THUNDER BAY – Vulnerable youth in the city will soon have a homeless shelter of their own.
The project, being spearheaded by the Urban Abbey, on Friday got a $47,000 boost from the Thunder Bay Community, money that will allow them to take possession of a abandoned property on Simpson Street, with hopes of opening their doors by next fall.
Adam Schenk, the executive director of the shelter, said it’s a facility that’s been needed for some time in the city, where youth are facing homelessness at alarming rates.
“It’s incredibly important to give youth that are experiencing homelessness a place where they can go to feel safe and to feel like they’re being supported at the position that they’re at,” Schenk said.
“Homeless adult populations are different than homeless youth populations and we’re really hoping to be able to establish a relationship with these youth to be able to provide them with the supports to help them get a plan to find safe, secure housing and to maintain that safe secure housing in the future.”
Schenk said chronic homelessness often begins during the younger years, which is why they’ll be focusing on 16- to 24-year-olds when the shelter opens.
They have different needs and face a different set of dangers than adults often do on the streets.
“The big concern is vulnerability. A 16-year-old youth that’s living on the streets that doesn’t know what their next step is going to be, they’re vulnerable, they’re susceptible to being pulled in the wrong direction by individuals who might want to do them harm, who might want to get them involved in a culture that is going to be detrimental and harmful moving forward,” Schenk said.
“That’s what we’re trying to prevent. We want to get them off that path as quickly as possible and on a much healthier path that’s going to get them off the street.”
When completed, the shelter will have a capacity to house up to 16 youth, eight male and eight female, with space for transgendered youth, who face a whole set of challenges of their own on the streets.
Jackie Dojack, the executive director of the Thunder Bay Community Foundation, said the project leapt off the page when the funding application was received.
It was an easy sell, she added.
“It was a project that we felt could make a significant difference in Thunder Bay. We know that poverty overall and youth poverty is an issue in Thunder Bay. There is no dedicated youth shelter in Thunder Bay and we knew from the grant application, we knew this amount of money leveraged all kinds of dollars,” Dojack said.
“It leveraged them getting a building donated to them for the shelter and it also enabled them to continue with the renovations necessary to the building so they’ll be able to open the shelter as quickly as possible.”
