Current State
Current State of Long-Term Housing for Youth and Young Adults
The housing system in this country is rooted in structural racism that can be traced back to the literal theft of Indigenous land to build homes for white people, the redlining that kept generations of Black and Brown people locked out of homeownership and generational wealth, and the housing discrimination rampant today among housing developments and landlords. The system is also rooted in distrust of providers and people receiving services, which has led to over-regulation of homeless and housing funding in a way that does not allow for flexible and quick use of funds to house people in spaces of their choice.
Decades of disinvestment in affordable housing and homelessness assistance has led to the current scarcity of resources within the homeless response system. This scarcity leads to harmful practices of pitting youth against other subpopulations for the few resources available, often resulting in few young people being prioritized into rental assistance programs for people experiencing homelessness such as Rapid Rehousing (RRH) and Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH). And once prioritized into housing, young people face time-limits, income requirements, and a lack of staffing and other supports tham make it difficult to successfully retain housing. The programs, at best, are keeping young people at or below the poverty line with no room to make safe mistakes without losing their housing.
The scarcity of resources within the homeless response system also leads to the need to categorize and prioritize the types of housing instability and homelessness experienced, which leads to too many young people being boxed out of any form of assistance from the homelessness response system.
There are still far too few dedicated affordable housing units for youth and young adults and little to no assistance to support homeownership for youth. The supports available are often concentrated in certain neighborhoods leaving youth with little to no choice in the location of their housing. And for youth (ages 16-21) who reside in transitional living programs, there is still not a secure bridge to long-term housing, causing many young people to “age out” of those programs into homelessness.
Youth under the age of 18 who are seeking housing independent of their families face legal barriers to renting or accessing housing programs without parental consent and the pathway to emancipation is often complicated and long. These barriers lead to many young people under the age of 18 having limited to no access to long term housing when they have become disconnected from families.