“I…” Sierra cuts herself off with a sigh, shaking her hands from the wrist. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I whisper, nodding into my loose fist. Under the table, my finger taps my thigh, mining for a solution. Then, I sit up in my chair and grip the base of my ponytail. With my other hand, I hook my finger around the double-twisted hair tie atop the crown of my head and pull, releasing my long braids from their up-do. The mess of box braids collapses around my shoulders, and I hand Sierra the hair tie. “You can fidget with it.”
Sierra stares at me with wide eyes, but she eventually takes the hair tie from me with a sheepish smile. “Thank you,” she says.
It’s the least I can do, really, as she sits in the office I’ve borrowed from my colleague, about to put to words the hardest story of her life.
Sacrificing my ponytail to strengthen her nerves is easy.
Being homeless at nineteen is not.
What does it mean to belong to a space defined by having nowhere to belong?
I met Sierra through the Restoration and Empowerment for Social Transition (REST) Centres, the Peel Region nonprofit organization I work for that serves BIPOC youth experiencing or at risk of homelessness—that I, too, am a client of, though I hate admitting that. I hate it not because I am ashamed of my life. I’ve had my entire young-adult life to understand and accept the ways in which my family will not support me. I understand that my family will never see me as more than the glue to hold themselves together, as my own person. I understand that I can never go back.
I’m done feeling shame that was never mine to feel.
No—I hate admitting that I am a client of REST Centres because it feels like a lie.
Homelessness is a spectrum that starts with ‘risk,’ where you have a short deadline to find new shelter before you have nowhere to live. Then, it transitions to ‘hidden homelessness,’ which the Canadian Observatory of Homelessness defines as “people who are staying with relatives, friends, neighbours or strangers because they have no other option” (Homeless Hub para. 1). Homelessness in the most traditional sense—living on the streets, in and out of shelters—is known as ‘chronic.’
So, there’s no single way to be homeless, and I certainly live in perpetual ‘risk,’ but when I think about how Sierra and her younger sisters experienced hidden homelessness when tragedy struck, why do I feel like a fraud?
“What is one thing you think REST Centres is good for?” I ask.
The REST office in downtown Brampton, Ontario is open for youth drop-ins almost every weekday. Youths ages sixteen to twenty-four drop in for homework help, school lunch breaks, to say ‘hi’ while they’re in the area, or, occasionally, “to get off the streets” (Sierra)
. I look up from my notepad. My hair tie loops in two figure-eights around Sierra’s fingers
“Most shelters kick you out by, like, 7:00 AM or something. You usually can’t go back until after dark,” she clarifies.
My eyes glance to the clock in the corner of my computer screen; it’s only 4:13 PM, and Brampton’s not always the safest place to be. That’s such a long time.
“But you guys keep us off the streets,” Sierra insists. “Like, there’s always someone to talk to here.”
REST strives to “Shelter Dignity” because dignity should not be lost in these struggles but protected. Everyone deserves love and judgement-free support for experiences that are ultimately out of their control. Most weeknights, REST hosts a variety of workshops for landlord and tenant training and learning life skills, but they also host social events. A lot of these workshops—even the boring ones about being an adult—run way past their scheduled end time because the youth never want to leave. As a facilitator, I often try to keep the youth on track, but after a while, I let time slip between my fingers.
The REST youth play around a lot and tell jokes—a habit contingent upon both their age group and their circumstances, but their sense of humour is dark, at best. They make the kinds of jokes you only make with friends, where you know no one will take them seriously. It’s not everywhere a Black kid can joke about stealing someone’s Aldo purse because they think it’s cute or how they were escorted home in a police vehicle because they were gifted a new mini fridge (true stories). In most places, comments like those are taken out of context as either highly criminal or politically-charged. Here, they’re healing; we cope with humour because laughter is rare.
“I feel comfortable coming here, you know?” Sierra says. “I can come here and just, like, talk my problems out. That comfort that is here, like… I just appreciate it. Because who else can I run to at the end of the day? When I’m here, no one’s ever gonna let me down. Outside of REST, I don’t really have friends like that.”
Defining youth homelessness as a subculture is a complicated choice. To be of a subculture—a subculturalist – is often characterized as an intentional choice. However, the first thing to understand about youth homelessness is that it’s never a choice because a youth is only homeless when our social systems fail to protect them. Independent youth are perpetually at-risk of homelessness and often fall into it because they don’t have a safety net. Even with financial support from Children’s Aid Society or Ontario Works, independent youth lack supportive adults in their lives who will catch them when all goes wrong—and for sixteen to twenty-four-year-olds, a lot is bound to go wrong.
The difficult balance to strike is to help these youths grow into independence far earlier than is fair while reminding them that they are still kids. Sierra is the kind of girl to double jinx you when you two say the same thing (rest assured, I owe her a soda), but she’s also the head of her household now, at nineteen. Youth homelessness is a phenomenon, but I’ve come to see REST Centres as our scene. REST youth come together and thrive in each other’s shared experiences while discovering who they want to be. They have fun with each other because they don’t often get to socialize with youth their age with similar lived experiences— and that makes a world of difference.
“The people here—they just get it, you know? There’s no explaining yourself because it doesn’t matter. There’s no judgement because everyone knows. There’s no, like, putting each other down or pity because we’re all just trying to survive.” Sierra karate-chops her palm to punctuate every point, my hair tie stretched snugly around her hand.
“When I think about place and everyone involved, I’m grateful to be alive. I see my future in front of me, you know?”
Talking to Sierra—taking her under my wing as I have—has healed me in a lot of ways. Even though I’m far more stable now than I have been in a long time, I still see myself in Sierra, in her sisters, and in all the youth at REST. I see myself in the sad looks Sierra tries to hide when she needs to go home. I see myself in every laugh and every cry to ever be shed in this office.
Youth homelessness is a phenomenon, but REST Centres is a community. I’m grateful every day to give back.