The National Center on Family Homelessness just released A Report Card on Child Homelessness—America’s Youngest Outcasts. They documented that nearly 2.5 million children are now homeless in our country each year---that’s one out of thirty children.
How is it possible that in a country as affluent as ours a dramatically growing number of children and youth are experiencing homelessness—by some counts almost 2 million kids annually. In fact, in school year 2011-2012, the numbers were at an historic high. Although we seem to agree that children are our nation’s future, their needs have not been adequately addressed in our federal plan to end homelessness. How is it that children are expendable?
It is not news that housing remains out of reach for millions of Americans, including many working parents and their children. Currently, 3.3 million American workers earn minimum wage or less, and there is no place in our entire country in which a family supported by a parent working full-time and earning minimum wage can afford to pay market rent for even a one-bedroom apartment.
Homelessness is devastating. First, it is a painful, often terrifying, traumatic experience for people who become homeless and for those who love them. Second, homelessness is an overwhelming social problem—one that weakens us as a nation and lays bare the underlying injustices that erode our country’s foundation. Homelessness does not represent a type of person or a set of bad decisions by an individual. Instead, it reflects the crossroads of all that is broken in our society: poverty; lack of affordable housing; unemployment; jobs that don’t pay livable wages; poor health care access; inadequate services for mental health, substance use, and trauma; an educational system that allows too many young people to slip through the cracks; fragmented families and dangerous neighborhoods; violence and victimization; racism; and social exclusion.
