Last year, Ontario MP Carolyn Bennett introduced Motion 546 requesting Nov. 17 to be declared National Youth Homelessness Awareness Day.
It may come as a shock to many people that such a day needs to be declared, but the level of youth homelessness has reached "epidemic" proportions. That was the term used by Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin Group when he was enlisted to help raise national awareness about the crisis.
The statistics are startling.
Conservatively, there are estimated to be 65,000 homeless youth in Canada between the ages of 16 and 24. This is about one-third of the estimated homeless population in the country; some non-governmental organizations estimate the numbers are much higher. In the past 25 years, there has been a 450 per cent increase in the number of youth shelter beds in Toronto. There are between 1,500 and 2,000 homeless youth in Toronto on any given night.
In the 2011 Metro Vancouver Homeless Count, the youth homeless population increased 29 per cent from 2008. In any community, about 40 per cent of the youth who are homeless belong to the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender com-munity. First Nation youths are also disproportionally over-represented.
The suicide rate for street-involved youth is about 10.3 times he national average for Canadian youth.
Research shows that 87 per cent of Canadians are unaware of just how many homeless youth exist in our midst.
There are a couple of rea sons for this ignorance.
First, at-risk youth are, for the most part, invisible.
They find temporary beds in church basements, shelters or abandoned buildings. They live in cars. They couch-surf or stay in overcrowded rooms to stay out of the cold.
While one in three homeless teens still attend school, many refuse any attachment to government help or outreach agencies for fear of being stigmatized. Their young minds desperately want inclusion, peer acceptance and the need to be wanted, not rejected.
Second, the fear of stigmatization is real since, until recently, most homeless youth were lumped together with the general adult homeless population.
The two couldn't be more different.
Youth don't leave safe homes. Abuse and neglect are two of the major reasons young people leave home. Several studies show that nearly 70 per cent of homeless youth have experienced some form of sexual, physical or emotional abuse.
Once the door is closed behind them, youth find the barriers to obtaining safe lodging almost insurmountable. Most market-value landlords won't rent to minors; even if minors found a willing landlord, they do not have the savings to pay the damage deposit, monthly rent and utility bills, and they lack credible references.
More, youth are mostly unskilled not only in life skills but work skills, and can find little more than minimum-wage jobs that hardly pay for food.
More disturbing is the fact that street youth experience incredibly high rates of criminal victimization; in 2010 a Canadian study showed that more than 76 per cent reported at least one instance of criminal victimization in the previous 12 months, with almost three-quarters reporting multiple incidents of victimization.
There is no national response to the plight of youth homelessness. The only city to take a proactive stance to the crisis is Calgary. Last year it came out with its "Plan to End Youth Homelessness in Calgary" by 2018. While some cities have plans to combat homelessness in general, failure to combat the at-risk youth problem with equal resolve is glaring since youth homelessness is a key gateway to adult homelessness.
In leaving such large numbers of youth at risk, the nation is squandering a key resource for the future and missing a vital opportunity to prevent the next generation of homeless Canadians.
A national day of recognition for homeless youth is indeed appropriate.
Mark Muldoon is executive director of the Threshold Housing Society of Victoria.
