If one were to pass through downtown and observe only the behavior of street youth, it would be easy to pass judgment and see them merely as a problem that needs addressing. To understand street youth, we must be willing to look at their individual experiences, values, and frameworks of reality. We need to sit on a curb, listen to their stories, and let them tell us who they are.
Street culture among homeless youth is a framework for viewing life, for relating to one another and the outside world, and for creating accepted norms and behaviors that allow street kids to function and survive in their common environment. Street life is more about a culture than just a physical location, so it takes much more than just getting kids physically off the streets to “get them off the streets.” A youth can be fully a part of the culture and involved in street life without necessarily being homeless.
Entering Street Life
When a kid first emerges onto the street, she finds herself alone, carrying the weight of her recent experiences as well as the heavy pack stuffed with all she owns. She is in a new world where she’s no longer in control of anything, and the ways in which she once was able to manage her life don’t work anymore. She is scared, but she has seen enough just since leaving home to know that she has to be tough if she’s going to make it on her own. Her past is gone now; that was a different life, someone else’s. The future is so uncertain that she wonders if it’s even real. All she has is now, and even that seems like too much to handle.
View of Time
The concept that the present is the only reality is one of the most common characteristics among street kids.
The past is too painful; it is either re-created, treated like it never existed, or disconnected from the individual.
The future is so uncertain that it isn’t real. The future has no meaning because many kids don’t know if they will survive to see next month, or even tomorrow. If tomorrow does come, it promises only to bring more difficulties. If there is any possibility of something bad happening, street kids often assume that it will happen.
Now is all that exists. If a task or effort doesn’t produce immediate benefits, it’s not worth it. If an action doesn’t have immediate consequences, it’s fine. Because there is only now, kids will often repeat the mistakes of the past and borrow against their futures.
Support Systems
Entering street life usually involves a severing from the youth’s prior support system. Street kids are alone, with no one to fall back on for financial, mental, spiritual, or emotional support.
“The hardest thing about being on the streets was being alone, ‘cause I was alone a lot of the time. I knew that when I started staying alone on the streets, my life had changed forever.” -“JJ”
Part of our nature as humans is to attach ourselves to some type of family in which we can feel accepted and safe. Although most street kids find themselves alone at first, most will soon seek to fill this void, by whatever means necessary. Many create street families with other youth and refer to each other as relatives; some join gangs or connect to alternative cultural groups.
Survival
For most street youth, life isn’t about acquiring possessions, being popular, having an impact, or even living a good life; it is survival. When survival and the basic necessities of life are in jeopardy, morality goes out the window.
-from CCW Training Manual
