A Simple Solution for Youth Homelessness That Works

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FEATURING LARRY COHEN - An ambitious national program to address homelessness among youth is showing remarkable success. Homelessness is a national crisis, and among young people in particular, traditional solutions are often out of reach. But organizations like that of my next guest are paving the way for an ambitious rethinking of best to support young people with housing needs.

Larry Cohen is Executive Director and Co-Founder of Point Source Youth, a national organization working to prevent and end youth homelessness in the U.S. He spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about the program and how it can be scaled.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: How widespread is the problem? If you listen to, for example, the Trump administration, everything's getting better but of course we know that being unhoused is far too common in the United States. And then I imagine for young people the situation is even more dire because they're more vulnerable. What are the statistics around the need for housing among youth? 

Larry Cohen: Yeah, so youth homelessness is a national crisis. So 10 percent of all young people experience unstable housing in a given year. And 3.5 million young people are unstably housed. And so, we see it's a growing problem. Also, you know, with economic inequality and other attacks on youth, and we also know that LGBTQ youth and Black, Indigenous Youth of Color are disproportionately represented in youth homelessness, and so those young people are becoming even more at risk of experiencing homelessness. 

Kolhatkar: What are some of the reasons why? I mean, there's a broad strokes reason why—you mentioned inequality. So of course, just the financial inability to pay rent or to afford to purchase a home?

Cohen: Yeah, I mean, a lot of it stems from family crisis. Forty percent of young people experiencing homelessness come from the foster care system and then LGBTQ young people are disproportionately represented as well. So what we're seeing is families that are under incredible strain both economically and in other ways, really don't have access to resources and supports and are so fragile that when there's a crisis it's leading to young people experiencing homelessness.