Every youth deserves a chance at postsecondary education.
Higher education remains the surest path to economic stability and a life free from homelessness. However, the 2024-2025 FAFSA has had numerous delays and glitches, making it significantly harder for homeless youth to access financial aid and pursue higher education.
This page offers resources to help you assist students experiencing homelessness in completing the 2024-2025 FAFSA.
Understanding the different definitions
Unaccompanied homeless youth, or unaccompanied youth at risk of homelessness and self-supporting require additional steps to fill out the FAFSA. The first step is understanding what these terms mean.
For the FAFSA, an unaccompanied youth means someone under the age of 24 who is not living, or in the physical custody, of a legal parent or guardian.
For the FAFSA, homelessness is defined by the legal definition contained in the education subtitle of the McKinney_vento Act: lacking a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence. This includes living situations that fall into one of the categories below:
- Temporarily staying with other people due to financial hardship
- Staying in emergency or transitional shelters
- Staying in motels, campgrounds, cars, parks, abandoned building, bus or train stations, or any public or private places not designed for humans to live
- Staying in substandard housing
- Staying in the dorms, but would otherwise have no place to go
For the FAFSA, at risk of homelessness means your housing may cease to be fixed, regular, and adequate. For example, you are being evicted or have been asked to leave your current residence and have been unable to find fixed, regular, and adequate housing.
For the FAFSA, self-supporting means you pay for your own living expenses, including fixed, regular, and adequate housing.
Unaccompanied homeless youth or unaccompanied homeless youth at risk of homelessness and self-supporting are “independent” students on the FAFSA and do not need to include parental information. If youth are experiencing homelessness with their families, they are “dependent” students on the FAFSA and would need to include parental information.
Here are ways to help youth fill out the FAFSA:
Identify and Provide Outreach to Students
The first step in helping students experiencing homelessness fill out the FAFSA is to identify and provide outreach to students. Some students might not know they meet the definition of homelessness.
Help Students Answer FAFSA Questions
If the student meets the definition of an unaccompanied homeless youth or an unaccompanied youth at risk of homelessness and self-supporting, the student would answer “yes” to the homeless question.
Independent students do not need to include parental information and may qualify for additional financial support, like Pell Grants.
Unaccompanied homeless youth have a FAFSA process that is different from students who have experience in foster care, students with unusual circumstances, and students who are provisionally independent. Unaccompanied homeless youth should not go through dependency override processes for the FAFSA, but instead homeless youth determination processes.
Provide Students with Unaccompanied Homeless Determinations
Once an unaccompanied homeless youth has been identified, they need to receive a determination. This determination can be a letter or a documented phone call. Determinations can be made from the following authorized entities:
- A high school or school district homeless liaison or designee
- Director or designee of an emergency or transitional shelter, street outreach program, homeless youth drop in center, or other program serving those experiencing homelessness
- Director or designee of a project supported by a federal TRIO or GEAR UP program grant
- Financial aid administrator
If you are one of the people listed above, you can provide the student with a determination. Keep a copy of the determination for your records and encourage the student to keep a copy too.
Follow Up with Students
Continue helping the student fill out the FAFSA as instructed. The financial aid office will request the homeless determination, which will process the student’s award letter. If you are an authorized entity, the financial aid must accept this determination and should not request additional documentation unless there is conflicting information.
Reminder: Unaccompanied homeless youth should go through an unaccompanied homeless youth determination process, not a dependency override.
Frequently Asked Questions
There is not a period of time the student needed to have experienced homelessness to be eligible. For the 24-25 FAFSA, the student would need to have experienced homelessness on their own on or after July 1, 2023.
If a student is experiencing homelessness with their family, they would answer “no” to the homeless question and continue filling out the FAFSA as instructed with parental information. We encourage the student to follow up with their financial aid office at their institution to see if there is additional support, aid, or resources available to all students experiencing homelessness, not just unaccompanied homeless youth.
The student should put down an address they can access. Consider using the school’s address or a trusted adult. Once the student is in college, they can change their address to their campus address.
Use SchoolHouse Connection’s sample form. A determination can be a letter or a documented phone call.
Inform financial aid of the changes from The FAFSA Simplification Act for homeless youth. These changes are in the law and The U.S. Department of Education (ED) has provided guidance.
Inform financial aid of the changes from The FAFSA Simplification Act for homeless youth. These changes are in the law and The U.S. Department of Education (ED) has provided guidance. Financial aid administrators can watch this role-playing video and use this template to see how to conduct an unaccompanied homeless youth documented interview. Alternatively, financial aid administrators can request students to fill out this written statement. Both of these examples are acceptable forms of documentation for unaccompanied homeless youth determinations.
If the financial aid administrator is asking for three forms, the student is most likely getting rerouted the wrong way and going through a dependency override – not an unaccompanied homeless youth determination. Share ED’s guidance.
If unaccompanied homeless youth are unable to provide a determination from an authorized entity, the financial aid administrator is required to provide a determination. This determination must be based on the legal definition listed above and should be independent from the reasons that the student is an unaccompanied homeless youth.
View the changes here.
Related Resources
- SchoolHouse Connection FAFSA Page
- Sample Form Letters to Determine Independent Student Status of Unaccompanied Homeless Youth for the FAFSA
- The FAFSA Simplification Act
- Other FAFSA questions from a January 2024 webinar
- SchoolHouse Connection’s Higher Education Page