Report: Youth homelessness, housing instability on the decline in CT
The number of youths in Connecticut experiencing homelessness and housing instability is on the decline, but remains high.
The Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness recently released its youth outreach and count report from 2020, which shows an estimated 7,823 youths from age 13 to 24 experienced homelessness or housing instability last year. This represents a 16 percent decrease from the 9,303 youths estimated to be experiencing this in 2019.
Of these, 2,462 experienced literal homelessness while 5,361 experienced housing instability where they may be couch surfing, in a shelter or moving from place to place. A disproportionate number of youths identified as Black, Hispanic and/or LGBTQ+.
“What sticks out is still the amount even though the numbers are going down,” said CCEH Youth Special Projects Coordinator Roy Graham. “There's still a significant amount of work out there. We’re seeing small decreases but there's still a large number of youth that need housing stability and assistance.”
The top reasons youths gave for homelessness or housing instability were having a conflict with someone they lived with and leaving home, facing unemployment or being unable to pay their rent.
CCEH conducted the 2020 Youth Outreach and Count from Jan. 22-28, 2020. Community providers, state agencies, schools, colleges and universities throughout the state teamed up with one of the eight regional Youth Engagement Team Initiatives to survey teens in towns throughout Connecticut, particularly those known for high levels of poverty.
“The demographics are always pointing to young people of color,” said Graham. “That always sticks out. The other thing we always see is the rural areas that have significant numbers folks probably aren't aware of because it’s in rural areas.”
Nearly half of the respondents struggling with housing are people of color. While 33 percent of survey respondents were white, Black and African American youths accounted for 31 percent of youths affected by homelessness/housing instability, despite making up 12 percent of the population in Connecticut. Another 12 percent identified as multiracial, 14 percent as other, 2 percent as Asian, 2 percent as Native American/Alaskan and 1 percent as Pacific Islander.
Two percent of respondents gave no response.
When it came to ethnicity, 31 percent of surveyed youths identified as Hispanic/Latino.
Madeline Ravich, CCEH development advisor and be homeful project director, said housing discrimination and low income could be reasons why these numbers are so high.
“We see it disproportionately affecting people of color,” Ravich said. “We’re trying to understand more about why that is. We want to really understand this issue and figure out what we can do to mitigate this. I really do think we’re just at the beginning of our journey of understanding the impact of communities of color.”
Graham said CCEH is working with municipalities and doing advocacy work to change policies and introduce legislation to ensure accessible housing for everyone, regardless of race.
The number of LGBTQ+ youths affected by homelessness also increased by 4 percent. Nearly one in five youths surveyed were affected, with 20 percent saying they identified as LGBTQ+ or pansexual.
Graham said moving forward, CCEH is going to keep a youth count through a continuous outreach effort as opposed to conducting surveys during one part of the year. This includes working with schools and local municipalities and doing surveys there to find youths.
“We’re starting to make it not a one-time approach like we’ve done in past years,” Graham said. “We’re trying to make it an every day outreach effort so we continuously outreach and identify people experiencing unstable housing and homelessness...We weren’t totally convinced the methodology was right...We felt like we needed to do this on a continuous basis.”