{"id":17456,"date":"2025-12-13T06:00:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T09:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2025\/12\/13\/edmonton-mayor-andrew-knack-expands-youth-housing-spaces-and-encourages-youth-engagement\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T06:00:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T09:00:24","slug":"edmonton-mayor-andrew-knack-expands-youth-housing-spaces-and-encourages-youth-engagement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2025\/12\/13\/edmonton-mayor-andrew-knack-expands-youth-housing-spaces-and-encourages-youth-engagement\/","title":{"rendered":"Edmonton Mayor Andrew Knack Expands Youth Housing Spaces and Encourages Youth Engagement"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Edmonton Mayor Andrew Knack.  By Chevi Rabbit, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter (ANNews) \u2013 Edmonton\u2019s newly elected Mayor Andrew Knack has moved quickly to address pressing issues affecting youth and vulnerable populations, with a focus on homelessness, safety, housing, and community support. On his first major initiative as mayor, Knack introduced a motion to expand daytime and winter warming spaces for youth. Speaking about the urgency of the issue, he said, \u201cI heard overwhelmingly during the campaign across the city that safety is the number one issue for Edmontonians, including homelessness, mental health and addictions. Edmontonians want leadership on this issue; they don\u2019t want us to keep saying it\u2019s somebody else\u2019s problem. They want action.\u201d Thanks to partnerships with Homeward Trust and other agencies, funding was leveraged to expand youth spaces from an anticipated 50 to 300. Knack highlighted the impact for iHuman Youth Society: \u201cYeah, so we have 100, specifically for iHuman, there\u2019s 120 new spaces for the youth there, and it\u2019s allowed them to expand their hours. Originally, they were open until about five o\u2019clock, now it\u2019s going till nine o\u2019clock. They weren\u2019t able to do weekends, now they\u2019re able to do weekends. Before it was Monday to Friday, 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., now it\u2019s seven days a week, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., with additional spaces available to support those youth and make sure they have more coverage and care. This is incredible. It\u2019s going to allow those youth to have more safe spaces to go for a longer period of time.\u201d The expansion isn\u2019t limited to iHuman. Knack also noted broader citywide improvements: \u201cOn top of that, we\u2019ve expanded spaces across the city. There\u2019s more spaces \u2013 for example, there was one in the West End that was open Tuesday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 12. Now it\u2019s Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., and they\u2019re open on the weekends, 10 a.m. to 4. So many more people are going to have access to a space, especially throughout the winter, where we know it can be particularly hard. These types of spaces are critical to helping more and more people, so it\u2019s so good to see we have spaces downtown, we have spaces in the west, and we have spaces southside.\u201d Knack has also been active on housing solutions. He shared his optimism about collaboration with other levels of government: \u201cA lot of money [is going] into housing. I had a meeting with the provincial governments about two weeks ago, and Minister Jason Nixon\u2026 What was really encouraging is in that meeting, we really realized that there was common agreement about the need for more post-recovery housing\u2026 We need more market housing, but we also need more non-market housing for people. And so I actually see a situation where this might be the first time in 12 years where I actually see all three orders of government seemingly aligned, and it\u2019s really good to see.\u201d On collaboration, Knack emphasized partnerships as the key to impact: \u201cThat\u2019s how you build a stronger Edmonton together \u2013 by working together with all these groups, the other orders of government, these agencies like iHuman who are serving. We do that together and we have the biggest impact.\u201d Knack also encourages youth to use their voices and engage in shaping the city: \u201cI sat as the councillor up in my first eight years on the City of Edmonton Youth Council, and something I always try to remind youth of any age, whether they\u2019re just in grade school or starting post-secondary, is how much their voice actually matters. I think there\u2019s this assumption that if you\u2019re younger, people don\u2019t care about youth as much\u2026 But what I have seen over my time as a city councillor, and now as mayor, is that when youth are speaking up and using their voice, they\u2019re actually the group that you have to listen to the most, because they are the ones that are going to be around to experience the impact of the decisions we make for as long as possible\u2026 Please make sure you speak up and use your voice.\u201d Through these actions and statements, Mayor Knack has set a tone of hands-on leadership, prioritizing measurable improvements for youth, vulnerable populations, housing solutions, and meaningful civic engagement across Edmonton. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Edmonton Mayor Andrew Knack. By Chevi Rabbit, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter (ANNews) \u2013 Edmonton\u2019s newly elected Mayor Andrew Knack has moved quickly to address pressing issues affecting youth and vulnerable populations, with a focus on homelessness, safety, housing, and community support. On his first major initiative as mayor, Knack introduced a motion to expand daytime [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":17457,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2075,118,1],"tags":[2074,116],"class_list":["post-17456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-alberta","category-indigenous","category-uncategorized","tag-alberta","tag-indigenous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}