Police harassment: In provinces like Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and BC, police harass street youth relentlessly, ticketing and arresting them for panhandling, squeegeeing or loitering.

In 1999, the Ontario government passed the Safe Streets Act, which gave police the power to arrest youth for simply approaching people for money or squeegeeing their car windows. Youth complain about police harassment as being one of the biggest hazards they face. One study done by a Toronto legal clinic, Justice for Children and Youth found that 11.5% of street youth reported their worst victimization was at the hands of the police.

Sickness and death: Street youth are more likely to get sick and even die on the streets.

RISK OF DEATH: A Quebec study found the mortality rate was 11 times higher for street youth -mostly caused by suicide or drug overdose.

A recent study that examined the mortality rate among homeless youth was carried out in Montreal between 1995 and 2000, and looked at 1,013 young people between the ages of 14 and 25. Originally the study was designed to examine rates of HIV and Hepatitis infection among youth. But the researchers began to realize that some of their subjects were disappearing. They began checking the coroner’s records and discovered an alarming rate of deaths – mostly caused by suicide and drug overdose.

By June, 2001, 26 of the 1,013 participants – 22 boys and 4 girls – had died, or a mortality rate of .89% per 100 person years.
NOTE: The total figure is really 29 but three were not included in the above number because they had not been on the street for two years or more.

The homeless youth mortality rate was 11 times higher than the rate of the general population of Quebec.

The causes of deaths were: suicide (13), overdose (8), accidental death (2), Hepatitis A (1), unidentified cause (1), with one case pending.
Four of 31 HIV-infected youth died of suicide, Hepatitis A, and one unknown.

The study concluded that “mortality is very high among street youth. Those at highest risk of dying are youth who are HIV-infected, youth who are daily drinkers, those who are homeless and those who are injecting drugs. While the role of HIV infection in the mortality of street youth is still not clear, substance misuse and suicidal thoughts and attempts, in the context of homelessness, clearly play direct causal roles.”

Street youth pregnancies: A study conducted in 1997-98 by the Hospital for Sick Children and the Shout Clinic among 93 street-involved females found that an alarming number of street children have pregnancies. There was a total of 118 pregnancies among the women. The study found that:

Health risks to the children: Evergreen, a drop-in center for homeless youth in Toronto, finds that homeless young women tend to have smaller babies than the norm and a higher number of preemies. Consequently, babies are stunted in their physical development.

Because the bottles used for feeding are often not cleaned properly, and the infants are regularly handed around to other teenagers, the babies end up with fungal infections in their mouth, which results in diaper rash. Indeed, skin rashes, mouth and diaper rashes and feeding problems are common.

Babies are often malnourished when they are born. This is often because the placenta of the mothers is unhealthy and the baby won’t have received enough blood.

The babies see and experience a lot more violence than the norm. The children are apprehended at a much higher rate than average infants. The babies are more likely to be physically punished, and suffer from neglect.

What is the long term impact? The biggest impact is with mental developmental problems, with developing poor attention spans and tending to walk and crawl a bit later than babies from non-homeless population.

“The body is very forgiving but the brain, because it develops within the first few years of life, because these kids don’t have the right kind of interaction or right kind of stimulation, or right kind of play or because they witness as much violence as they do, my grain of fear is for their brain development,” says Ruth Ewart, a nurse at Evergreen. “So they will be another group of kids who will struggle in schools because of various brain and brain developmental issues.”

THE CAUSES OF HOMELESSNESS
People become homeless for a wide variety of reasons – loss of job, marital breakdown, mental illness, and alcohol and drug addiction. But when it comes to youth and children, the reasons tend to revolve around the family.

Missing child reports: Overall, a total of 66,532 missing-child reports were made to Canadian police agencies in 2002, of which 52,390 were classified as runaways. About 75% return to their homes within a week.

These are not 52,000 individual children, but simply reports, and 73% of the children will run away again. More females (59%) than males are categorized as runaways. 96% of the children were between the ages of 12 and 17 years old.

Over half of these children - 56% - report they were “thrown out” by their parents. When youth were asked whose decision it was to leave home, 47% noted it was “their decision”, 18% said it was the decision of one or both parents and 30% indicated it was a joint decision by themselves and their parents.

Abuse in the home: Ultimately, experts say that the vast majority of youth or children rarely leave happy homes for the streets. Several studies have indicated that 70% of youth have experienced some form of sexual, physical or emotional abuse. Many of the rest simply felt neglected.

One Toronto study showed that 40% of girls and 19% of boys left home because of sexual abuse. Physical abuse was a factor among 59% of females and 39% of males. Violence and parents’ drug and alcohol abuse were also huge factors.

The number of confirmed victims of child abuse and neglect nearly doubled in Ontario between 1993 and 1998, according to a University of Toronto study published in 2002. Substantiated cases of physical abuse jumped from 4,200 cases to 8,000, while cases of neglect rose from 4,400 to 8,900. The study also found an 870% increase in cases of emotional maltreatment, largely as a result to exposure to domestic violence. The number of investigations completed by children’s aid societies in Ontario has increased by 36% from 1998 to 2002.

Social factors: Various studies have identified some key social factors besides sexual and physical abuse.

In contrast, supportive housing is cheaper:

It has been estimated that to virtually eradicate homelessness, it would cost all levels of government in Canada $3.5 billion to achieve this, which would go to pay for affordable housing, income support (like welfare) and some support services.