About The Program
Maison Umune Uniashuk (MYCASA) is an award-winning, peer-led model preventing homelessness for youth from care through housing, mentorship, and community support. The program was developed by Carrefour Jeunesse Emploi (CJE) in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, in Quèbec, was recently selected as one of the winners of the 2025 Making the Shift Youth Homelessness Prevention Awards.
Founded by Black and Indigenous youth in care alumni, Maison Umune Uniashuk (MYCASA) is a groundbreaking, peer-led initiative that is working to prevent homelessness for youth with experience in the child welfare system. The program, which is based at Carrefour Jeunesse Emploi (CJE) in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, uses holistic and culturally responsive methods that draw from lived expertise, practitioner knowledge, and academic data. This includes Quebec’s EDJEP study on youth in care and their transitions into homelessness. Together, these perspectives shape a model that provides both secondary and tertiary prevention supports.
“We are trying to provide the services and structures we know that we ourselves needed when we aged out of care.” – Marcelle Partouche Gutierrez, Project C.A.R.E Coordinator (MYCASA: Maison Umune Uniashuk)
The program draws on clear evidence that connection prevents homelessness: community belonging, chosen family, peer support, and safe, discrimination-free housing all lower risk. When paired with education, employment, and well-being supports, these interventions help young people well before they reach couchsurfing, shelters, or the street
The Maison Umune Uniashuk (MYCASA) program includes three prongs:
- Camp THRIVE, an Indigenous-led and culturally responsive program
- The Holistic Afro Youth Centre (HAY), offering peer mentorship, creative resources, and training
- The Montreal Youth Care Alumni Student Association (MYCASA), which provides mentorship, financial assistance, healing supports, and post-secondary guidance
These three prongs converge in a housing initiative called From Gaps to Growth. It provides secondary prevention supports for young people most at risk. This includes rental subsidies through an eviction prevention program rooted in holistic care. The initiative will soon expand through the acquisition of 25 dedicated housing units.
How the Program Fills Critical Gaps In Services
More than 60% of youth leaving the child welfare system experience homelessness within three years. This initiative supports young people in or leaving care in Quebec, a group significantly overrepresented among people experiencing homelessness. In the most recent Without a Home Study in Quebec, nearly half of respondents had a background in care. Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean youth are also overrepresented in both homelessness and child welfare systems. Young people least connected to their communities receive dedicated support through Maison Umune Uniashuk.
“We recognize that there was a need for this program, first and foremost, through lived experience. I don’t know anyone who’s been through the child-welfare system who hasn’t experienced either a visible or invisibilized form of homelessness.” — Marcelle Partouche
MYCASA’s harm-reductive, non-judgmental model emphasizes connection, dignity, and belonging. It offers an alternative to systems that too often fail youth aging out of care.
“Our housing project is made by and for youth from care, so it’s a peer support approach. We go from a needs-based angle…We really listen to the pain, the struggles, the victories—and constantly tailor our services by listening to their needs.” — Marcelle Partouche Gutierrez
How and Why the Program Was Created
MYCASA began with a single youth in crisis. Marcelle Partouche and her peers refused to let that young person return to homelessness after aging out of care.
“It came to a point that we decided…that we were going to cover their rent while they were doing an educational alternative program. For about four months, we covered their rent.” — Marcelle Partouche
“We realized that we cannot accept, morally, that someone would go back to shelters or to homelessness after we were able to get them out of it. That became the sounding alarm that we had to have a housing project.” — Marcelle Partouche
Program Impact
The impact of MYCASA is clear in both numbers and lived experiences.
“[Once one youth] got their permanent home, they told me, ‘now I can tell my brain that I’m safe, that it’s okay for me to hope.’” — Marcelle Partouche
For youth once in survival mode, housing through MYCASA creates room for stability and aspiration.
“This youth actually wrote their first bucket list and started to dream about things they wanted to do… which was absolutely impossible before because they were homeless.” — Marcelle Partouche
Why This Prevention Program is So Important
“If our program did not exist…the youth have actually named that already. They’ve shared with us that they would be homeless. Some of them go as far as saying they don’t know if they would still be [living]. This is harm reduction. This is saving lives.” — Marcelle Partouche
For many young people, MYCASA represents housing, community, and a chance to heal. Without supports like these, youth leaving care face ongoing instability, shelter use, and trauma. MYCASA provides safety, belonging, and a path toward independence.
Lessons for Other Communities
Marcelle’s reflections offer guidance to any community looking to build prevention-focused supports:
- Ask for help early. “Get volunteers. Get other similar organizations to lend their vans, to lend some hands. It’s important not to try to tackle everything on our own. It’s supposed to be a community-supported project.”
- Make it community-supported. “It’s supposed to be a community-supported project. We have a collective responsibility to change the way the system works.”
- Create dignity, not charity. “We wanted to make sure youth didn’t feel like second thoughts—we wanted them to feel really good about their home…”
- Expect challenges. “One of the biggest challenges of being one of the first organizations…is that you end up feeling lonely at times and not necessarily sure if you have the roadmap.”
Prevention succeeds when the entire community shares ownership—neighbors, funders, and youth themselves.
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About the Making the Shift Youth Homelessness Prevention Awards
This year marked the fifth annual Making the Shift Youth Homelessness Prevention Awards Program. The Awards are presented by Canada Life and co-led by A Way Home Canada and the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness. They were created to celebrate the important work happening to prevent youth homelessness in Canada.
Note: This blog post is part of a blog series highlighting the winners of the MtS Youth Homelessness Prevention Award Winners. To learn about the other award winner for 2025, read our blog here. And to learn about the 2025 honourable mention, read our blog here.