For homeless, the journey off the street is long and hard

Matthew dreams of running his own restaurant one day, a fine-dining emporium where, as top chef, he could track his main course from live beast to butcher block to dinner plate.

“My favourite thing is anything that has to do with meat. I would love to work in a steak house, I would live in a steak house, no problem. But I like every kind of food,” says Matthew, still wearing his toque and windbreaker as he tucked into a heaping plate of beef chili at Chez Pops one recent lunch hour.

With luck and fortitude, Matthew is on his way to becoming one of Dans la Rue’s happy endings.

Eight years after he first found himself on the street, and five years after his first visit to The Bunker – the centre’s emergency shelter for homeless youth – the 24-year-old has begun to rebuild his life.

“I got kicked out of a lot of homeless shelters. I didn’t have access to anywhere anymore so I was really stuck. Without any help, I had to work. I had to figure some-

“Matthew credits Dans la Rue with helping him back to the classroom.”

thing out. I was in Ottawa, a town I didn’t really know.”

Matthew credits the team at Dans la Rue with giving him basic cooking skills and helping push him back toward the classroom.

He’s working in a French restaurant and will soon complete his high-school equivalency, the credentials he needs to enrol in cooking school.

But the journey off the street is not without its complications.

“I am coming here because I have a financial situation at my place and I can’t eat. I’ve got some food but not enough,” said Matthew, struggling to make ends meet since his roommate moved out, leaving him to cover the $680 rent on his own.

Housing is a huge problem for street kids, says Aki Tchitacov, executive director at Dans la Rue.

“If you are on welfare and you are getting about $550 a month, in Hochelaga-maison neuve, the east end of the city, you’re not going to find an apartment for less than that. So right there you are behind the eight ball.

“The second thing is because of the way you are, the way you look and dress, not too many landlords would be open to giving you a chance and renting you a place.”

Some street kids manage to find a place with help from Dans la Rue. Others couch surf.

“For some, it’s on and off. They get an apartment and then they blow their money and they lose it. That’s the thing about homelessness. It’s a very dynamic thing.”

Tchitacov sees Dans la Rue’s programs – from medical care, psychological counselling and family support for young mothers to backto-school, job placement and make-work projects – as a gateway for young people like Matthew who are ready to try again.

“The reality is that for some of our kids when they reach their early-20s the indication is that they are heading toward chronic homelessness.”

The challenges – drugs, abuse, prostitution, mental illness – are huge.

“The drug trade in this town has exploded. There is all kinds of synthetic stuff out there that’s garbage, that’s laced with all kinds of harmful stuff that really messes you up really badly.

“And these guys, they don’t have their medicare card, and where they are in their lives, theydon't really express themselves very well. They don’t have the best social skills. So they aren’t going to be able to go to the Error the CLSC necessarily sarily and be able to express themselves properly. They are going to be antagonistic. So it’s tough. All that is part of the job here. We’re kind of the place of last resort. We’re the end of the line.”

Upstairs at Chez Pops is École Emmett Johns, a French-language school run in partnership with the Conseil scolaire du Montréal that offers the French and math credits street kids need to qualify for vocational programs.

“We are not a refugee camp. It’s not just a cafeteria, feeding you. It’s also about starting to give you the opportunities … to start being able to work your way out of the street.”

For Matthew, that means a place to eat when his cash runs short, and help with his bus pass once he goes back to cooking school and is living on student loans.

“I think anybody can make progress,” he says. “I think it’s the person. Once someone wants to move out of the street, they have everything here to do it. You need to want to get off the street.”