Liberal MPP Madeleine Meilleur’s recommendation to relocate social services has received a mixed reception from Operation Go Home, an Ottawa street-youth program.
Meilleur recently suggested that moving social services such as homeless shelters and drug treatment centres from downtown Ottawa to the suburbs could help control homelessness, drug trafficking and prostitution. She said there is no reason for a service like OGH to be downtown because there are too many temptations in the area for vulnerable youth.
“We are here because there is a need,” says Michelle Jackson-Brown, the program’s youth worker in education. “We provide emergency services to youth that are already homeless.”
OGH is a five pillar program that helps homeless youth. Its services include a drop-in centre, an education program and an employment service. She says that at the drop-in centre, OGH sees anywhere from 50 to 100 youth a day.
If the program was located in the suburbs it would be hard for them to access these services, Jackson-Brown says.
“To be accessible is the most important thing for them.”
Twenty-two year old Vera Lynn Weaver left home when she was 14 years old and is currently staying at a friend’s house in Vanier, she says. She has been coming to the centre for years.
If OGH is relocated, Weaver says it would be difficult to find money to pay for transportation to the suburbs. “A lot of us wouldn’t show up,” she says.
Relocating OGH would be a waste of money, says Jamie Beam (name changed). She often used the program’s services when she was homeless, but now she volunteers there. She says services such as OGH should be kept on a main street downtown in the public eye.
“It’s in your face,” she says.
But Jackson-Brown says she agrees with Meilleur that more social services are needed in the suburbs. She says affordable housing needs to be located in a better environment where youth aren’t tempted by drugs and other problems, areas like Vanier. She says that there is not enough affordable housing and they’ve had youth on year long waiting lists.
“If they can’t afford housing, they’re going to stay on the streets.”
Rideau-Vanier Coun. Georges Bedard also says that affordable housing with supportive programs is needed outside of downtown.
He says the high concentration of social housing in downtown Ottawa is problematic.
“What we’re creating is a ghetto for the poor and this is totally unacceptable. It creates havoc, it creates an unpleasant environment and people can’t grow out of their problems.”
Bedard says decentralizing new services will make it easier for homeless people and recovering drug addicts to integrate into society.
He is pushing city council to prohibit the creation of new shelters in the Rideau-Vanier area.
Jackson-Brown says she hopes OGH will expand its services to suburban areas in the future, but right now it makes sense for their programs to be located downtown for the youth.
“There’s a real community downtown where they feel comfortable,” she says, “but that’s because they don’t have housing. They don’t have any other support besides the people that they know on the street. And so once you can find them housing, that’s where you can move forward.”