Youth and children are exposed to drugs and sex trafficking at tent cities, local agencies say

WATERLOO REGION - Girls as young as 12 and 13 years old shouldn't be allowed to hang out at homeless encampments where they are exposed to drugs and groomed by sex traffickers, says the CEO of a Kitchener agency that provides shelter for youth facing homelessness.

Sandy Dietrich-Bell, chief executive officer for Oneroof, an agency that has offered youth services locally for more than 30 years, said youth, many of whom are still children, should be restricted from hanging out or living at homeless encampments.

It's a prime place for the grooming around sex trafficking or increased drug use and drug availability," Dietrich-Bell said in an interview.

Also concerned with youth in encampments is Safe Haven Youth Services, an agency that provides emergency shelter for youth, as well as Family and Children's Services of Waterloo Region.

About a month ago, the agencies started to meet with Region of Waterloo officials to voice their concerns about the youth and how to get them out of there.

OneRoof's concern is that the region is looking at these encampments from an adult lens instead of a youth lens," she said. They don't forbid adults from being there but that's not acceptable when it comes to young people."

Both Oneroof and Safe Haven want to see security remove the youth from the camp because they won't leave on their own, Dietrich-Bell said.

It's not enough to have eyes on them," she said. I don't want you to have eyes on a 14-year-old going into a 50-year-old's tent. I want you to stop them."

Outreach workers with Oneroof are at the encampments daily, trying to encourage youth to leave but they are often faced with threats of violence from adults, not the youth, who want to keep the young people there," she said.

Outreach workers are at the camps everyday to encourage the youth to go to Oneroof or Safe Haven, she said.

The reality is that the encampments have no rules. They can do whatever they want. They have adults influencing them in very negative ways," she said.

And in fairness to the youth, what 13- or 14-year-old wouldn't want to have an environment where there's minimal rules," she said.

The youth lack the cognitive ability and development to fully understand the consequences and they need to be protected, Dietrich-Bell said.

A Waterloo mom has shed many tears and had sleepless nights since her 14-year-old ran away from home last summer and has been spending much of her time at the encampment in Victoria Park.

The mom went to the camp and tried to convince her daughter to come home but she wanted to stay with her new friends. On one visit, the mother recalls her daughter sitting on the ground crying and yelling at her as she picked the scabs on her face from smoking meth.

She was so dirty. Her hair and her face were so brown. She was so thin and not taking care of herself. I didn't know what to do," said the mom in a recent interview. She is not being named to protect the identity of her daughter who has been in and out of hospital and has been reported missing by Waterloo Regional Police a couple of times.

The mom said she had heard of the tent city but had no idea what to expect until she went there with her older daughter looking for her youngest child.

I didn't know what was there. I was shocked," she said. A man kept telling me to put my phone away."

The mom has connected with other moms whose daughters also ran away and went to live at the camp.

I just want her back home," she said.

The region's commissioner of community services, Peter Sweeney, said that since the agencies came together for the youth encampment table with regional officials, the number of youth staying at the encampments has decreased.

We are collectively working to connect the youth with family and where possible the community, shelters and organizations," he said.

The encampments are particularly unsuited and unsafe places" for children and youth, Sweeney said.

The outdoor managed encampment, which the region says they will announce a location this week, will not allow youth to live at the encampment.

The hybrid managed encampment that will be opening next year will not be a place for children and youth," he said.

In August, regional council approved a multimillion-dollar plan to address chronic homelessness.

The homelessness strategy includes a managed encampment, as well as money for transitional and supportive housing, more rent supports and opening an Indigenous-centred and Indigenous-led housing project.

The outdoor encampment, which will be staffed 24/7, is part of the plan and is expected to be located outside of the region's downtown cores.

It will likely be up and running by the end of January, Sweeney said. The region is waiting for the structures that residents will be living in and the delivery of the buildings.

Amanda Trites, program co-ordinator for the court services team at the Healing of the Seven Generations, said her staff also goes to the encampments to talk to Indigenous youth who are at the camps.

They're being given drugs. They're being made to sell the drugs. They are being given gifts, but expected to pay for those gifts through sexual favours," she said.

Many of the parents of the children running away are struggling to pay the rent, struggling to put groceries on the table. They are struggling," Trites said.

Instead of taking the encampment to court which leads to more trauma or opening a managed encampment, Trites wants to see more invested in some of the root causes such as addiction and mental health.

They need to build addictions treatment centres. They need to add more detox beds. They need to add more mental health workers. They need more outreach workers so that we can go out and we can make sure these people are getting what they need," she said.

Transitional housing is key so individuals have the tools to live in their own place, learn how to pay their bills, how to cook, how to clean and how to manage all that."

Liz Monteiro is a Waterloo Region-based general assignment reporter for The Record. Reach her via email: lmonteiro@therecord.com