Report tries to find cause of youths ending up on streets

Brian Aysanabee was homeless off and on from the age of 16 until he was 23.
 
Now 27, the Thunder Bay youth said he slowly worked his way off the streets and now works for the Regional Multicultural Youth Centre.

“I couch surfed a lot and I slept in parks and in friends’ cars,” he said. “It was a weird way to live.”

He eventually graduated high school, despite living above a bar at the time and said while the decision to change his life came early, it took eight years to achieve a steady roof over his head.

Aysanabee knew there were services in the community for street youth, but said he never felt it would work for him.

“It didn’t feel like my needs were going to be met,” he said. “I didn’t feel like I fit the bill or qualified for any of it, so I didn’t even bother.”

The lack of affordable housing for youth in Thunder Bay is just one of the issues identified in the Children’s Aid Society’s report on the city’s street youth.

Researchers spoke with 60 youth to see what they saw as the city’s strengths and weaknesses when it came to services for street youth.

CAS executive director Rob Richardson said their focus was on finding out from street-involved youth what the circumstances were that led them to the streets and how the community can address those issues and find ways to improve the lives of street youth.

Limited, suitable, affordable housing was one of the most glaring issues highlighted in the report. Richardson said not only do they need to improve the stock of long-term housing for youth but also from an emergency shelter standpoint.

Other challenges included improving youth’s life skills, access to psychological services and alcohol and other addictions.

“At the beginning of that is access to an adequate income and looking at ways to perhaps reduce or even eliminate some of the red tape involved in getting assistance for young people,”  Richardson said.

“We’re talking young people between the ages 16 to 24, so these are pretty young, pretty vulnerable people and life on the street is pretty challenging and extremely difficult, so how do we as a community band together to provide services for an extremely vulnerable population?”