Thank you very much, Chairman May.
Today we have two things to ask of the federal government. One is to create a specific and distinct strategy for youth homelessness, and the other is to directly fund long-term youth shelters and housing for the reasons we will be revealing next, in terms of lived experience.
My colleague, Teesha, has lived every aspect of the youth homelessness that we're going to be talking about today. She has suffered through it all and come out very strong, as we believe every one of the youths who are currently in the situations we're going to describe can, within one year of us finding them in their situations.
We're actually going to speak about two distinct populations. The first is children aged 13 to 18 who land on the street, usually at the age of 13 or 14. The second is youth who have not gotten there yet. If we have that long-term housing and shelter there for them when they land on the streets, they will not encounter these situations.
I'm going to turn it over to Teesha to describe some of her regrettable experiences.