Building a Better Future for Unaccompanied Minors at Risk of or Homelessness in WA state
May 6, 2022
Most communities in the U.S. have a fractured response when it comes to supporting youth under the age of 18 who are experiencing homelessness apart from their families. It is one that bounces youth between child welfare, juvenile courts, and runaway/homeless youth providers, leaving a gap in response and responsibility to provide for them. These three systems often do not coordinate resources and responses, leaving youth struggling to access assistance and be safely housed and to keep their family relationships intact. The systemic racism built into the foundation of these systems attempting to serve youth often results in traumatic experiences for Black, Brown, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ youth and their families.
In partnership with the Raikes Foundation, the Housing Justice Collective (HJC) pulled together teams of community representatives– including young people with lived expertise– from King & Snohomish Counties, along with state and national policy leaders, to take a closer look at two specific local efforts that are designed to fill that gap, and to make recommendations for improving their efforts and the impacts for young people.
At first, HJC put forward a set of recommendations to the group of stakeholders that did not appropriately center the role of leadership of young people in systems, the vision young people have for transforming government structures to be more community-led, and the necessary investment needed in trusted Black, Brown, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ community-based organizations. The process resulted in a deeper partnership with the Greater Seattle and King County Youth Action Board, and a new set of recommendations that clearly describe what it means to transform the ways these systems currently operate.
As such, the transformed future state we want to see is one where wealth is redistributed directly into the hands and households of people as reparations; where experiences of a housing crisis are met with an understanding of the social and historical systematic failures that brought a young person to that moment and is compensated as such.
The recommendations included in the report, in and of themselves, will not result in complete system-transformation, but our hope is that they push us toward a future state of housing justice that includes unaccompanied minors. They were generated by an explicit centering of Black and Brown and LGBTQ+ youth and their families/caregivers. It is clear that racism and bias in broader areas (e.g. the housing market, child welfare, and legal systems) needs to be addressed as well.
Click on the report and appendix to learn more about this project and the recommendations, and read the support letter from the Greater Seattle and King County YAB.
We also want to extend very special thanks to all of the organizations and individuals who participated in the design and recommendation creation process.
Send us your thoughts and questions by emailing info@housingjusticecollective.com