Missed Opportunities: Youth Homelessness in America

As we eagerly await the data from 2017’s Youth Count DC, here’s a look at some national numbers and recommendations.

Today, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago released a brief highlighting the results from a national survey on unaccompanied youth homelessness in the US. The brief, Missed Opportunities: Youth Homelessness in America, highlights data collected from young people who have slept on the street or in shelters, ran away from or were kicked out of their homes, or couch-surfed, living with friends or family. Findings from the study show that, nationally, one in ten young adults ages 18-25, and at least one in 30 adolescents ages 13-17--at least 3.5 million young adults and 700,000 adolescent minors-- experience some form of homelessness unaccompanied by a parent or guardian over the course of a year.

The brief also indicated that particular subpopulations are at higher risk of homelessness:

The brief also highlighted seven national recommendations developed from data from the study:

Those interested in the study itself, Prevalence and Correlates of Youth Homelessness in the United States, can find it in the Journal of Adolescent Health and can access it here.

DCAYA Budget Advocacy Day on May 11

The District's proposed FY2018 budget leaves significant funding gaps for a number of key programs that could better address the needs of the children and youth we serve every day.

Call to Action: we invite all our members and youth-serving organizations from throughout the District to join us at the Wilson Building on Thursday, May 11 to meet with Councilmembers and staff to advocate for a more youth-friendly District budget for FY2018!

Council markup on the mayor's proposed budget is scheduled for May 16-18, so May 11 is a critical time to reach out to members and remind them of the importance of our budget asks for DC's youth, which include:

• Transportation: $2 million to extend transportation subsidies to adult and alternative learners through the School Transit Subsidy Program
• Youth Homelessness: Up to $3.3 million more to fully fund the Year One objectives of the Comprehensive Plan to End Youth Homelessness
• Expanded Learning: An additional $5.1 million to fund the new Office of Out-of-School Time Grants and Youth Outcomes and better meet the need for quality youth development programming
• Youth Workforce Development: A comprehensive implementation plan for coordinating and funding youth workforce development initiatives to build on the progress of DC’s WIOA State Plan
• Per-Pupil Funding: A 3.5% increase in per-pupil funding in the FY18 budget to bring DCPS closer to an adequate standard for education funding next school year
• Proposed Tax Cuts: Ensure revenue is available to fund these and other critical priorities by delaying the $40 million in estate tax and business tax cuts slated for 2018

On Advocacy Day, we'll walk around the Wilson Building and visit Councilmember offices in teams. A DCAYA staff member will join each team to help support messaging and follow-up.

In order to make the most of your time as we reach out to Council staff, we ask that you RSVP for multiple time slots throughout the day on DCAYA Budget Advocacy Day. After you RSVP, you will also receive an invite to join us on an optional strategy call at 11am on Tuesday, May 9.

Thank you for all you do and we hope to see you on May 11!

And in case you missed it, check out our Actions for Budget Advocacy - Week 4 email.

Powered by Eventbrite

#DCFY18 Budget Advocacy: Up to $5.7 million Toward Ending Youth Homelessness

Throughout budget season, we’ll be sharing talking points around the #DCFY18 Budget as it relates to our asks of Council and the Mayor for DCAYA’s key issue areas, which have included spotlights on Expanded Learning and Disconnected Youth. We conclude this week with Youth Homelessness.

THE ASK: Up to $3.3 million in additional funding to fully fund Year 1 of the Comprehensive Plan to End Youth Homelessness

The DC Interagency Council on Homelessness (ICH) approved the Comprehensive Plan to End Youth Homelessness in December 2016, and the plan includes a five-year projection for scaling services to youth experiencing homelessness. The plan proposes expanding existing services (transitional housing, crisis beds, PSH) as well as bringing new services for youth online (youth rapid re-housing, aftercare) in the first year, the cost of which we estimate to be $5.7 million.

Funding in the mayor's proposed budget for FY18 falls short of that mark, at just $2.4 million, meaning we'll need to work through Council to get to the investment we know is needed if we are serious about ensuring that by the end of 2022, homelessness among people age 24 is a rare, brief and non-recurring experience.

NOW: What are the needed program enhancements and what can be accomplished in the next year?

