Each year, around 150,000 unaccompanied older youth experience homelessness. These youth have a broad range of needs but there is no comprehensive system to prevent their homelessness, provide supportive services, and ensure sufficient safe shelter and long-term housing options. Such […]
Category: Youth
Rapid Re-Housing for Unaccompanied Homeless Youth
Rapid re-housing is an intervention that helps people who are homeless quickly return to permanent housing. The intervention has been widely used to end homelessness for adults, including both individuals and families. It was also identified as a promising practice […]
Family Intervention for Unaccompanied Homeless Youth
Learning what works and what does not in family intervention is vital to ending youth homelessness, and providers shared the following important lessons based on their many years of experience: Family intervention is almost always appropriate, and families should be […]
It’s Time to Break the Connection Between Foster Care and Homelessness
Research shows that people who have spent time in the foster care system tend to become homeless at an earlier age than homeless people without foster care histories. They’re also overrepresented among the homeless youth population.
It’s well known in the homeless assistance field that the foster care system itself is a feeder into youth homelessness, but this year it’s come to the attention of several senators who have introduced legislation to address the problem.
Homelessness Declined 11 Percent Since 2010, 2 Percent Since 2014
One a single night of this year, 564,708 people were experiencing homelessness in across the country. This is according to the 2015 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress (AHAR) Part 1, which was released today by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). This report provides data aggregated from community point-in-time counts conducted in January and includes longitudinal trends in overall homelessness and among specific subpopulations.
So how are we doing in our efforts to end homelessness? Overall homelessness has decreased by 11.4 percent since 2010, when the Administration set ambitious goals to end veteran and chronic homelessness in five years and family and youth homelessness in 10 years. And, we have seen substantial decreases in veteran, chronic, and family homelessness in that same time period: