Robert Raynes struggles to pay rent and other expenses involved with running Poverty House.

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Readers of this magazine may recall the story of Robert Raynes from about a year ago. Raynes is the Saint John based director of something called the United Youth Federation Incorporated, a local anti-poverty group. At the time of last year's story, Raynes was working on a project that saw his organization filling shoeboxes with food and toiletries to be distributed among the city's homeless and poverty stricken youth.

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Shortly after the publication of that story Raynes was informed the building which had housed his operation had been sold and that he would have to find a new home. On short notice Raynes relocated to Saint John's downtown core renting space in the old Royal Antedeluvian Order of Buffalos Hall (the Buffalo Club), a venue much larger than what he was accustomed to that also came with a much higher monthly rent.

As Saint John nears what has been promised as a time of economic prosperity with several large projects and a lift in real estate values, citizens at the lower end of the economic scale find themselves facing the very real possibility of homelessness and poverty. As market demand for housing goes on the increase so do monthly rent values. Landlords are now in a position to virtually name their price as an influx of skilled workers come to the city for good paying jobs. This uplift in rental prices may help landlords in the city, but it can be the catalyst that sends tenants with less income to the streets.

Among these tenants is a growing number of youth who Raynes claims he has been crusading for over the past 15 years. After moving to his Union St. location in November of 2007, Raynes says he has provided assistance to over 5,000 people in the uptown Saint John area. Financing his agency with a small call centre that provided jobs to some of the very people he was assisting, the United Youth Federation was working on a project to create a drop-in centre. That drop-in centre was to be targeted at youth between the ages of 15 and 18 between noon and 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. to midnight.

In an interview with [here] Magazine, Raynes explains the size of his new space has led to new challenges as well as new opportunities.

"When we came here we noticed there were people looking for food in the evenings. Romero house is great but they close in the afternoon. So we started doing soups at night and we got a lot of people coming through the doors. It's great but it's also tough because we pay for all the food from the Federation, we don't get any donations of food. When you get up to 100 people a night that can be a lot of food we have to buy. So I started thinking about what we can do with the new building to help keep us paying the bills and offering something for the youth of the city. So I came up with the idea of a teen drop-in centre. We got 15 used Internet-ready computers donated from the New Brunswick government and I got an X-Box and an X-Box 360 so the kids would have something to do."

Raynes bounces from topic to topic over the phone, rarely pausing for a breath. Over the course of a half hour conversation he jumps from discussing the number of people on the streets in Saint John to what he sees are shortcomings in the government funded TRC. It should be noted that the TRC also supports local youth. Raynes also goes on to tell of how just last week he was prepared to close his centre's doors.

"It's been hard. When the landlord sold our property in the North End we needed to move fast. Then when we got this new location we noticed that nobody knew what we stood for. United Youth Federation didn't tell our story. So I changed the name to Poverty House and for some reason the landlord didn't like that. We are struggling with the rent and our payroll and phone bills and they all came due at the same time. We even sent a press release out saying that we were going to close our doors on June 30. We did manage to do some fundraising over the phones and are getting caught up on our bills. It's really hard, but I'm not going to give up."

Now Raynes has plans to rent out the hall portion of his new location for dances and anniversaries. He also claims he has a downstairs space that he can rent out as rehearsal space for area musicians and he has been running teen dances and benefit concerts as money raising events to help finance operations.

Raynes admits that financial restraints are making a touch and go situation with Poverty House but remains optimistic that he and his staff can persevere.

In last week's press release he refers to himself as the "lone voice for youth poverty in Saint John" and vows to continue to fight for the rights of homeless youth whether or not he has an office to operate out of.