• Aftercare and Prevention Services: We presently do not have an aftercare support system in place for youth who have experienced homelessness, meaning that a key service for preventing returns to homelessness is not being met. While the Plan calls for an upfront and full-scale investment to fund more than 60 aftercare slots in its first year, the budget as proposed only funds 20 of these slots.
• Youth Shelter Beds: While it is understood that a bed in a shelter setting is not an acceptable replacement for a home, the annual census of youth experiencing homelessness reveals a present and persistent need for more safe and low-barrier access to beds for young people in crisis. The Plan calls for increasing our present capacity by 32 beds in its first year and then adding steadily and as needed in future years, but the budget as proposed funds just 20 additional beds.
• Transitional Housing: Transitional living programs remain a vital intervention in the current system, and those that serve youth in a developmentally appropriate and culturally competent setting are all the more important given the need. They offer a more structured placement than shelter beds, and the Plan calls for 15 new units in its first year with a steady increase in future years to reach full scale by year five; the budget as proposed funds 10 additional units.
• Permanent Supportive Housing: There are relatively few PSH units set aside for youth in the current system, and as we scale up other housing intervention programs for youth, it is important that PSH keeps pace to ensure that young people in those programs who are found to need ongoing case management and mental health supports have a place to go. The Plan calls for 16 new units in its first year; the budget as proposed funds 10 additional units.
• Rapid Re-Housing for Youth: Beginning in FY18, DC will bring online a rent-subsidized housing program specifically for youth. While this is an exciting development, and the Plan calls for an ambitious scale in its first and future years, we also recognize that Youth Rapid Re-Housing programs are an option among a diverse array of programs in the District which will need to grow and evolve with our young people. With that in mind, we see the 20 units as proposed in the budget as a good start, and would encourage DHS to pursue efficiency and frequent program evaluation to maximize the impact of funding allotted for this program in its initial year.

Current performance indicates that DHS is poised to work with youth providers to meet the objectives of Year 1 of the Plan by deploying the funds for launching and enhancing the above programs.

For the current fiscal year, $2.3 million in new investments were committed in the FY17 budget to serve more youth experiencing homelessness. With those funds, DHS has to date:

• Funded a new LGBTQ transitional housing site-based program at SMYAL (8 beds)
• Funded a new LGBTQ transitional housing apartment-based program at the Latin American Youth Center (LAYC) (6 beds)
• Extended low-barrier crisis beds at Casa Ruby beyond hypothermia season through the end of this fiscal year (14 beds)
• Supported additional staff at youth drop-in centers at Sasha Bruce Youthwork and LAYC
• Increased youth street outreach support at Friendship Place
• Set up a 6-person youth homelessness prevention team at DHS

HOW: Help advocate for funding toward ending youth homelessness in the #DCFY18 Budget

• Please sign up to testify at the Budget Hearing for the Department of Human Services on Wednesday, May 3, 2017 at 10 am in Room 500 of the John A. Wilson Building at 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue NW.
• To sign up to testify, you can email humanservices@dccouncil.us, or call the Committee on Human Services at 202-724-8170.

NEXT: Please sign up for updates from DCAYA to stay informed about our budget advocacy and our upcoming Youth Advocacy Day on May 11!

And in case you missed it, check out our Actions for Budget Advocacy - Week 3 email.

DCAYA's Top Ten Blog Posts of 2016

To wrap up the year, we thought we'd take a look back at our Top Ten most read blogs for 2016, beginning at number 10!!

10) FY2017 Budget Asks, 3/31/16

As you know, our asks take a look at the Mayor's proposed budget, incorporate our own policy analysis and research, and are a mix of requests:

• to maintain what is in the Mayor's budget,
• to increase the amount of funding to appropriate levels, and at times
• to insert funding that isn't included at all.

Our asks for the current fiscal year included Transportation Support, Educational Data Capacity, Youth Workforce Development, Youth Homelessness, and Expanded Learning. Little would we know that the latter ask, as it related to allocation to the DC Trust, would be part of a completely new landscape the following month.

9) Local Funding for Local Opportunity: The Role & Vision of the DC Trust in Expanded Learning, 3/9/16

9 months later, it's pretty interesting to see how the core values shared in this post continue to be a part of the conversation, as legislation for an Office of Youth Outcomes and Grants is in the midst of the markup process, following the dissolution of the DC Trust.. From our community providers, several themes that emerged were:

• The impact of expanded learning programs on achievement outcomes
• The capacity of community partnerships to maximize resources
• The need for stable local funding intermediaries

So although the landscape might be a different one, as our community and representatives finalize what a new youth development entity looks like, the direction and purpose of our work remains constant.

8) A transcript of the Kojo Nnamdi Show's segment on the DC Trust, 5/4/16

Our next most read blog was simply a transcript of a Kojo Nnamdi Show segment focused on the DC Trust, what went wrong and what's next. One of his guests included Andria Tobin, Executive Director of Kid Power Inc, but also a member of DCAYA's Board of Directors. On one our favorite quotes from the show, from Andria:

"So we want to make sure that there’s a really thought out plan to make sure those funds are protected for many nonprofits and youth in the District, one that is collaborative and strategic, and is flexible and innovative in the way that the Trust was designed to be."

