Left to the streets more youth going homeless this year

By Marley Durant, Dec 12, 2022

Lex Sonier was sitting in the grass at Kings Square enjoying the sun when she got a text from her father.

She started to cry.

“What's wrong?” asked her friend, Jayden Smith.

“Dad just kicked me out. I have 30 days to get everything out of my room in their house.”

“What? Why?”

“He said his girlfriend saw me steal their pack of cigarettes. But I haven't been home in three days. I can't believe this is happening to me again.”

She was homeless, a month before her 18th birthday.

Lex Sonier has been struggling on the streets for a few months. She wishes there were more support for teenagers who end up on the streets. (Marley Durant photo)

She had been living with her father since March because her mother kicked her out in January.

Sonier couch hopped with friends between January and March, until reaching out to her father.

“We had never been in touch. He left my mom when I was five, and we never spoke, until I was homeless.”

Sonier had been struggling with an addiction to pills since she was 15. She dropped out the second semester of her senior year because she wasn't getting any support at home or at school.

“If I told the guidance counselor at school, she would always call my parents to tell them I was a risk to myself, like if I told them I wanted to spend the night at a friend's house, to get away from my parents.”

When she was out on the streets the first time, she got herself clean. She was only smoking weed and vaping.

When she was living with her father in Charlottetown, she reconnected with her childhood best friend, Smith.

She was with Sonier when her parents kicked her out, and it was heartbreaking Smith said.

“She has already been through enough. She needed her parents and they tossed her out because she was too much to handle. What kind of parents are those?”

Sonier and Smith live in an apartment on Queen Street. The three-bedroom apartment is home to 10 people, eight of them being teenagers.

The apartment is a three-storey unit with one room in the basement and two on the top floor.

Sonier and Smith share a room with another girl on the top floor.

Smith was the only one of Soniers friends who stuck with her when she had nowhere to go.

They stayed together in Tent City, the local homeless encampment near the bridge that connects Charlottetown and Stratford.

Smith would sometimes get home late because she didn't want to leave Sonier on the streets alone at night.

Jayden Smith has stuck at Sonier's the entire time she has been on the streets. (Marley Durant photo)

Then one day in August, Smith found herself homeless too.

Sonier and Smith were at Kings Square. Sonier was browsing through Smith's phone for a song, when it buzzed with a text.

“Your mom just texted,” said Sonier, handing Smith her phone.

“Jay, Matt and I have thought very hard and after that last CPS [Child Protective Services] call we have decided to move to Stratford with the kids.”

“To Matt’s parents?”

“Yes.”

“There's no room for me there.”

“I know.”

Smith looked at Sonier in disbelief.

“Mom always told me I had a place with her when Dad moved to New Brunswick,” Smith started to cry.

Now both of her parents had left her. She had no choice but to go with Sonier.

“At least we have my tent,” Sonier said, hugging Smith.

Smith said sharing a place, anyplace, is not unique to just her and Sonier.

“All my friends are on the streets too. We are all in the same situation right now and we have no support, only each other,” she said.

“You can't even get into most of the local shelters until you turn 18. It can be fun during the day because we have each other and we are able to have fun, but once the sun sets, it's oh shit where are we going to go?”

In Charlottetown, support for minors who are homeless is a problem, said Sonier.

Two of the shelters she tried told her she needed to be an adult to claim a bed.

Lifehouse Summerside is a women’s and children's shelter in Summerside. It officially opened in June of this year.

It describes it’s goal as “committed to ensuring that women and children in the Prince County region have access to safe, secure, inclusive and supportive transitional housing and shelter while navigating life’s rough waters.”

Robbie Sevilla is the minister at Central Street Christan Church. Part of the reason Lifehouse started was the lack of services available to homeless people across the Island, he said.

“We have been watching the situation there [Tent City] and even here in Summerside closely. We are saddened to hear how things have gotten worse.”

Sonier and Smith said if they had known about Lifehouse during the summer, they would have done anything they could have to get to Summerside.

“Because it’s not just the parents kicking them out for bad behavior, but it's also the parents getting evicted and having to stay with family members that don’t have space for all of us, or at a shelter that only allows 18 plus,” Smith said.

“There is just nowhere for any of us to go.”