Revitalizing to serve you better
Revamped locations will offer more employment programs and services to help homeless
Within 24 hours of leaving his hometown of Guelph, Ont., a year ago, Mark Zilio found refuge at Toronto’s Queen Street West YMCA shelter for homeless young men.
A performance artist ( better known to some as Toronto’s Spiderman), Zilio was able to take advantage of the Y’s multiple services, including counselling and a pre-employment development program.
“I also received help with workplace clothing and transportation money, and they are assisting me with getting into low-income housing,” Zilio, 24, says. “They even give tours to Ryerson University, George Brown College and even Bartender One, but right now, I’m trying to learn budgeting, and improve my relationship with my family.”
Last year, one in four YMCA members received financial assistance, while 34,000 were helped through employment programs. Y Houses also provided a roof over the heads of 45 youths each night.
Being able to assist more homeless youth like Zilio has Louise Smith, general manager of youth outreach and intervention for YMCA of Greater Toronto, excited about moving these services down the road into a much bigger location.
The new Vanauley Street YMCA will offer broadened programming such as employment services (a big contributor to community health) not only for young street people, but also the people who are living in the area. Within the larger building, other programs will be added, including Streets to Homes and an extreme cold-weather alert drop-in program for youth.
“We’re moving into a welcoming, vibrant community,” Smith says of their future home in the Alexandra Park area. “We asked ourselves: how we could fit into the picture? How can we support the good work that is already being done?” Toronto-Centre MP Adam Vaughan describes this community as “going through a massive revitalization,” not only with changes in infrastructure, but also in population density and demographics.
While there are social services for low-income kids who are residents of the area, Vaughan explains that over the past 10 years, they’ve seen a huge influx of young, non-residents, who are attracted to the downtown core and end up on the streets.
A priority neighbourhood, it hasn’t been given the top-up of services the city and provincial level have received, and so, in partnership with residents (who are leading this conversation), “the YMCA, with its social dexterity, is stepping up to upgrade the services to a very particular sector of the neighbourhood — strengthening its capacity to properly house, and provide a platform for a better future,” says Vaughan.
Zilio is currently employed at Sobey’s, thanks to the support he found at the Y: “As a youth, there is all the help in the world that you could want here, you just need to be willing to ask for it.”