SchoolHouse Connection is a national non-profit organization working to overcome homelessness through education. We provide strategic advocacy and practical assistance in partnership with early childhood programs, schools, institutions of higher education, service providers, families, and youth.
The Issue
Child and youth homelessness is widespread and devastating – but hidden. Education can help break the cycle.
Why We Use the Phrase “Experiencing Homelessness”
Why we’ve made an intentional choice to use “experiencing homelessness” rather than “unhoused,” “houseless, or “housing insecurity” when communicating about homelessness.
Critical Connections: Ensuring Mental Health Services for Children and Youth Experiencing Homelessness
Homelessness is caused by traumatic events, and often leads to traumatic events, creating compounding layers of complex trauma that have serious consequences, often having a significant impact on mental health. The isolation and aftermath of the pandemic have...
The Education of Children and Youth Experiencing Homelessness: Current Trends, Challenges, and Needs
This fact sheet includes the current trends, challenges, and need of children and youth experiencing homelessness.
Hidden Homelessness: Why Child, Youth, and Family Homelessness is a Crisis We Cannot Ignore
Through first-person storytelling, the series explores the ways in which homelessness is an equity issue that is inextricably connected to others; it is an experience that many vulnerable student groups face at disproportionate rates and intersects deeply with other national crises of mental health, academic achievement gaps, xenophobia, and the impacts of systemic racism.
Hidden Homelessness: Youth Voices is a sub-series developed by SchoolHouse Connection that highlights the often overlooked and unseen experiences that define child and youth homelessness. Under the education subtitle of federal law (the McKinney-Vento Act), the definition of homelessness includes common situations for families and youth experiencing homelessness, including living in cars, temporarily staying with others, and in “substandard housing.”
Committee for Education Funding Budget Book: Education for Homeless Children and Youth
SchoolHouse Connection highlighted the critical significance of funding for the Education for Homeless Children and Youth program in the Committee for Education Funding’s FY 2024 education budget book. You can access the comprehensive resource on CEF’s budget book webpage, which includes informative charts, videos, and a briefing video.
Act by March 17 to Support Funding for Homeless Children & Youth
A bipartisan “Dear Colleague” letter is circulating in the U.S. House of Representatives that calls for $800 million for the McKinney-Vento Act’s Education for Homeless Children and Youth (EHCY) program and $300 million for the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act (RHYA) program in the FY 2024 budget. Please urge your U.S. Representative to sign on to the bipartisan Davis-Bacon-Panetta letter.
Hidden Homelessness in the U.S.: Why Congress Must Change HUD’s Definition of Homelessness to Align With Other Federal Agencies
Learn why Congress must change the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s definition of homelessness to align with other federal agencies.
Why We Use the Phrase “Experiencing Homelessness”
Why we’ve made an intentional choice to use “experiencing homelessness” rather than “unhoused,” “houseless, or “housing insecurity” when communicating about homelessness.
Hidden Homelessness in the U.S.: Why Congress Must Change HUD’s Definition of Homelessness to Align With Other Federal Agencies
Learn why Congress must change the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s definition of homelessness to align with other federal agencies.
The Pitfalls of HUD’s Point-in-Time Count for Children, Youth, and Families
On December 19, 2022, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released its 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report Part I (AHAR), boasting continuous decreases in both family and youth homelessness. In this brief, we explain why HUD’s data are flawed and misleading, and why other federal data sources provide a more accurate picture of child, youth, and family homelessness.
Early Childhood
Infants are at greater risk of living in homeless shelters than any other age group in the United States. Early childhood programs prevent the harmful life-long effects of homelessness on education, health and well-being.
PreK-12
In the 2019-20 school year, public schools identified nearly 1.3 million homeless students. Schools provide basic needs, caring adults, stability, normalcy, and the skills to avoid homelessness as adults.
Higher Education
The majority of well-paying jobs created today require education beyond high school. Post-secondary attainment is increasingly necessary to break the cycle of poverty and homelessness, and live a healthy, productive life.
Unaccompanied Youth
Unaccompanied homeless youth are young people experiencing homelessness who are not in the physical custody of a parent or guardian. 4.2 million youth and young adults experience homelessness each year.
How to Contact your McKinney-Vento Liaison
Under the McKinney-Vento Act, every local educational agency is required to designate a liaison for homeless children and youth. The local educational agency liaison coordinates services to ensure that homeless children and youths enroll in school and have the opportunity to succeed academically.
Click HERE to find the contact information of your local homeless education liaison.
Note: This contact information may change frequently due to staff turnover. If you have problems finding the right school district homeless liaison, please contact your state homeless education coordinator.