COH-AWH-What_Would_it_Take

Importantly, youth explained that these structural issues interact in ways that mutually reinforce
inequity and poverty, trapping youth in cycles of marginalization and homelessness. Across
these structural challenges, several important patterns emerged:
• Structural issues are linked together in youth’s experiences, meaning that young people
often experience multiple structural problems at the same time.
• Experiencing one type of structural issue often amplifies the effects and consequences
of other structural and system issues. Youth reported that when they face one type of
structural issue (e.g., low social assistance rates), they are more likely to feel the effects
of other structural problems (e.g., lack of affordable housing). As a result, youth often
felt trapped in circular processes of exclusion that they, and the people supporting them,
couldn’t find a way out of.
• Structural issues are embedded in Canadian colonial history, legislation, and policy,
implemented within all orders of government. These provide context for, and directly
contribute to, homelessness among specific groups of youth.
• Due to systemic forms of oppression, such as racism, structural problems particularly affect
youth facing discrimination and exclusion on the basis of their identities or experiences
(e.g., LGBTQ2S+ youth or youth with mental health challenges). This means that in tight
housing and job markets, marginalized youth who face discrimination are even less likely to
obtain housing or employment.
These observations remind us that
youth homelessness prevention
cannot be the work of the youth
homelessness sector alone.
“If you don’t
have ID, you can’t
sometimes get
work, and you can’t
make money to buy
an ID, to get work,
and to get a home.”
EDMONTON YOUTH
It means that we cannot avoid tackling head-on the wicked problems that have plagued Canada for
centuries: income inequality, colonial violence, patriarchy, environmental destruction, inequity, and
human rights abuses. Fortunately, young people across the country offer us practical, compelling
solutions for implementing the structural change necessary to ensure better outcomes for all youth.
WHAT WOULD IT TAKE? 36