Thank you. It's so nice to see you, Tony.
There's a lack of trust by people experiencing homelessness. There's not a lot of trust with systems to begin with. You'll see that with some vaccine hesitancy as well. There's a lot of fear in going into crowded spaces. Unfortunately, with emergency housing, emergency shelters, they're quite crowded sometimes. There's room sharing. There are spaces where they get together, where they eat, etc.
During the pandemic, of course, in order to stay safe, we had to have people eat in their rooms, which was social isolation. A lot of people would rather stay outside than be isolated for two weeks. We had fewer units.
We also had a transitional system—it was all for safety and made sense—where you'd have to isolate for 14 days, which was really tough, especially when you might have addictions or mental health challenges. You might have an alcohol withdrawal program or drug withdrawal program that you're working through, and you might not have access to that if you're isolated. It really opened up a lot of different challenges for people.
With regard to youth, there's a reason we have other types of separate emergency housing for youth, seniors, women. For youth to have to isolate with adults and families, they just weren't doing it. Youth weren't going inside. It wasn't a choice. They were just saying they were going to stay outside if that's the only possibility they had.
We did not end youth homelessness. We saw... I think it was 17% of youth accessing our transitional housing program to keep them safe.
The isolation piece is tough. There's a lack of trust and a lot of fear.
What we have to do is to be really innovative and creative, as we did with a vacant home in Rouge Valley park. Parks Canada has 44 vacant homes in Rouge Valley park in York region, and we can take those homes and make affordable housing for many years beyond this.
We did a 200 Doors campaign, where 10 organizations came together to work with landlords to see if we could access new rental properties. We were not looking for a break on rent but their being open to renting to vulnerable people. We really have to be creative in how we do that. It continues to be a challenge, but it's going to take innovation and creativity.
Also, we work with a lot of people to prevent them from losing the housing they have now, getting them—through the region—the rent supports they need so that they don't lose their housing and we don't have new people coming into homelessness.