As Ottawa’s mayor continues to bolster home-building and councillors stand firm in their advocacy efforts, it seems the whole city is working to support affordable housing and eradicate the city’s ongoing homelessness crisis.
But within the statistics about unsheltered individuals in Ottawa and data from emergency shelters lies a smaller but underrepresented community of homeless youth, some under the age of 18, who live on streets, friends’ couches, or in the few shelters dedicated to their age group.
In 2020, city council approved the City of Ottawa’s 10-Year Housing and Homelessness Plan. At that time, city data estimated that more than 1,200 young people — between the ages of 16 and 25 — experience homelessness in Ottawa each year. Local organizations believe that the number grew during the pandemic, but homeless youth tend to be difficult to track and survey, making it difficult to find substantial data.
In September, Mayor Mark Sutcliffe promised to end youth homelessness in Ottawa by 2030. He said the plan was about “having a system in place” that would focus on prevention and social infrastructure to provide support to youth and divert them away from shelters.
One of the organizations dedicated to that cause is Operation Come Home (OCH) at 150 Gloucester St. OCH, which was first established in 1971, works to be a hub for support and outreach services, offering programs to help youth find housing, secure employment or complete education, as well as mental health and addiction counselling.
John Heckbert, executive director at OCH, says there are likely up to 80 young people currently unhoused in Ottawa — about 30 of whom are in shelters — but that addressing youth homelessness is different than the adult system.
“The tricky part with the youth system is there's a higher level of vulnerability, and that's risks around violence, human trafficking, substance use, exploitation of other kinds,” Heckbert told the Lookout. “They're definitely more at risk simply because of their age and their lack of exposure to the system.
The City of Ottawa’s 10-Year Plan report identified some factors that can trigger homelessness or housing instability among youth, which include difficult family situations and conflict, personal factors like mental illness, and histories of childhood abuse or involvement with Child Protection Services.
According to the report, Ottawa also lacks strong, consistent data on the prevalence or characteristics of youth homelessness, in part because the City does not have “a common way to define or count youth homelessness.”
That said, data from the report found that youth who experience homelessness are at significant risk of social and personal costs, including increased risk of not completing high school; studies have found only 20 per cent to 30 per cent of youth experiencing homelessness graduate from high school.
Youth experiencing homelessness also report high levels of mental health disorders and are more likely to be the victims of violent crime, including physical and sexual assault, are at higher risk of infections like HIV, and report high mortality rates.
“We try to fulfill a function where we keep them out of touch points of the adult system as much as possible,” he explained. “And that's why we've kind of located quite a lot of services that they need here at Gloucester Street under one roof, because we want to be a hub so that they, as much as possible, avoid or minimize their contact with the adult system.”
There are currently two youth shelters — one for young men and boys and one for young women and girls — run by the Youth Services Bureau, as well as one dormitory-style shelter provided by a local church. Some young people over 18 are also accessing adult shelters like the Ottawa Mission or Shepherds of Good Hope.
Youth who are 15 years old or younger are usually under the care of the Children’s Aid Society and can access group homes or foster care. But once they turn 16, they can choose to leave those services and voluntarily be an “unaccompanied young person”. That’s often where OCH comes in.
At OCH, Heckbert says family conflicts are the primary cause or trigger of youth leaving home.
“Sometimes youth, in some ways, have to leave home because they're not safe or because their parents have not made the home a good environment for them,” he said. “We did see an uptick in the last couple of years around discrimination.
If their gender identity doesn't match their parents' expectations, or their sexuality, that's kind of surged a bit,” Heckbert said. “Twenty-one per cent of the youth in our programs self-identify as Two-Spirited, non-binary or LGBTQ+.”
Other factors like experiences of marginalization, poverty, and violence, as well as racism, homophobia and transphobia, can create barriers to young people securing safe and stable housing, the report said, which Heckbert echoed.
“There are additional barriers to employment and success when they're coming from those backgrounds, too,” said Heckbert. “That's a driver for sure.”
He also said youth can be newcomers to Canada who have been separated from family or could have had “poor exits” from the Children’s Aid Society.
“Sometimes it's because they've accompanied somebody who might have passed away in the hospital, and then they become kind of stuck,” he added. “There are programs to help them, but sometimes they don't know, or sometimes they don't want to use those programs. So they might come into the system.”
But the overall situation of youth homelessness in Ottawa isn’t necessarily getting worse. In fact, in many ways, Heckbert said he feels there is progress being made.
Securing housing
One of the biggest wins in Heckbert’s eyes is that through partnerships with the City, local landlords and other organizations, Operation Come Home has secured housing for more than 100 young people in the last year.
The organization rents apartments and housing units from local landlords and essentially sublets them to young people, then continues to offer support and resources.
Through this partnership, Heckbert said landlords have felt reassured in knowing they can contact OCH for support and to guarantee rent payments, adding to security for all parties. It’s also funded through the City of Ottawa, and Heckbert said that if OCH can secure a few dozen more units, he thinks Ottawa can reach a “functional zero” status in youth homelessness.
“I think that the city is doing a really good job right now. There's a bit of a higher sense of vulnerability around youth experiencing homelessness,” he said. “There's also a really good collaboration in the youth space around addressing homelessness.
“I work very closely with our good friends at YSB and other youth serving agencies to make sure we have a really, really tight focus on the problem, and that we're working towards a functional zero state.”
In September, Sutcliffe said that part of his goal is to establish preventative resources and a system to divert youth from emergency shelters.
At that time, Sutcliffe's pledge is a "doable goal," Kaite Burkholder Harris, executive director of the Alliance to End Homelessness, told media.
"When we say the word end, it means that homelessness is rare, brief and doesn't happen again. In other words, people don't get stuck. Unfortunately, right now ... people are stuck," she said at the announcement.
Sutcliffe's plan would not call on funding from other levels of government, he said, and in the 2026 budget, the City budgeted $400,000 toward ending youth homelessness by 2030. The City approved a $4 million increase for social and community housing for both young people and adults, all of which Heckbert said will make huge strides.
“I think it's likely that the City will see anti-youth homelessness before 2030, as the mayor has said, and I hope that we can get there sooner, and that's what we're working towards,” he said. “What will transform in the system is that you'll move from a status where the shelters are full and no one's moving through the system to a system where people will still enter the homelessness space, but they'll be very quickly connected to resources that help them achieve housing.
“That's what is defined as functional zero, the idea that you know you're always hovering around three or four people that might need shelter support at any given night,” he added. “But that you're constantly flowing them through the system and into productive or supportive programs that help them.”
