Infant and toddler homelessness is widespread, under-identified, and under-resourced. This new report shines a light on the gaps — and the solutions within reach.
Between birth and the age of three, a child’s brain develops faster than at any other time in life.
Tragically, an increasing number of infants and toddlers move through these critical years without a safe and stable home – an experience that jeopardizes their health, development, and future.
Infant/Toddler Homelessness Data
Just launched: You can now explore national and state-level data on infants and toddlers (birth through age 3) experiencing homelessness—now available as part of our interactive dashboard.
For the second consecutive year, SchoolHouse Connection, in partnership with Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, collected and analyzed data on infants and toddlers experiencing homelessness in all 50 states. This report presents the estimated prevalence of homelessness among infants and toddlers at the national and state levels, along with their enrollment in early childhood development programs. It also recommends strategies at the federal, state, and local level to increase access to both housing and early childhood development programs so that all children thrive from the start.
In this webinar, the SchoolHouse Connection Early Childhood Team dives into our second-annual report, Infant & Toddler Homelessness Across 50 States: 2022-2023.
Date Recorded: April 30, 2025
We share key findings, recommendations for federal, state, and local leaders, and hear from national partners and local providers about the impacts of homelessness on young children and strategies to combat it.
Homelessness is a traumatic experience with long-term consequences, particularly for infants and toddlers in their most critical stages of development. Yet homelessness among young children is hidden. It includes a range of living situations:
a six-month old living in a car with her family;
a family of five squeezed into a motel room;
a newborn in an emergency shelter;
a two-year-old on a series of floors next to a series of couches, moving with his mother from place to place as she stays with anyone who will take them in.
Lack of shelter, fear of having children removed from parental custody, and restrictive eligibility criteria for housing programs mean that most young children experiencing homelessness stay in places that are not easily identified.
Methodology
To better understand the prevalence of homelessness among expectant parents, infants, and toddlers, SchoolHouse Connection partnered with Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan to analyze census data and calculate an estimate of the number of children ages birth through age three experiencing homelessness across all fifty states.
SchoolHouse Connection’s Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships Erin Patterson and Senior Manager of Early Childhood Sarah Vrabic discuss the latest findings on the growing crisis of homelessness among America’s youngest children, and what we can do about it.
Q: Can you tell us about this year’s report and how it builds on previous work?
Erin: This year we created our second annual report on infant and toddler homelessness across 50 states. We built upon last year’s first-of-its-kind 50 state profile of data on the prevalence of homelessness among infants and toddlers, including their enrollment rates in early childhood development programs.
Q: How was this year’s data collected and what stood out to you in the findings?
Sarah: This year we were able to receive data from Early Head Start, multiple home visiting models, and those children who are identified and served by a program affiliated with their local educational agency to determine how many infants and toddlers experiencing homelessness are enrolled in early childhood development programs.
For this year’s report, we found nearly 450,000 infants and toddlers experiencing homelessness, an increase of nearly 84,000 from the 2021–22 program year to the 2022–23 program year. And in fact, what was really surprising was that we found this increase in almost every single state, including DC and Puerto Rico.
Q: Why is homelessness during infancy and toddlerhood so uniquely harmful?
Erin: The first three years of life are critical for brain development. Babies are learning and growing faster than at any other time in their life. The younger and longer a child experiences homelessness, the worse the negative health outcomes.
And that includes physical, developmental, and mental and emotional health. Increased risk of chronic asthma, stunted development, social-emotional problems that linger even after a child and their family have been permanently housed. So any instance of homelessness, especially during the early years, can be life altering.
Let me try and paint a really specific, vivid picture here, because the impacts of homelessness can snowball from infancy. Even in the prenatal stage all the way through a child’s life, into its teenage and early adult years. The developmental environment that needs to be in place in order for them to grow at a healthy rate. They need space to do tummy time, safe sleep, access to a refrigerator if the mother is pumping and wants to feed their baby breast milk. Any interruption in these environments, in these conditions, can cause a developmental delay in a child.
So what we might see, for example, is a child who experienced homelessness in infancy, now showing up to first grade, not as ready and supported to learn. And so that puts them on a trajectory where they might not pay attention as much in the classroom. And so then they get behind in reading or math. Maybe they’re held back a grade, placed into remedial courses, maybe by middle and high school, those learning difficulties show up as behavioral differences. This child is less likely to graduate, pursue postsecondary education, hold a stable job, and be stably housed as an adult. That’s the cyclical nature that builds over time.
Q: Sarah, you mentioned new home visiting data—why is that important and how do these programs help?
Sarah: What is exciting about this year’s report is that we were able to receive additional data from multiple home visiting models, including Parents As Teachers, Healthy Families America, and a Michigan-based model called the Maternal Infant Health Project.
Many families with young children experiencing homelessness participate in home visiting and benefit from those services. But they’re not always captured in that data collection. We are excited to be able to shine a light on the families that are participating in these programs.
The majority of families experiencing homelessness in our country are experiencing doubled up homelessness. Sharing the housing of others due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason. For many of these families that can look like moving around from place to place frequently.
So for families with young children who are experiencing homelessness who may be highly mobile, sometimes that traditional brick and mortar early childhood program is not the best fit for that child to receive early care and education. Participating in a home visiting program where visitors are trained to prioritize the needs of families experiencing homelessness by meeting with them in community parks, in libraries, in local rec centers to deliver their services, sometimes that is the best fit for a family with a young child experiencing homelessness to still benefit from early care and education, but in a way that is more flexible and meets their needs.
Q: Erin, what do you want people to take away from the report?
Erin: I hope people feel alarmed and a sense of urgency. I hope that they will have a better understanding that homelessness impacts babies just as it impacts adults, and the consequences are perhaps even greater because of the developmental stage that are in.
We have been encouraged though, and we highlight several promising strategies and practices, throughout the report. And so I hope that, no matter what level you work at, federal, state, local early childhood or housing, I hope that you will find at least one action that you can implement in your daily practice, whether that’s a policy at the state level to remove barriers so that families can access housing and early childhood development more readily, or whether it’s a practice in your program to help families understand services available and the importance of connecting to early childhood housing and case management services. I hope our audience will see that there are opportunities to act on behalf of our youngest children experiencing homelessness.
For the second year we have 50 individual state profiles. No matter what state you’re in, you can find your profile page that shows the prevalence of homelessness among infants and toddlers. And it shows a breakdown of enrollment rates in early childhood programs specific to your state. And we’re excited about that because we cannot solve a problem that we can’t define. Having those individualized state profiles will help people, no matter what state or sector you work in. Hopefully be a conversation starter.
Reach across, if you’re in housing, to early childhood or vice versa. If you’re in a state agency working with legislatures or program providers, data should be the jumping point for action on behalf of infants and toddlers experiencing homelessness.
Q: Can you share any collaborative efforts that SchoolHouse Connection is part of to address this issue systemically?
Erin: One step SchoolHouse Connection has taken to integrate sectors that touch the lives of infants, toddlers, and their families experiencing homelessness is we’ve become a part of a coalition called Thrive From the Start. You can check it out at ThriveFromTheStart.org. But it’s based on the premise that we have to integrate sectors and strategies, including housing, early childhood, health and homelessness systems, so that we are connecting our systems on behalf of families.
We’re all on the same team promoting stable housing and healthy development for infants, toddlers, and their families experiencing homelessness.
