An U.S. national study by Chapin Hall reveals that rural youth share the same risk for homelessness as their urban peers, challenging the narrow image of homelessness as an urban problem. Further, Missed Opportunities: Youth Homelessness in Rural America finds that rural youth experiencing homelessness are less likely than urban youth to have jobs and attend school, and are less likely to have access to services.
The Voices of Youth Count study’s first National Estimates report showed that about 1 in 10 young adults, and 1 in 30 teens, experience some form of homelessness within a 12-month period. New analysis shows that these rates are consistent in rural parts of the country. Specifically, 9.2% of young adults (ages 18 to 25) in predominantly rural counties report experiencing homelessness within the last year, while 9.6% of their urban peers do. Similarly, among younger teens (ages 13 to 17), 4.4% of rural households with adolescents reported any homelessness experiences among adolescents in the household during a 12-month period, compared to 4.2% of their urban peers.
These findings mean that – as a share of population size – youth homelessness is just as much of a challenge for rural communities as it is for urban ones.
«We now know that American communities of every size have youth who are experiencing homelessness», said Bryan Samuels, executive director of Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. «These new findings make it clear that we need to develop creative housing options and service delivery models that meet the needs of the youth who live in more isolated or rural areas of the country».
Missed Opportunities: Youth Homelessness in Rural America is among the first national assessments of the similar risks that rural and urban youth face. The report also found:
- Most rural counties lack services designed specifically for youth experiencing homelessness, forcing young people to go without help or travel long distances to gain support;
- Rural youth are more likely to be ‘hidden’ in their communities because they often rely on ‘couch surfing’ at friends’ or strangers’ homes, sleeping in vehicles, or staying outdoors;
- Rural youth find it more difficult to connect with education and employment opportunities than their peers in larger, more urban counties;
- American Indian and Alaska Native youth show more than double the risk for homelessness as other youth, although most were located outside of rural communities.
- In rural communities, changes like the collapse of an industry or the emergence of a substance use epidemic can have profoundly destabilising effects on disadvantaged families, which, in turn, can shape young people’s trajectories into homelessness.
«These findings signal an opportunity for policymakers and stakeholders to reexamine federal programs and funding», said Dr. Matthew Morton, Research Fellow at Chapin Hall, who oversaw the study and called for young people in every part of the country to have access, within a reasonable distance, to youth-specific homelessness services and supports. «By ensuring that all of our nation’s youth can count on stable housing, we can help them achieve their full potential and strengthen our communities in the process».
This is the fifth in a series of research briefs on youth experiencing homelessness in America. The previous briefs covered other critical findings from the Voices of Youth national study:
- A paper published in the Journal of Adolescent Health was the basis for the first brief, which identified high levels of youth homelessness nationwide. The first Voices brief on National Estimates found that one in 10 young adults, and one in 30 teens ages 13-17, experienced homelessness during a year.
- The second brief found that LGBTQ youth were more than twice as likely to experience homelessness as their peers, and were more likely to suffer adversities before and during homelessness.
- The third brief found that pregnant and parenting teens frequently experience homelessness and that as many as 1.1 million children have a young parent who experienced homelessness during the past year.
- The fourth brief summaries key lessons learned from conducting point-in-time counts of youth experiencing homelessness in 22 diverse counties across the United States.