7) Lights On Afterschool: 4 Questions with DC Afterschool Ambassador Daniela Grigioni, 10/19/16

This month's blog took a closer look at afterschool, in an interview with Daniela Grigioni, who had been selected as one of 15 leaders from across the nation to serve as a 2016-2017 Afterschool Ambassador for the Afterschool Alliance. This is the third of our blogs in the top ten which related to Expanded Learning. This is one of our four main issue areas, and has to do with learning outside of the classroom, particularly after the school day and over the summer.

6) Homeless Youth Census: Data-Driven Advocacy Calls for Greater Investment to End Youth Homelessness, 3/2/16

As with many of our efforts, the need for accurate, robust, and timely data leads to better advocacy. And the Homeless Youth Census is both a great example and a relatively recent success. Benefits of this census highlighted in the 2015 Report Fact Sheet were that it:

• Provides understanding of the number of youth experiencing homelessness in the District
• Informs the various and complex needs of youth experiencing homelessness and help bring solutions to scale
• Educates key stakeholders of where resources should be allocated

What's especially wonderful looking back at this post was another very recent success we highlighted in last week's blog post, that the DC Interagency Council on Homelessness voted to approve the 5-year Comprehensive Plan to end youth homelessness.

5) Advocacy Season Update: Performance Oversight and Budget Hearings Set by Council, 1/20/16

It should be no surprise that one of our most read blog posts was an update regarding the hearing schedule set by DC Council, which is our primary advocacy season. We've already been planning for the FY2017 hearings over the past several months, which included our regular community input sessions across our four issue areas as well as a special effort to move the Office of Youth Outcomes and Grants legislation forward so that an FY2018 budget has somewhere to put Out-of-School Time funding.

4) It's Time to #ExpandLearningDC! (version 2.0), 6/9/16

This month, we re-released #ExpandLearningDC, our policy and funding framework for afterschool and summer learning in DC, originally posted in April. The report had been updated following the vote that month by the DC Trust’s Board of Directors to dissolve the organization. This version also used updated data to better reflect trends in out-of-school time access within DCPS.

3) #ExpandLearningDC, 1/28/16

Even more read than the previous blog post, was our first Expanded Learning post of the year. As you can tell from this year's highlights, our work is definitely more of a marathon rather than a sprint. Although our main advocacy season happens during regular times each year, not only is there a tremendous amount of work that is required to prepare for and then evaluate after hearings, but there are also the unplanned events and developments that we have to monitor and respond to, like the dissolution of the DC Trust. And this refers not just to DCAYA's staff of four, but the hundreds of member organizations whom we do our work with.

2) Leading the Way in Youth Workforce Development!, 8/3/16

The runner-up to our top read blog post for 2016 was our recap of a joint program we have with the Institute for Educational Leadership, the Youth Workforce Leaders Academy aka YWLA. Through in-person learning sessions with national and local experts, online discussions, capstone projects, individual professional development action planning, and facilitated peer-to-peer learning, participants will significantly expanded and grew their expertise in providing high quality youth workforce development services This post recapped the year with our 2nd cadre, and recognized each individual in this post.

1) New Year, New Resolutions, 1/6/16

Our most read post was our first one of 2016, a light-hearted start to the year, using GIFs to animate some New Year's Resolutions we wanted to make, both personally and professionally.

And THAT was 2016! We hope you enjoyed this look down memory lane, as we look ahead to 2017. We also hope you may have learned a bit more, not just about our work highlighted at various points throughout the year, but how it all ties together. And this work is only possible, because of the year-round engagement of our members and support from our community.

If you would like to support us during this holiday season, please consider showing your support with a donation, and thank you in advance!

- Your DCAYA Team

DC ICH Votes to Approve 5-year Comprehensive Plan to End Youth Homelessness

At the December 13 quarterly meeting of the DC Interagency Council on Homelessness (ICH), members agreed by unanimous voice vote to adopt the ICH Youth Subcommittee’s Comprehensive Plan to End Youth Homelessness (short title TBD). 

The youth plan will complement the ICH’s Homeward DC plan which addresses homelessness among adults and families. The ICH Council’s approval of the plan is a culmination of more than six years of community efforts to bring youth homelessness in the District to light, and to meet that awareness with dedicated action. 

For DCAYA, the first major benchmark was reached in November 2011 with our release of From the Streets to Stability: A study of youth homelessness in the District of Columbia. Before that time, little to no concrete information was available related to the issue of youth homelessness in DC – in terms of the size of the population, or the unique needs and characteristics of homeless youth. The report highlighted the need for a more services and for a diverse array of supportive services and programs for youth, and the groundbreaking effort led to more people taking notice over the next several years. It was followed up in October 2013 with a community coalition-led Bold Strategy to End Youth Homelessness.

