It's a tremendous service. You've touched on one particular one. I'll stick to your community for a moment, but I'll also talk about a place like Phoenix house in my hometown in Halifax.
Those benefits are very real and the programs that are provided by the charities that receive the funds are very real. You mentioned The Corner. The YMCA had a very important facility on College Street, where they had overnight rooms particularly for young people.
The other issue is trying to prevent people from getting on the street. When I was at the YMCA we developed a program called the First Stop program. It was a program that was operated at the bus terminal on Bay Street in Toronto. I think that's where the main terminal is. It's been awhile since I've lived in Toronto.
We had trained professional people at the First Stop program who were there to identify young people getting off the bus from somewhere in Ontario—God knows from where, and God knows why they were there and what they were fleeing from at home. Their job was to intercept those people, to befriend them, ask them why they were there and if they needed services. Many of them would say, “I'm going to visit my aunt in Etobicoke. I'm going to go stay with her.” That was a safe refuge to them, but they didn't have the subway fare. First Stop would provide them with the subway fare, but they would also try to provide them with other services to prevent them from walking outside of the bus terminal and bumping into people who had more unsavoury plans for these young people who arrived in the big city.