shelter, food, clothing and counselling to 1,400 young people every year. Last year, it had to turn away 400 youths.
 
Krista Thompson, executive director of Covenant House, is asking people for a little kindness when they see young people living on the street.

"When you see them on the street, look past the dirty jacket and the tattoos and the wacky hair … look at them and say, 'That's my sister, my brother, my grandchild,'" Thompson said.

The province will contribute $4.75 million and additional funding will come from the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

Meanwhile, three Vancouver social groups mailed a formal complaint to the United Nations over the conversion of low-cost housing in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside in advance of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The human rights complaint is designed to embarrass the Canadian government and draw attention to a lack of public housing in the city's poorest neighbourhood.

But Campbell said there isn't a quick fix to the problems of homelessness and social housing, and efforts are ongoing, involving the federal, provincial and municipal governments.

" We don't need to go the United Nations to see there is a problem," he said. "We are trying to deal with the problem openly [and] constructively with a little bit of imagination and bringing everyone together in partnership to solve it."