In May 2014, DC Council passed the End Youth Homelessness Amendment Act, requiring a new youth drop-in center and a street outreach program, a new intake system to ensure that there is no “wrong door” for youth seeking support, more beds for youth in crisis, a publicly-funded Homeless Youth Census to be completed annually, and finally, a community-wide comprehensive plan to end youth homelessness.

The Youth Plan: Vision Statement and Benchmarks

With the groundwork laid by the 2014 legislation, the District now has the start of structures and supports needed to end youth homelessness. This goal does not mean that a youth will never experience housing instability or homelessness again. Rather, it means that our community will have a system in place to prevent homelessness for youth whenever possible, and if literal homelessness cannot be prevented, to ensure that the youth’s homelessness is brief and non-recurring, with access to stable housing within an average of 60 days or less.

This is vision statement for the Comprehensive Plan: By 2022, youth homelessness in the District will be a rare, brief, and nonrecurring experience.

For youth experiencing homelessness, their housing crisis comes at a key point in their development into independent adults. Recognizing this difference between youth and adults, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness has developed core outcomes for youth that go beyond resolving the youth’s housing crisis to also helping them with building permanent connections, achieving education and employment goals, and developing social-emotional well-being. Addressing these core outcomes will require a community-wide effort with the involvement of partners in the District beyond the usual stakeholders in the homeless system.

The plan lays out specific benchmarks to assess progress toward the vision, including:

1. Our community has ended chronic homelessness among youth;
2. Our community has a system in place to identify all youth experiencing homelessness;
3. Our community has the ability to provide immediate access to developmentally appropriate emergency shelter for any youth without a safe place to stay;
4. Our community connects youth to stable housing as quickly as possible; and,
5. Our community provides Transitional Housing only for youth that prefer it, and that Transitional Housing is stable, does not have barriers to entry, and has high rates of exit to permanent housing.

What’s Next

The ICH will be formally releasing the plan in early 2017. The plan will be published to include a series of short vignettes written by District youth experiencing homelessness, and there is also a contest underway for youth to determine a name for the plan. 

The plan also lays out more than 40 key strategies which DC agencies and community partners will undertake in the coming years. The ICH’s youth subcommittee will continue meeting monthly in 2017 to work across youth-serving agencies, community-based organizations, local advocacy partners, and young people from the community to support the key strategy work. And as performance and budget hearings approach in the spring, DCAYA will be crafting an advocacy agenda in strong support of achieving the plan’s benchmarks.

To stay informed about the plan’s 2017 release and the title contest, or to find out more about the work of the ICH Youth Subcommittee and DCAYA’s advocacy, please contact Joseph Gavrilovich, Senior Policy Analyst.

One month closer to ending Youth Homelessness in DC

As National Homeless Youth Awareness Month comes to an end, SMYAL is preparing to open an LGBT homeless youth facility. And just two weeks ago, we hosted our first Intersectional Happy Hour at Local 16, looking at how youth homelessness is an LGBTQ issue here in the District.

LGBTQ youth account for 43% of  the 545 youth experiencing homelessness at any given time, here in the District. Our city is 68 square miles, which means that is the equivalent of 8 homeless youth for every square mile in DC. And all youth require a tapestry of supports and services, because homelessness does not look the same for each individual.

So we wanted to highlight just some of the resources here in the District, for youth experiencing homelessness:

• Coalition for the Homeless Transitional Housing for Men
• Covenant House Safe Haven & Transitional Housing
• DC Public Schools Homeless Children and Youth Services
• Latin American Youth Center Safe Housing
• Sasha Bruce Safe Homes
• Wanda Alston House

And if you'd like a way you can help, beyond the general support and donations all these organizations need, check out Stand Up for Kids' Winter Clothing Drive:

Join StandUp For Kids in assisting Washington’s homeless and at-risk youth this holiday season by donating coats and winter accessories. StandUp will distribute these to youth who need them through our outreach center and any extras will be given to DC schools. Please contact Natasha Byrd, our director of program support, to arrange drop-off details. Consider working with your office or apartment building neighbors to do a drive! 

Make sure to also keep up with us on Facebook and Twitter, so we can keep you updated on our work to end youth homelessness, here in the District.

Even though Giving Tuesday is over, our End of Year campaign has begun. Over the past 5 years we've helped double emergency shelter and transitional living capacity for youth. Please consider making a donation of 25 dollars to help us continue moving forward so that all youth, even those experiencing homelessness, have a safe place to at least go to sleep at night.