![]() The law has since been amended several times school districts now must identify and enroll any student experiencing homelessness. But beyond declaring that homeless children should have access to the same public education as other kids, the McKinney-Vento Act contained few protections for elementary and secondary students experiencing homelessness. The nation’s patchwork of solutions to homelessness dates to the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987, Congress’s first significant response to the problem. It’s not an entitlement program,” said the spokesperson, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Our targeted homeless programs are grant funds, subject to annual appropriations from Congress. “That’s actually mandating long-term suffering before you extend a helping hand.”Ī spokesperson for HUD said the agency does not support a broader definition to determine who’s eligible for housing aid, which the official described as “programs of last resort.” He said the law obligating schools to identify homeless kids was designed to help children who needed more stability at school, not who necessarily need immediate support to find a home. ![]() “You have to sleep on the street for 14 days - you have to put yourself in danger for two weeks - before you’re eligible” for federal aid, she added. “We do nothing to prevent the ‘hidden homeless,’” said Darla Bardine, executive director of the National Network for Youth, a nonprofit that works to end youth homelessness. And they must restart the legislative process with this year’s new congressional term. ![]() Homeless-youth advocates succeeded in getting a bill to change the law’s language before Congress last year, but the legislation never got a hearing. Research continues to show the harmful impact of housing instability on kids’ learning: Each time students switch schools, for example, they are more likely to fall behind academically and less likely to graduate. That forces parents to move their families into cars or risk more dangerous living situations before they’re eligible for aid.įor years, advocates for homeless youth have tried to convince HUD and lawmakers to expand the agency’s definition to include anyone who can’t afford to put a roof over their children’s heads. While the federal Department of Education considers kids homeless if they are living in motels or doubled up with other people, HUD, which controls the purse strings for federal housing aid, requires that recipients live in shelters or on the street. But roughly 85 percent of these children didn’t qualify for public housing assistance. Public schools identified 1.1 million kids as homeless in 2020-21, the most recent school year for which data was available. In other parts of the country, though, the picture for homeless students is starkly different. In response to rising numbers of homeless youth here, state legislators passed a bill in 2016 that freed money to enable schools to identify more students as homeless and get them into stable housing - even if they aren’t viewed as homeless by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. The assistance came thanks to a Washington state program - one of the first of its kind in the country - that aims to help children who aren’t considered homeless, and thus aren't qualified for help, under a strict federal definition. Within an hour, the woman called back and shared news of a second check - to cover up to $11,000 in overdue rent. A woman she’d never met asked a few questions about Suka’s living situation and suggested she could get help with her utility bill. Then a cousin suggested she call her kids’ school. As she began to recover, Suka started making calls from her hospital bed to a local housing hotline seeking assistance. “All I was thinking: ‘That’s true.’”Īfter her primary employer cut her hours - and her health insurance - Suka ended up in the emergency room for a heart attack. We love our school,’” said Suka, recalling the conversation. Please don’t make us go to another school. Her older kids loved their high school sports teams and she couldn’t imagine uprooting them. Her two youngest, both attending Vancouver’s Washington Elementary School, had struggled with remote learning and still lagged their peers in basic math and reading. Suka feared what a notice-to-vacate would mean for her children.
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