FUNDING CUTBACKS CLOSE SAFE HOUSES FOR YOUNGER TEENS

They are the youngest children on the street -- the most at risk,
frequently sexually-exploited, vulnerable to predators and dangerous street
drugs such as crack and crystal methamphetamine.

But starting April 1, kids aged 13 to 15 who are homeless or experimenting
with drugs will have no safe place to go when Vancouver's three exclusively
underage safe houses close due to funding cuts.

Today, a group of teens who say their lives were saved by the three
underage safe houses will be protesting at 11 a.m. at city hall and
marching toward the nearby offices of the B.C. Ministry of Children and
Family Development.

"It is painful to say this, but some of our youngest children, the most
vulnerable, just won't make it off the street or off drugs until it's too
late -- children will die," said Horacio Valle Torres, underage safe houses
co-ordinator.

"There will be an increase in sexual exploitation, diseases, physical and
emotional abuse, addiction, involvement in the drug trade and criminal
activities," Torres warns in a recent letter to Children's Minister Christy
Clark.

Davina Boone, 18, now a receptionist who is helping organize today's
protest, agrees.

"The underage safe houses do save lives," she said. "They got me out of the
street scene, empowered me and gave me hope. It's really dangerous out
there now -- cheap crystal [meth] has taken over the city."

Torres said a ministry social worker was forced to place a 14-year-old boy
in a Downtown Eastside hotel last week.

The three safe houses, which had eight beds reserved for kids under 16,
were run on a "family-style" model with 20 live-in staff, in three East
Vancouver homes under contract to the Vancouver Native Health Society.

The houses took in about 140 kids each year but that number jumped to 100
kids in just the past six months.

"We had no choice but to close the three houses after the ministry gave the
funding to a different lead agency and then cut their funds by $400,000,"
said society spokesman Lou Demerais.

Children's Ministry spokeswoman Kate Thompson said the Urban Native Youth
Association is now the lead agency and its Aboriginal Safe House, as well
as one run by Family Services, already takes kids 16 to 18 and will accept
kids aged 13 to 15.

Family Services supervisor Christopher Graham said it's not wise to mix
younger kids with older streetwise teens.