More Than One Street

1. Who we are: It’s Complicated. There are Lots of Tensions. There is what I want versus what other people want for me - wanting people around but being forced to live alone or wanting to be alone but having to share space. Getting the place to live, getting the job all feels very middle class – like society’s plan for us. What happens if we question this as the plan we want for ourselves? More Than One Street We are a diverse group of young adults who have teamed up with UVic researchers to share our experiences and knowledge of street life. We work together to build understanding of the complex circumstances shaping the lives of youth on the street. The information in this poster is drawn from our own life experiences. We’ve lived the difficulties of finding safe and affordable housing in Victoria, BC. • Living Wage (necessary income to meet basic needs in Victoria): $18.50 /hr • Minimum Wage: $9.50 /hr - $10.25 /hr • Youth Unemployment Rate: 10.9% (vs. 5.5% for adults) • Income Assistance: $663 /month • Average Rent Bachelor Apt : $695 /month • Vacancy Rate Bachelor Under $700: 0.9% (Youth Vital Signs 2013; GVCEH Facing Homelessness 2013) Getting housing is especially challenging for youth when we don’t have references, we may not know our rights as workers and tenants, and when the only jobs we can get are part-time entry level and at minimum wage. Getting onto the streets is easy. Getting off the streets is complicated. Going back to housed life is like climbing a mountain. It is not just about getting housing. Expectations. More Than We Can Handle On the street we’re in limbo. All we focus on are our basic needs like food and where to sleep. Then there are expectations once we get housing…we have to get a job, deal with mental health, face addictions, go to appointments, repair or build new relationships. These expectations glom onto you and it feels like more than we can handle. The stakes are higher for us. Can’t we just ease into this? Pulling Back & Staying Loose On the street there is constant stimulation with people: being in a group, with friends that listen and talk to you, sharing resources and doing things. When you are housed, there may be a tug back to this life and these relationships: to what I can handle and what I know. Staying loose keeps our options open. “I want a roof and then I want another roof” What we got: What we need: Eventually we did find housing and transitioned away from the streets. We were told that living on the streets was bad, and that to be successful adults we must find houses and get jobs. Once we actually did get housing, it did not always feel like the housing we found was better than being on the streets. Sometimes the only way for us to afford decent places was to pitch in with friends. Plenty of times this did not work out; bad roommates is a problem most anyone could relate to. Stolen food, missing stuff and unclean common areas were the least of our concerns. Worrying about our roommates’ and neighbours’ drug addictions, our places becoming party houses or squats for all of our other friends weighed heavily on us. These were the people we called our family on the streets, the ones who stood by us when we had no one else and protected us, but now we had to say “No sorry man. You can’t stay here.” If we were fortunate enough to make it into housing we could afford on our own, there were different sorts of roommates to worry about. Rats and mice, bedbugs and cockroaches ran rampant through the spaces that were supposed to be our own. With uncaring slum-lords who could not be bothered to care about pest problems, the streets looked pretty good in comparison. Then there was isolation, anxiety, depression and other mental health problems we had to deal with. Some of us went the route of supported housing. We wanted control and freedom to make our own choices, a quiet and safe place where we could feel secure for a change. We got smothered and felt tension instead of support. We were under surveillance and felt trapped by our housing - unable to move to another place. We had to hide people who wanted to visit or we were not allowed to share our new home with our partners or pets. They pressured us to have a plan immediately about what we were going to do with our lives. For us, just getting housing at all was a big step, and we needed a little time to ease into it. They expected and assumed that because we were ready to leave the streets behind that we could automatically get our shit together. We felt like we were being set up for failure or that we were children again, unable to make decisions for ourselves when we had been on our own for what seemed like a life time. No, they might not have always been the best decisions, but at least we were making them for ourselves. We got our lives invaded by strangers who “knew best for us”. As street youth, we lived through more, and dealt with more problems than the average kids our age. While they were busy worrying about what dress to wear to the school dance, or their parents not buying them the latest video games, we worried about our safety, where we were going to sleep at night, and the uncertainty of where our next meal was coming from. We managed to survive, and came through it stronger people. People who may have different stakes than others, but capable none the less. What would have been beneficial when we were transitioning: • Affordable options • Freedom and support to shape our own routines • Housing where young parents can be together • Safe places to raise our kids • Support without consequences or judgment • To not feel constantly monitored or under the microscope • Respect for the skills and wisdom we have from managing ourselves • Support people being as accountable to us as we are expected to be to them • Shorter term leases so we have more chance of completing them • Emergency rent subsidies if we get sick, injured or must attend a funeral • Some trust • Safe personal space • Ability to make the place our own - paint, hang art, plants, animals • Flexibility around references and credit history; to be able to use teachers, social workers, friends or whomever we have • To feel welcomed in the neighbourhood Created by Amber Flett-Daniels, Meagan Gabriel, A. Meghan Ignatescue, Isha Matous-Gibbs, Michaela H. Roos, Marion Selfridge, Thayne Werdal, and Lisa M. Mitchell. Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada