Youth homelessness is on the rise in Waterloo region and organizations expect trend to continue
'Sadly, I think the trajectory is going to continue for some time,' OneRoof Youth Services CEO says
A new survey says up to 13 per cent of youth in Waterloo region may have experienced homelessness, but that number doesn't surprise Sandy Dietrich Bell.
Bell, CEO of One Roof Youth Services, says there are contributing factors that have increased those numbers — not just in Waterloo region, but across the country.
"As families begin to struggle more and more, youth who are 15, 16 may decide that it's time to launch out on their own and find themselves on the street," she said.
"Sadly, I think the trajectory is going to continue for some time."
The survey from the Children and Youth Planning Table of Waterloo Region was completed by almost 2,000 young people between the ages of nine to 18 years old. It found the number of youth experiencing homelessness has increased from eight per cent in 2021.
Some of the bigger factors that may have caused that figure to increase to 13 per cent in just three years could be related to poverty, mental health and addiction, Bell said.
"Young people feel that they're not welcome in the home or that they need to leave the home — there are youth that are struggling with their sexual identity and sometimes that's not acceptable in the home," she said.
Jen Gordon, manager of research and advocacy at YWCA Cambridge, says family breakdowns can be a large factor affecting youth homelessness in the region.
"There's two ways of looking at this: there's youth that have disconnected from their families and then there's also family homelessness," she said.
"We see a lot of family breakdown that happens that leaves youth in a situation where they need to fend for themselves … We can see youth that are connected to those families come in to try and seek employment in other things to help meet those family needs."
Viewing homelessness through a different lens
Gordon has also been part of the co-creator table of the Region of Waterloo's Plan to End Chronic Homelessness — a blueprint for strategies to address homelessness in the region.
The plan additionally provides resources and timelines needed to combat long-term homelessness in the community.
Gordon says something being brought forward in a real way is looking at what the homelessness and housing sector has done in a "gender-based analysis lens," she said.
"There's very different experiences happening for youth across gender identities," she said, adding understanding that will help governments and services provide the appropriate response to youth homelessness.
It's important to view homelessness away from structures that assume the same experiences for female and male identified youth, Gordon said.
Doing so will result in a less-traditional way to understand unhoused youth.
In some ways, more than one solution that can be implemented to combat youth homelessness, Bell said.
One is affordable housing, which she calls "the biggest issue" when finding a place to house both youth and adults on the streets.
"The other thing that's needed is additional funding for agencies like OneRoof, along with agencies like House of Friendship, Bridges, YW — the ones that are working frontline with these folks," Bell said.
OneRoof Youth Services has been around for 40 years and Bell says there are stories of hope from those who have started off in supportive housing, but the definition of success may be different than what others would expect.
"To me, success is a young person being able to successfully navigate into adulthood, or a young person deciding not to die today, or a young person decreasing or trying to work towards quitting using drugs," she said.
When she taught part time at Conestoga College, she sometimes would look up to find a client she had previously worked with in her classromm. She says it's a joy to realize the success they've found is simply returning to school or back to a family where they have stability.
"There's lots of various degrees of success that are happening every day," she said.
"And as staff at OneRoof, we're always trying to remind each other of those successes because it can be a daunting profession to work with folks that are are hurting all the time."
LISTEN | More youth are homeless in Waterloo region, survey finds. Here's how one organization is handling that:
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