Even as we head into the cold depths of February, we can look forward to York Region becoming a warmer and kinder place in 2016.

In the past generation, our communities have grown from quiet suburban locales into bona fide urban centres, but adjusting our mindsets to that new reality takes time. 

A lot of issues we tend to think of as “city” problems fly under the radar, and it’s harder to address them until they’re acknowledged.

Homelessness is a perfect example, since as soon as you hear the word you probably picture someone sleeping on a sidewalk in downtown Toronto. But people leave home in York Region, too, for a myriad of reasons. They just don’t tend to sleep on our streets. 

They may hopscotch across various friends’ couches or camp out in a ravine, so homelessness remains a hidden problem. 

Because the resources for helping people in need have been spread so thin here they may also drift down to Toronto.

Until now, if you were a youth who left home in Thornhill or Richmond Hill and needed a shelter bed, you’d either have to venture south or head to the nearest York Region shelter, in Newmarket. 

The shelters there and in Georgina are at least 30 minutes away if you have a car and can zip up Highway 404. If you’re a kid with a bus fare, they might as well be on the moon.

But construction is nearly complete on the Hub, an amazing, desperately needed joint project by York Region and 360Kids. 

The latter organization, formerly known as Pathways, provides a series of programs for homeless youth, and their main facility was a drop-in centre, tucked away in a house at Yonge and Elgin Mills. It was a great place for kids to get meals, clothes and other resources, but kids got turned out in the evening when it closed for the night.

The Hub, at Yonge and Major Mackenzie Drive, provides a new location for those services as well as 14 shelter beds and 11 transitional apartments for youth getting back on their feet: no more desperate bus rides to the wilds of Sutton. 

Not surprisingly, there were the usual residents’ concerns during the planning, about having the clients coming into their neighbourhoods, the effects on real estate values, etc., but drive by and have a look: it doesn’t remotely resemble what you might imagine as “social housing.” 

The people it’s serving aren’t “street kids” from outside the area but members of our own communities who have long had nowhere else to go.
In 2012, I had the privilege to work on Leaving Home, a survey of homeless youth in the region. 

It was amazing how lacking the resources are and in how many instances homelessness could have been averted if problems were nipped in the bud rather than being allowed to grow out of control.

A key idea at the time of that survey is now coming to fruition. By the time you read this, the United Way of Toronto and York Region will have conducted a point-in-time count of the homeless people in York Region. 

On Jan. 21, volunteers fanned out – despite the challenges I listed above – trying to get, for the first time ever, a sense of just how many people are homeless on any given night. Once again, the more information we have, the easier the issue is to confront.

So youth in need now have a nearby place to go, but until now single women in need haven’t had anywhere to go at all.

York Region has shelters and supports for women and their children but, despite our population of more than 1.1 million, not a single shelter bed for single women fleeing abuse or otherwise in need. That changed with the recent opening of Belinda’s Place, up in Newmarket. 

Named after benefactor Belinda Stronach, the shelter is owned by York Region but operated by the Salvation Army and offers support services, drop-in facilities and emergency housing. 

As with the Hub, it’s amazing to think it took until 2016 for this to come into being.

York Region and other parts of the 905 have grown so fast that funding for social services often lags behind. 

Other “urban” problems, like traffic and even crime, are pretty easy to spot with the naked eye and talk about, but we should look at the Hub and Belinda’s Place and take some pride in finally embracing our neighbours and friends in their time of need.