Of the thousands of people living on the streets in Metro Vancouver, an estimated 400 are youths — some as young as 12 — with no place to call home.

Blair Knutson and Ashley Robertson are just two of the hundreds of street youth in Metro Vancouver.

'Dope is the only thing you can accomplish on the street'—Ashley Robertson

The couple has lived on the streets together for five years, sleeping in emergency shelters by night and running drugs by day.

Both have been in and out of support programs with little success.

"There's a lot of help in this city, but there's too many rules. You can't be high, you can't be late, but lots of kids don't, so there's no help for them if you don't fit the criteria," Robertson said.

"You have to get healthy, have a home, food — until then you'll stay where you are. Dope is the only thing you can accomplish on the street."

The couple's two-year-old son has been taken away and both Robertson and Knutson long for a change.

"I'm just really down on myself for how badly I've messed things up. I just want my son back. I just…he's in my heart," Robertson said.

Kids need help from people with first-hand experience

But just wanting a change isn't enough — homeless youth are in desperate need of support to help get them off the streets.

That's something Tim Pittmann knows all too well.

"I was a heroin addict for many years. I lived on the streets, grew up in foster care. That gives you training they don't give you in school," Pittmann said.

Now, he runs a home for troubled teens in Burnaby, B.C., where his own life experience is key to helping house homeless teens.

"One of the biggest problems is there's a lot of people higher up making decisions for these kids who don't have a clue," Pittmann said.

"They've gone to school and got all their knowledge from books. They don't last 15 minutes in my house with the kids. You have to put people who've been there, done that, with the kids, who know what they need. That's a huge problem."

Pittmann, like Robertson, believes most street kids refuse to use existing programs because the rules are too restrictive. As a result, he said he's seeing a rise in the number of kids living on Vancouver's streets.

But Jennifer Hannerhan with 24/7, a drop-in centre for homeless youth in Vancouver, said the bigger issues are political.

"How do you create a plan, then keep it in place for as long as it needs to be there? Governments change, funding changes, then programs have to close," she said.

More funding to prevent kids from landing on the streets, she said, will ensure a centre like hers is no longer needed.