Counties fight child homelessness

Key Takeaways

Between 1% to 3% of children in the United States face homelessness over the course of a given year, with even more experiencing housing instability at some point in their lives. Child homelessness rarely takes the form most Americans picture. Instead, it’s often hidden, woven into the margins of communities and schools.

Unlike many adults who may be seen sleeping outdoors, children experiencing homelessness most often stay in shelters or motels, or they “couch surf” with friends and relatives. Of the nearly 1.4 million children and youth identified by public schools as experiencing homelessness in the 2022-2023 school year, only 5% were unsheltered, while the remaining 84% stayed in motels or other temporary arrangements.

This makes the issue harder to measure and address than adult homelessness. In general, child homelessness exists downstream of poverty and the high cost of living in the United States — and differences in levels across counties is mostly explained by variation in cost of living. Most often, a family already on the margins of economic precarity faces an economic shock — a lost job, an unexpected expense — and misses rent payments, gets evicted and falls into homelessness. Where the rent costs more, shocks are harder to endure and child homelessness happens more often.

Economic pressures drive housing instability

"What I really deeply care about — and what I campaigned for as a county commissioner— is preventing homelessness and eviction in the first place,” said Lori Stegmann, a former Multnomah County, Ore. commissioner and current director of the county Youth and Family Services Division. “[Counties] should not wait until people are being taken to court by their landlord” to help prevent homelessness, she said.

In 2024, Multnomah County processed about 9,400 evictions, a number projected to rise to 11,000 in 2025. With a family shelter wait-list already six months long, the county sees eviction prevention as essential.

“We try to come in with emergency rent assistance,” Stegmann explained. “Good luck trying to ever rent again if you go through the eviction process.”

At a broader level, Stegmann pointed to the core economic pressures driving housing instability: Rising rents, utilities, gas, groceries and childcare costs—combined with stagnant wages.

“We aren’t producing enough housing, and wages are stagnant,” she said.

With federal and state funding cuts reducing the county budget by nearly two-thirds to 2025 compared to 2024, Multnomah County is prioritizing the highest-impact strategies: Eviction prevention, rental assistance and intergovernmental collaboration.

Multnomah County and the City of Portland have adopted the Homelessness Response Action Plan, an intergovernmental agreement to jointly contribute funds. The plan focuses on preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place — through eviction prevention programs and expanding affordable housing development to ease cost burdens on families.

Rental price surges

In Travis County, Texas, home to the city of Austin, rents have surged 25% from 2020 to 2023 before declining slightly. During this period, youth homelessness almost tripled — the on-the-ground reality of families falling through widening cracks as the cost of living climbed.

At LifeWorks Austin, a nonprofit partner of the county, CEO Liz Schoenfeld describes the impact.

“Youth homelessness has increased dramatically in Austin over the last several years for a variety of reasons — a trend that has been exacerbated by the affordability challenges faced by so many in our community,” she said.

Through coordinated entry, 1,171 unaccompanied youth were on Austin’s by-name list of those experiencing homelessness as of August 2025 — up nearly fivefold since 2020. While the broader rental market cooled in 2024 and 2025, young people often could not access these gains due to high move-in costs, credit barriers and unstable incomes. In response, Travis County and the City of Austin invested deeply in the LifeWorks housing and prevention programs.

Recent funding supported Works III, a deeply affordable 120-unit apartment complex for youth exiting homelessness, alongside emergency shelter, GED classes, workforce training and mental health counseling. These interventions have helped hundreds of young people and families stabilize and kept them from entering the homelessness system, even as overall need has continued to climb.

The fallout from homelessness during childhood is profound. Lost stability disrupts critical developmental stages and chips away at well-being. Children who become homeless are more likely to have experienced domestic violence, neglect, or parental struggles with substance use and mental health.

Seeking stability

Stegmann underscores the connection between family violence and housing loss. “Domestic and sexual violence is the number one cause of homelessness for women and many of those women have children,” she said.

Parents facing homelessness often go to great lengths to remain unseen, out of fear that losing their housing might also mean losing custody. This invisibility makes it harder for counties to get an accurate count and provide timely support.

The physical and emotional costs for children are steep. Unstable living conditions can mean limited access to nutritious food, routine medical care or safe environments — leading to higher rates of malnutrition, asthma and delayed growth. Schooling is often disrupted, too, as children experiencing homelessness transfer frequently due to unstable housing. That instability translates into lower academic achievement, chronic absenteeism and higher dropout rates.

To confront these challenges, Multnomah County invests in youth-specific shelter and stability programs. Stegmann noted that the county currently provides about 4,000 nights of shelter beds for youth each year.

“I’m very proud of this, because so far we haven’t had to turn any youth away,” she said.

Case management services focus on family reunification, emergency shelter and long-term stability.

The county also funds SafePlace Northwest, which partners with local businesses to offer safe pickup locations for youth in crisis. Multnomah County will pick up a young person wherever they are and take them to a shelter.

Hennepin County, Minn. is pioneering a prevention-driven answer. Through the Stable Homes Stable Schools (SHSS) initiative — a collaboration between the county, the City of Minneapolis and Minneapolis Public Schools — families with elementary-age kids receive holistically layered support.

Since 2019, SHSS has supported more than 6,400 kids and 2,300 families, with nearly $8 million in annual funding from public and private sources. The first tier of support offers emergency short- and medium-term financial assistance to families to prevent homelessness, which can be used to back pay rent, fix a car needed to get to work or other forms of assistance to keep families in their current housing. The second tier is multi-year rental assistance and wraparound services helping families escape or avoid homelessness and placing them into stable, long-term affordable housing.

“Stable Homes Stable Schools is a perfect example of what’s possible when state, local and philanthropic partners are aligned around a common goal,” said Brandon Crow, director of Housing Choice Vouchers at the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority. “We look forward to expanding the critical work of ending student homelessness in Minneapolis with this new funding.”

Permitting more housing construction makes the cost of living more bearable, but building alone isn’t enough. Alongside supportive construction policies, targeted programming such as early screening for housing instability, robust family support services and education-centered outreach give counties powerful tools to disrupt cycles of homelessness and stabilize families.