[URBAN NOTE] "When hidden poverty penetrates Toronto’s suburbs"

[rfmcdonald]

This, a Toronto Star article by Jessica Wynne Lockhart, is part of a series on suburban Torotno's woes. I confess that I know so little about these areas. I should know more.

With its brown brick exterior and tidy garden, the 1970s bungalow on Mississauga’s Dixie Road appears unremarkable.

The home of Our Place Peel, a United Way-funded emergency shelter for youth in crisis, is a safe haven for 16- to 21-year-olds who have nowhere else to go.

It is also the only emergency youth shelter in the entire Peel region.

“We have to turn away a lot of kids on a nightly basis because we’re usually full,” says executive director Christy Upshall. Last year, Our Place Peel, which houses 14 short-term and six transitional beds, had to send away more than 450 youth who were in need of a safe place to stay.

Much like the non-descript building, the need for emergency shelters and housing in Toronto’s suburbs is one that could easily go unnoticed. However, it’s a widespread problem — in 2015, 14,000 people in the Peel region accessed a shelter, 4,000 of which were children or youths (up to age 21).