Many youth in the U.S. who are experiencing homelessness are pregnant or parenting – 44% of young women are pregnant or mothers, and 18% of young men have a pregnant partner or are fathers. Chapin Hall estimates that as many as 1.1 million children have a young parent who experienced homelessness in the past year.

Building on Missed Opportunities: Youth Homelessness in America, Chapin Hall and Voices of Youth Count will next turn our attention to deepening knowledge and understanding of the key findings from the national survey.

Youth should have a voice in decision making processes that affect them. That’s the core value that guides a new toolkit developed by the True Colors Fund.  

It’s not enough to have data—to make an impact, that data needs to reach the right people. The audiences for Voices of Youth Count data range from local providers to state-level policy makers to federal law-makers. To ensure amplification of key messages from the research, VoYC has begun working with partner sites to coordinate communication strategy across these different audiences.  

The Central Florida Commission on Homelessness has renewed its partnership with VoYC to build on the lessons learned during the Orange County Youth Count in 2016. The continuing engagement of communities like central Florida is growing the impact of the VoYC youth-centered approach and strengthening local efforts to prevent and end youth experiences of homelessness.

Ten communities across the U.S. are planning to coordinate implementation of efforts to address youth homelessness. Local initiatives are funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) through the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Project (YHDP). In early August, Voices of Youth Count was invited by HUD to hold a webinar for these communities to share…Read More

What works in addressing youth homelessness, from policy to practice? VoYC has reviewed more than 2,400 articles to help answer that question. The VoYC evidence review is the most comprehensive of its kind to date, building on previous reviews while also integrating the latest research in the field.

More than 2,000 people committed to end homelessness gathered in Washington, D.C. this week at the 2017 National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) conference. Activists attended more than 80 workshops over the three day event—NAEH’s largest conference ever—and heard from keynote speakers Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) and HUD Secretary Ben Carson among others.

Voices of Youth Count convened allies from over 20 organizations at a presentation and discussion held in Washington, D.C. this past month. Attendees got a preview of the types of findings and recommendations that the Voices of Youth Count will bring to the field this Fall and beyond.

How we talk about homelessness has a direct effect on support for our work. By learning how to effectively frame a message, we can ensure that findings from research have a real impact. That was the message at a communication workshop at the National Alliance to End Homelessness conference this past month.