( Vince Talotta / Toronto Star ) | Order this photoOntario needs a youth homelessness strategy that focuses on prevention and on moving youth out of the shelter system and into stable housing as quickly as possible, says a national homelessness think tank. Article Continued Below“A strategy to address youth homelessness will not simply result in fewer people who experience homelessness, but rather, contribute to the longer-term reduction in poverty within the province,” says the report. “If we wait for communities one-by-one-by-one to come up with a clever idea, it will be 100 years or more before we end youth homelessness,” Gaetz said in an interview. A provincial allocation of an additional $5 million would be appropriate, says the observatory’s Stephen Gaetz, who co-authored the Ontario report with Melanie Redman of A Way Home, a national coalition dedicated to ending youth homelessness. “The time is right for the province of Ontario to play a more proactive role in helping communities move from ‘managing’ the crisis, to preventing, reducing and ending youth homelessness,” says the report.

Source: thestar June 02, 2016 09:31 UTC