KITCHENER — The last straw for Jennifer Weber was when things started to go missing from her home.
She knew her teenage son, Brandon Dao, and his friends were taking her jewelry.
“I met him outside one day. I took his keys. I said, ‘Go grab some clothes. That’s it. You’re gone,’ ” Weber recalled of the day she kicked out her son.
Dao was 17 when he found himself homeless. He filled his days hanging out with friends. But at night, he was alone.
He slept outside in secluded places.
“I had a whole bunch of blankets and crap to keep myself warm,” Dao said. “Living outside, I never got used to it.”
Nighttime was “crazy and scary.”
Dao ended up at a drop-in centre and shelter for homeless youth in downtown Kitchener called Reaching Our Outdoor Friends, better known as ROOF. The centre’s 15-bed emergency shelter for youth age 16 to 25 is called Providing a Roof.
Since it opened in April 2010, the coed shelter has been home to 416 young adults. Some stayed only a few days, the longest a year.
A shelter was badly needed for the age group because many teens were afraid to go to the adult men’s shelter, the House of Friendship, said Sandra Dietrich-Bell, ROOF’s executive director.
At that shelter, “You’re meeting people who’ve been on the street for 20 years,” said Tristan Lippert, co-ordinator of ROOF’s social enterprise programs.
Teens are also reluctant to go to churches that run Out of the Cold programs offering meals and beds to people living on the street because they don’t feel safe, Dietrich-Bell said.
There’s always a wait list of four or five youths who need ROOF’s shelter, she said. It’s located downstairs in the agency’s Queen Street building, near downtown Kitchener.
Lime green stairs painted with black footprints descend to a welcome sign on the shelter’s doorway. Inside, more bold colours cover the walls — purple, green, blue, deep red and lime green.
A huge, graffiti-style mural takes up a wall at one end of the room. Teens used spray cans to paint “I Know I Can” and “Kitchen Gnarly.”
Staff members are on duty all night and a camera scans the room to prevent stealing. The rules: no drugs, no weapons, no booze, no lighters and no bullying.
James Legate, 18, woke every morning to see “I Know I Can” on the wall near his bed.
He was also kicked out of his home — for “doing drugs, not going to school and disobeying my parents.”
He went to a rehabilitation program and returned home, but family circumstances were unstable and he left again. He stayed with a friend and kept his belongings in a shed.
Things changed when he went to jail. His girlfriend cried, and he says she snapped him out of it. He quit drugs and went to the shelter.
“It changed my life,” Legate said.
He hadn’t expected much, but got a nice surprise.
“It wasn’t as bad as it seemed,” he said. “A homeless shelter I thought would be worse. It was clean.
“When I came here, I met a lot of kids facing the same things I went through. It made me feel comfortable. The staff respect you and don’t judge you.”
Legate didn’t sit around. He had to be out of the shelter by 9 a.m. to look for a job or a place to live, or do something else productive such as volunteer at the Working Centre.
Residents are allowed to return at 1 p.m. for lunch and “essential services,” such as visiting the registered nurse practitioner, taking a shower, doing laundry, meeting with staff for goal setting and problem-solving, or using a computer for educational or work purposes. Residents can also see the psychiatric nurse on Wednesday afternoons.
Ontario Works pays for teens at the shelter. They’re expected to search for work, return to school or reconnect with their family, Lippert said.
Some work right in the building. ROOF hires 10 youths and two leaders every three months for two social enterprises that offer job skills to about 45 young adults a year who lack family support, housing and a high school diploma.
The Lunchbox program offers corporate catering and lunch delivery services. Street Designs lets youth express their artistic talents by creating such items as T-shirts, mouse pads, tote bags and puzzles for customers. The teens work 30 hours a week.
Coming to the shelter was a bit of a shock for Dao, a slight, polite teenager.
“When I first came here, it got to me,” he said. “It was a huge blow. I didn’t have a job. I was homeless.”
But he ended up working at Lunchbox and things improved.
“When I first moved here, I didn’t have the confidence in myself,’ he said. “The staff showed me that I did. I just felt like I could actually do something.”
After the first month, he handed out resumés and started looking for a place to live. He had job interviews lined up at a pet store and a sports equipment store. But he was offered the position of lead youth for Lunchbox and took it.
After two months, he asked his mother if he could return home, and she agreed. He now pays rent, and does dishes, cleaning and other chores on his days off work. He buys his own groceries.
“I wish I could have started doing this earlier,” he said. “Time has gone by so fast. I wish I was still 13.”
Dao, 19, was young when he got involved with a bad crowd in his low-income neighbourhood in Kitchener.
“I was just a kid who wanted to do bad s--t and not go to school,” he said. “I thought that would have been cooler.”
His mother was 18, and raising two children, when they moved there. She has seen a big change in her son, who used to skip school, drink and break into houses.
“He’s come a long way,” Weber said. “He’s more goal-oriented, interested in ROOF and cooking.”
For Dao, cooking used to consist of making a sandwich or eating a bowl of cereal, his mother said. Now, he makes pies.
“It’s exciting for me,” Weber said. “I’m very proud of him.”
She thinks being homeless was “a rude awakening for him.”
It wasn’t easy for her to send him away.
“I constantly worried about him,” she said. “It was scary because I didn’t know where he was staying, if he was getting in any trouble.
“I heard once he and his friend were sleeping in a tent in someone’s backyard. I felt like crap. You hear about kids going missing.”
She’s grateful to ROOF.
“I’m thankful for a place like that, very thankful,” she said. “I didn’t know there would be extra programs to help them ... figure out their goals in life, where they want to go from here.”
Last year, the agency served 3,751 young people in all its programs.
Legate, a longtime drug user, soaked up everything the agency had to offer. He became independent after two months, with an apartment, a job and a new-found confidence.
ROOF also hired him as lead youth for its Street Design program.
“I never really had a real job before,” he said.
He always turned to drugs to solve problems.
“I was too hurt to care,” he said. “Every time I had to deal with a situation that hurt me, I didn’t hesitate to do drugs.”
ROOF staff didn’t lecture him, instead offering strategies to help. He learned skills in leadership and communications.
“Then I felt motivated — obviously there’s something in me,” he said.
He set goals: find a place to live, get a job. He hooked up with Pathways to Education, a program that helps youth in low-income communities graduate from high school and then move on to post-secondary education or training.
Pathways provides academic support, social support, a monthly bus pass and $1,000 for every year he completes in the program.
He’s in an online co-op program, doing his homework during his free time while working at ROOF.
Legate now has his own place in Waterloo, paying $285 a month for a room in a house shared by two others. He mentors one who is like a little brother to him.
Shelter residents must move out once they have earned $799. Legate makes minimum wage of $11 an hour working at ROOF.
It takes only two paycheques to make $799 and become independent. ROOF staff members help with the housing search and setting up job interviews.
For the first time, Legate had bills to pay.
“I got used to it and kind of liked it,” he said.
In fact, he has paid his rent six months in advance and has a savings account of almost $1,000.
“I was scared to be homeless again,” he said.
Legate plans to continue his schooling and wants to become a nurse or paramedic, either at college or university if his marks are good enough. Pathways will fund his education for up to four years.
“I just want to help people,” he said. “I’m really good in science.”