Homelessness among young people in Vermont is growing worse, social service providers Wednesday told a group of legislators and child poverty experts.
Vermont has wisely focused on early childhood education but does not devote the same resources to older youths, said Kreig Pinkham, director of the Washington County Youth Services Bureau.
Meanwhile, Pinkham and others said issues experienced by a growing number of homeless youths have intensified and become more complex in the past five years.
Advocates at a meeting of the Vermont Child Poverty Council discussed challenges specific to Vermont, such as the state’s rural nature, as well as nationwide issues they witness, including a large number of youths who are homeless because they are gay, lesbian, transgender or bisexual.
Pinkham said the state should devote more money and resources to helping these youths get jobs, housing and education.
“It takes financial resources,” said Calvin Smith, director of the Vermont Coalition of Runaway and Homeless Youth Programs. He also said the statewide landscape of youth services is fractured and should be more cohesive.
In rural Vermont, homeless youths often couch-surf with friends or strangers or sleep in cars or abandoned buildings, he said. Most have experienced violence or trauma and leave home because of conflict. Many come from generational poverty.
“They’re very good at remaining intentionally invisible,” Smith said.
They are hard to see, but their problems are real. Although the coalition today helps about the same number of youths it helped five years ago, the need for housing among those clients has increased dramatically, he said.
In addition, the population the coalition serves is older. In 2008, 70 percent of youths accessing services were under age 18. In 2013, half were between the ages of 16 and 22, Smith said.
As with homeless adults, two main issues for homeless youths are housing and jobs, Smith and others said. Youth unemployment in Vermont is around 40 percent or 50 percent, Pinkham said, and income is around $27,000.
It’s also hard for homeless youths to focus on school, officials from the Department for Children and Families testified. Many don’t perform well in traditional classrooms and thus have few marketable skills, Smith said.
Foster children and those who exit the foster care system are often among those who become homeless, they said.
Meanwhile, older youths are naturally predisposed to take risks. Youths between the ages of 18 and 22 are proven to be more likely than younger kids to binge drink, smoke marijuana and become involved in crime, Pinkham said.
“At the prime period of life when risk becomes attractive, we begin to drop off public supports,” he said.
Amanda Churchill, director of youth development at the Washington County Youth Services Bureau, which is also the Boys and Girls Club, shared data about the youths the group serves.
Fourteen percent of youths they served in fiscal year 2014 had children of their own, 9 percent were homeless and 6 percent were incarcerated at some point during the year, she said.
In addition, 70 percent of youths age 18 and older had employment, 80 percent had a high school degree and 30 percent had post-secondary education or training. Churchill said this data indicates they are not yet the most needy youths.
She said her program wants more staff to be able to decrease caseloads from around one worker for 28 youths to around one worker for every 15.
They want to focus on pregnancy prevention or postponement, parenting education, and child care. Foster care youths are more likely to become pregnant earlier, have subsequent births and abuse or neglect their children, she said.
Smith said social service providers have learned several lessons. One is that they can’t take a one-size-fits-all approach to providing services. They have learned that no one housing model works to help homeless youths, he said.
They have also seen that youths need a positive adult model in their lives.
“Just re-engaging and building a relationship with an adult is a big step for them,” he said.
DCF workers also shared information about the number of homeless youth they served last year in shelters.
Between July 1, 2013, and June 30, 2014, the state housed 891 people age 18 or younger in emergency shelters, domestic violence shelters, veteran’s shelters and youth shelters via Vermont’s Emergency Solutions Grant program, a combination of state and federal funding.
Overall, the number of people staying in ESG-funded emergency shelters decreased in FY 2014, but the number of people 18 and younger rose, according to data provided by DCF.
At the same time, 92 percent of youths leaving emergency shelters had “safe exits” to places to live, including with family or friends, residential treatment, college, the military or independent living.
Foster children face challenges with educational preparation, said Dana Lawrence, a DCF official who works with programs for older youths.
If young people are unprepared for school, underserved at school or leave early, “they have a real millstone around their neck that is really difficult to overcome and has a collateral effect on all the other elements that they face in terms of challenges.”
The committee Wednesday took no action but could propose legislation next session.
