Martin Zhang grew up in the Limbrick Place housing complex.
He saw the violence, the drug and alcohol abuse and the verbal and sexual harassment that happens in Thunder Bay’s affordable housing complexes and he feels the need to shed light on these issues.
"I lived with the people. I talked to them. I ate with them," said the summer project coordinator for the Regional Multicultural Youth Council. "I feel that I have a responsibility for them. I need to advocate about those issues."
Now a student of the University of Toronto, Zhang and the rest of the RMYC have spent their summer surveying the city’s affordable housing complexes, speaking to the people living there about what the issues are and what they believe the solutions are.
The council came up with several recommendations from their research like more youth drop-in centres and youth-led initiatives, neighbourhood policing offices within the complexes. The youth council even supports a curfew like the one Mayor Keith Hobbs proposed last year.
However, Zhang said the way to fix things is to engage the residents.
"They have their own interests," he said. "They have their own ideas of what they want. We just need to provide options for them."
"A lot of them are caught up in poverty; they’re caught up in the cycle of drug and alcohol addiction," Zhang added. "We just need to give them an option that if you want, you can be in a positive environment."
And if there was one message Zhang could give to youth in the city, it’s to never lose hope despite how bad their situation gets.
"There are lots of ways to be successful in life. Don’t give that up because the moment you’re hopeless, that’s when everything goes downhill," he said.
The RMYC will be giving their findings to city council and the Thunder Bay Police Service and Zhang said he hopes they read their reports and listen to their recommendations.
The youth council is also looking to possibly relocate from their Victoria Avenue East location since it’s right beside Newfie’s Pub.
The council feels it’s not safe to have the youth centre so close to the bar and staff member Kaine Kindla, 16, says there are intoxicated people on the sidewalks at all hours of the day.
"Even in the middle of the afternoon, they’ll be out there," he said. "We’re worried about the kids, the youth that come in and see that. They come from their homes, which could be abusive too with alcohol. They come here to escape that but then there are adults walking in drunk."
Zhang has found traces of drugs in the youth centre’s bathroom after people have come in off the streets to use the washrooms and the centre had to replace its front door twice in the past year. Their van was also stolen and eventually returned 10 days later.
"Sometimes you walk up and you see urine and puke on the front there," said Kindla. "One time I saw a man passed out when I came in the morning for work and he was still there at 2 p.m. Then he went back into the pub."
Kindla knows it’s unlikely the bar will move and feels the RMYC will have to eventually find a new home.
