It's Time to End Youth Homelessness

Written by Steve Cordes, Executive Director, Youth Opportunities Unlimited

I think of youth homelessness as a great thief. It robs us of potential in the people who experience homelessness. It robs us of the resources we put into managing it. It robs us all of some of our humanity as we live in a community where people experience homelessness.

At the funding announcement for YOU’s Housing First Youth Shelter last year, a young person who had experienced 5 years of homelessness told guests that she never believed she’d live to see her 21st birthday. She was losing several friends each year and just assumed her time would come soon. That’s tragic – for the lives lost – for the traumas this young person experienced and for a community who never got to see those young people enjoy full lives.

The first time I met someone who had experienced homelessness was in 1984; my first day at YOU. It was the day I met Dave, Quinn and Roy; each experiencing homelessness by living in shelter, crashing with friends or “sleeping rough” outside. Before that, I didn’t believe homelessness existed in London. I was struck by their situations and also by the enormous resilience shown by each of them.

Since that early day, I’ve met hundreds of young adults who’ve experienced homelessness in London and come to know many of them. Something I’ve come to believe is that homelessness exists because we allow it.

One of the things we’ve learned as a result of the pandemic is that we can find the public funds needed to get us through a crisis. Governments of all stripes have responded with emergency relief and assistance. Faced with a crisis; action has been taken and we are getting through this. What if we acknowledged that homelessness is a crisis? What if we tackled homelessness with the goal of eliminating it? How would that help?

11 years ago, YOU created a unique twist to our annual Breakfast for YOU fundraiser. We hired youth grads as keynote speakers to address audiences that now top 1,000 each year. In those years, we’ve met several people who’ve experienced homelessness. All of them impacted by traumas and each of them describing someone who helped them out of homelessness. For one, it was a grandma who sent her granddaughter a Christmas card while she was in shelter. For another, it was a police officer and for another, it was a stranger who walked someone to a shelter.

You want to help end youth homelessness? There’s a lot you can do. Donate to a cause or project that moves our community in that direction. Be a champion in your circle that advocates for programs and supports that prevent it and end it. As one of the speakers at a Breakfast for YOU said, simply smiling and saying hello to someone experiencing homelessness can go a long way. Whatever you do, each of us needs to find ways, big and small, to stop homelessness from robbing us of any more of our young people.