When the knock comes at the door of the North Shore Youth Safe House, a young person’s life is at a critical inflection point.
Now, 20 years after co-founding Hollyburn Community Services Society, which has kept thousands of kids out of homelessness and guided them toward stable lives, executive director Nanette Taylor has retired.
Taylor had already spent half her working life in the Ministry of Children and Family Development where she saw first-hand, the holes in the safety net. As a result, in 2004, she co-founded the society, which launched the North Shore Youth Safe House as one of its first initiatives.
Since then, about 100 kids per year have come seeking shelter at the Maplewood area house. Sometimes it’s because they’ve got disagreements with their parents at home, which can be dealt with the Hollyburn’s parenting mediation.
But many times, when there is family violence or neglect, Hollyburn steps up in a much larger ways. After the kids get a full tummy and warm place to sleep, Hollyburn’s staff connect them with services that help them find transitional housing, continue their education, find employment and develop important life skills.
“So we end up being that wraparound, pseudo-parent that keeps them moving on and supports them so that they develop some confidence and some self-esteem and can actually become truly functional adults,” Taylor said.
Many past clients of the safe house have gone on to university and careers in the trades and tech. Taylor is aware of one who is training to become a medical doctor.
“These kids, in some cases, end up making more money than people who are helping them,” she said. “There are many, many success stories.”
Taylor, though, shudders to think what would have come for those youths had there not been Hollyburn and its web of services available. More than a few times, it became a mad scramble to find donors to keep the house going when government funding was clawed back.
“There would have been many, many more homeless youth who probably would gravitate down to the Downtown Eastside,” she said.
Once hopelessness and destitution set in, “it’s very hard to bring them back,” she added.
Society grows to help North Shore's vulnerable
While the safe house provides a soft landing for a kid about to hit the streets, Taylor also helped grow Hollyburn’s mandate to include services for those fleeing domestic violence, victims of crime, and seniors facing homelessness. The society’s first purpose-built affordable housing project, 86-units in Delbrook, is well on its way.
“Nobody ever thinks that such a well-to-do community would have homeless seniors, but we do,” she said. “So the mission always was and still is serving vulnerable citizens on the North Shore.”
Nothing would have made Taylor happier than to retire because Hollyburn simply wasn’t needed anymore, but sadly that will likely never be the case.
Youth arriving at the door today are presenting with higher levels of anxiety and depression, with stresses that go beyond their strife at home – climate change, social media, isolation. As the housing affordability crisis has become more dire, it’s made the Hollyburn’s mission all the more important and difficult. And funding to keep the critical services going is always precarious.
Those are trials that will have to be met by Mark Friesen, Hollyburn’s new executive director, whom Taylor has wholeheartedly endorsed.
Despite the challenges leadership of a non-profit like Hollyburn must face, Taylor assures it has always been deeply meaningful work.
“Particularly with youth, there’s a lot of hope there, and if you can tap into that, then there is nothing that feels so wonderful as those kids turning around and telling you that you made a difference,” she said, adding that thanks are owed to all of Hollyburn’s staff who have stepped up. “It totally warms your heart. There’s just nothing else kind of touches it in the same way.”
