Homeless Youth and the Search for Stability

Youth are one of the fastest growing segments of the homeless population. Although there has been much research on how youth become homeless and survive on the streets, we know very little about their pathways off the street and the many challenges that present during this process.

This book relates the lived experiences of homeless youth as they negotiate the individual, sociocultural, and economic tensions of transitioning out of homeless and street contexts and cultures. Through interviews the authors gained privileged entry into the lives of youth in Toronto and Halifax over a year-long period.

Through rich qualitative prose, quantitative elaboration, and comic-book narratives, participants spoke of courage, fortitude, strength, adversity, and at times, simple bad luck. Ultimately this became a story of fragility, complexity, living “on the edge,” and the (re)-building of identity.

• focuses on post-street life, unlike most studies
• centres solution-focused inquiry as opposed to problem-focused  
• growing interest in alternative research methods (ie., arts-based) that this book employs
• tongue-in-cheek approach to knowledge translation
• comic book narratives
• voices of youth articulated over time (followed for a year past homelessness)
• youth age 16-25