Serving Youth in an Economic Downturn
Coming in From the Shadows: Overrepresented Groups Among Homeless Youth
Depending on who is doing the counting, estimates are that between 500,000 and 2.8 million youth experience an episode of homelessness each year. When you consider that most youth, for a variety of reasons, don’t want to be found or labeled as homeless, and that different federal agencies, such as the U.S. Departments of Housing and Urban Development and Health and Human Services, define the age range of youth and the homelessness experience differently, you’ll see pretty quickly that getting a grasp on the problem is difficult—but critical.
Here’s what we know from FYSB’s Promising Strategies to End Youth Homelessness: Report to Congress:
- Youth experience homelessness largely because of conflict and violence at home—girls are especially vulnerable to sexual abuse and being “thrownaway” because of pregnancy and boys to rejection because they identify as gay.
- Although most adolescents who are unstably housed are white, black and Native American youth are overrepresented in the numbers of homeless youth.
- Other youth-serving systems, like child welfare and juvenile justice, contribute to youth homelessness through a lack of resources for effective interventions, especially for older teenagers who are transitioning out of care. Significant numbers of minority homeless youth come from these systems.
- Although older youth may not be as noticeable or appear to be as endangered as younger homeless children, they are also not as capable of caring for themselves as adults—they have limited access to education and jobs, and they may engage in risky behaviors, such as drug abuse and sex, to survive.
- Youth without homes prefer to hide: They don’t want to go into foster care and homelessness is a stigma they avoid at all costs. They may rightly consider adult homeless shelters to be unsafe and inappropriate for persons of their own age, but if they are to successfully grow into adulthood, they need outreach, services and competent care.
This installment of The Exchange aims to make the picture of youth homelessness less nebulous by talking with youth-work professionals about what groups they are serving the most and how they go about getting estimates of youth homelessness in their communities.
In Serving Overrepresented Groups of Homeless Youth, we discuss the disproportionate numbers of lesbian and gay, pregnant and parenting, African American and Native American youth experiencing homelessness and unstable housing; factors contributing to their large numbers; and how youth organizations serve them in a culturally sensitive manner.
Down for the Count takes a look at various efforts around the country to put a number on—and subsequent financial resources into—local incidence of youth homelessness. A tip sheet, How Many Homeless Youth Are There in My Community? provides hands-on guidance on how organizations should go about counting homeless youth.
A list of resources—from primers on working with special populations to the latest research on youth homelessness and helpful contacts—completes the issue.
Feedback, Please!
What issues surrounding youth homelessness are most pressing for your organization? What resources would you like to see developed to help you be more effective? Write to us at ncfy@acf.hhs.gov.
Serving Overrepresented Groups of Homeless Youth >> |
