It is one of our society’s saddest realities that we all hate to be reminded of: Not every youth can count on a loving home.
Whether it’s because they’ve been kicked out or because they are fleeing abuse and neglect, every year, teens wind up homeless on our streets. Thankfully, on the North Shore, they have a door to knock on.
About 100 kids per year come to the North Shore Youth Safe House where they can get their most urgent needs for shelter and a meal met, but also get connected with an array of services for education, employment, mental health and life skills – the foundations of a stable and healthy adulthood that they could not have at home.
The house was started by the Hollyburn Community Services Society, whose co-founder Nanette Taylor is now stepping down. We offer her our deep thanks. Without visionaries like Taylor, too many youth would have had a hard landing on the streets where they are at the highest risk of becoming trapped among the overlapping and compounding problems of poverty, mental illness, addiction and hopelessness.
And yet funding for this ounce of prevention is always precarious. As always, Canada is too reliant on non-profits to sew up the holes in the safety net and non-profits are too reliant on donations to offer their critical services.
Keeping youth off the streets is a priority and our governments must fund it as such. We cannot replace what should have been given in childhood. But we can offer our hand and support to give them a better adulthood.
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