Vancouver's Homeless Youth

In order to shine a light on the dark matter of youth homelessness in Vancouver, we took to the streets of Gastown with our friends at Coast Capital Savings to talk to the public about what we know about this problem, and to get some inspiration on how we can help.

Our host, Precious, who is a member of the Youth Get It Community Council at Coast Capital, was nervous for her first time conducting on-camera interviews; especially around such a heavy subject. However, once we started asking passer-bys “Have you seen a homeless person today?”, we could see the compassion come through on their faces. Not only are the public aware of the homeless situation in Vancouver, but they are well informed and are earnest to help make changes.

Unfortunately, homelessness strictly involving youth is harder to grasp. Many of the people Precious spoke to were shocked to hear some of the statistics provided by Covenant House Vancouver. The fact that there are 500-1000 youth who are homeless or at risk of being homeless on any given night in our city alone, or that 70% of those youth have witnessed family violence, is heartbreaking to learn.

Coast Capital Savings is committed to empowering youth to succeed in life, so that’s why they’re partnering with Covenant House to help raise awareness about youthless homelessness in Vancouver. Throughout the month of June, if you make a donation to Covenant House, Coast Capital will match it up to $100,000.

It was an honor producing a video that will hopefully spark a larger conversation in Vancouver about how we, as a community, can help prevent and end youth homelessness.