What Needs to Be Done to End Youth Homelessness

On any given night, between 300,000 and 400,000 teens sleep on the streets and in parks, in abandoned buildings, on the couches of strangers, and if they're lucky, on the couches of friends or in shelters. These are not rambunctious brats looking for adventure. They run from severe abuse or conflict or get thrown out of their homes; they are forced into adulthood prematurely.

Each year, about two million total youths experience homelessness. They are often hard to track, not always wanting to be found. They are afraid of being forced to return home or into foster care, a system that will spit them out onto the streets again on their 18th birthdays.

There's not enough space for all these lost kids in shelters, which are relatively safe. On the street, they panhandle, steal and prostitute themselves in order to survive. Rape, sexual exploitation, physical assault, addiction, mental illness and physical illness like HIV/AIDS can be hard to avoid. Some commit suicide.

Like their adult counterparts, however, youth receiving shelter services fare better than those on the streets. Teens who find beds and make connections in shelters are more likely to complete high school, escape victimization and make homelessness a fading memory.

Poverty, racism and homophobia -- the trifecta of our failure to these youth -- are often silent, but pervasive. Black and Native American youth and youth from low-income and working class families are overrepresented among teens on the street. LGBTQ youth are overrepresented at extreme rates, with 20 to 40 percent of homeless youth identifying as LGBTQ versus two to three percent in the general population.

We need to take action and remind our representatives that youth homelessness is unacceptable. There are a few key measures that communities and governments can take to cut down on the number of unhoused teens. Early intervention services for family preservation and housing options when youth cannot return home are key to ending youth homelessness. The federal government should increase the budget for the Chaffee Foster Care Independence Program, which currently allots just $800 per youth per year, making it impossible to house the majority of youth aging out of foster care under this program. Fewer than 4,000 homeless youth are housed each year. We must do better. It costs $11,800 to house a homeless youth for a year but $25,000 to $55,000 to put him or her in foster care, jail or inpatient treatment.

Funding should also be increased for the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act in order to increase services like outreach and emergency shelter. Service providers and politicians should seriously consider the suggestions made to end youth homelessness by the National Alliance to End Homelessness in the Homeless Youth Letter to the Obama Administration. Each and every one of us can do one more thing -- never forget the ways in which poverty, racism and homophobia contribute to and maintain youth homelessness.

Take a moment to send an email to your representatives encouraging them to act for homeless youth.

Photo credit: rejon