News

Young and homeless

Experts say youth homelessness is reaching a crisis

At 23, Francisco Vargas is in the prime of his life. Just a few years ago, he graduated from Los Altos High School. He has a girlfriend, a steady job and he's taking night classes at Foothill Community College in hopes of getting an anthropology degree.

But he's been depressed, with a sense of hopelessness about his future in the Bay Area. It's a gloom that's been hanging over his whole family for two years, he said, ever since they were priced out of their two-bedroom apartment on Montecito Avenue in Mountain View. They couldn't afford the rent any longer, but they were determined to stay in the area where they had laid down roots.

His parents planned to sleep in his father's work truck while Vargas would bunk in his sedan. Then, a friend located a 15-foot-long aluminum trailer large enough for all three of them, and the family began living on the street in Mountain View's Jackson Park neighborhood.

Vargas told the Voice he has been pushing himself to stay productive in hopes of being able to afford to rent an apartment. His family might be homeless, but it's not indigent. His father works a landscaping job, and Vargas said he was recently hired as a maintenance worker for the city of Los Altos. His mother can't work, due to her arthritis.

In many other parts of the county, Vargas would not be considered poor. He has a smartphone, a car, a dog and a steady income. Meeting at a downtown cafe, he refused to let a Voice reporter pay for his meal.

Help sustain the local news you depend on.

Your contribution matters. Become a member today.

Join

Yet stable housing still remains out of reach. Even with two incomes, his family would have had to pay 75 percent of their earnings to pay rent on an apartment, he said.

Living in the trailer was supposed to save money, but given all the costs, it still feels like they're losing ground, he said. While they aren't paying rent, the family has to pay for a storage unit for their belongings, fuel to stay warm, vehicle maintenance and frequent parking tickets. The pressure his family is under makes it difficult for him to concentrate on his studies.

"I have to worry about school, but also about work, and now also about housing. And I have to keep constantly thinking about this, every day," he said.

"It feels like I'm trapped. But if you want to live in this area, what else can you do?"

California's housing crisis

Stay informed

Get the latest local news and information sent straight to your inbox.

Stay informed

Get the latest local news and information sent straight to your inbox.

That California has a housing crisis is no secret: decades of insufficient residential development created a distorted housing market that's heavily tilted against low-income renters. Locally, suburban Eichler homes that sold for $23,000 a half century ago are considered a bargain at $1.5 million. About half of all renters in Santa Clara County are considered cost burdened, meaning they're paying more than 30 percent of their total income toward monthly rent, according to U.S. Census data.

Following the recession, the cost of rental housing has rebounded with a vengeance. Since 2010, the median price for rental housing across the Bay Area has increased by $1,100 a month, surpassing almost every other region in the U.S. In Mountain View, monthly rents have increased by $1,470 over the same period.

This surge has been a windfall for older Californians who bought a house back when they were cheap and plentiful. California's housing crisis predictably dovetails with a growing homelessness crisis -- one that is falling hardest on the youngest generation. Youth homelessness has spiked across the Bay Area and other large California cities in recent years, leading experts to warn of a new generation plagued by unstable housing.

Last year, more than 2,500 youth under the age of 25 were considered homeless across Santa Clara County, nearly triple the number from just two years earlier. The number was derived as part of a biennial "Point in Time" homeless count.

The South Bay isn't alone: the same count found homeless youth rates spiking in other parts of California. In Los Angeles County, 2,493 additional homeless youth were counted, a 93 percent increase; about 530 more in San Diego County, an 85 percent increase; and nearly 700 more in Alameda County, a 230 percent increase. This was all compared to just the last count done two years prior.

"Holy mackerel!" Lorraine Flores said she remembers thinking when she first saw those numbers. As an associate director at the Santa Clara-based Bill Wilson Center, which provides services to at-risk youth, she helped organize the 2017 count in Santa Clara County.

Her team put more effort than ever before into the job. Flores recruited homeless youth to serve as guides, who helped her team chart out common "hot spots" where street youth would gather, such as Rengstorff Park in Mountain View and Greer Park in Palo Alto. They spent seven hours on the count, nearly double the time spent any previous year, Flores said. If she had her druthers, they would've spent the whole day walking the streets if it meant getting a more accurate number.

Still, when the numbers came back, Flores said she felt her stomach sink a little -- 1,650 more homeless youth in Santa Clara County than recorded in 2015. That figure is likely still an undercount, she said.

"It was an alarming number, but at the same time it also made sense for why we're seeing so many homeless youth at our center, and on our waiting list," Flores said. "And I have to believe there's far more homeless youth than any of these counts have found."

Like Santa Clara, counties across the United States made a concerted effort in 2017 to count as many homeless youth as possible. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Department, the chief government agency in charge of homelessness, provided an incentive, stipulating that 2017 would serve as a baseline that future years' funding would be compared against.

These numbers are likely just scratching the surface, capturing only a fraction of the true number of young people who lack stable housing, according to experts. Homeless youth are notoriously hard to track -- at a glance, many street youth may look like any other teenagers. Compared to the general homeless population, they tend to avoid shelters, soup kitchens and service agencies where unhoused individuals would normally be counted. Many of them are struggling out of sight.

As homeless survey teams were out on a January morning in 2017 to canvass the streets of Mountain View, they may have counted Vargas and his family living in their trailer. But there would be no way for this survey team to know about his relative and her baby, who were sharing a bedroom in someone else’s Mountain View apartment. The same goes for his classmate who is couchsurfing in East Palo Alto. All of these unstable living situations meet most definitions of homelessness, but they are almost always missed in homeless surveys, according to experts.

Couchsurfing and doubled-up sharing of bedrooms, garages and other spaces is believed to account for 75 percent of the homeless youth nationally, according to the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

Far from perfect, the regional Point in Time count offers one snapshot of homelessness, said Dr. Colette Auerswald, an associate professor at University of California at Berkeley who has closely studied youth homelessness. She strongly believes all the Point in Time numbers should be seen as a crude baseline, the outermost layer of a deep-rooted problem, she said. If it were to get a grade, she would give it a D- for accuracy.

For a slightly better study, she points to the data provided by the McKinney-Vento law, the landmark 1987 bill that created the first federal homeless program. As part of that study, McKinney-Vento has been expanded to require school districts to assign a staff member to be a liaison tracking homeless students and gauging the nature of their living situations.

The most recently reported numbers, from 2016, shows that about 1 in 20 public school students in California are homeless. The vast majority of homeless students -- about three-quarters -- are living doubled up with multiple family members or others sharing the same room. Here is a data map of the high school and unified school districts. Here is a data map of elementary and unified school districts.

But the McKinney-Vento data has its own flaws. The school data only tracks students 18 years old and younger who are enrolled and don't drop out of school.

"I'm old enough to remember when homelessness was rare," Auerswald said. "What we have now just didn't exist. Period. There was poverty, but it wasn't anything like this."

According to Auerswald and others, things have gotten so bad in the Bay Area that people are starting to believe that homelessness is normal. Doubling up in a single room or sleeping on a colleague's couch sounds like a typical Silicon Valley living situation for many millennials. But for anyone who has to endure such unstable housing for prolonged periods, it is essentially the same as homelessness and carries many of the same issues, said Sparky Harlan, executive director of the Bill Wilson Center. Especially for young people, lacking stable housing can have huge negative repercussions on their development, education and future prospects, she said.

"Every homeless person starts out on a couch," Harlan said. "Depending on what day it is, a youth could be sleeping on a friend's couch or they could be out on the street. They go back and forth, and the idea they're two distinct populations is inaccurate."

A more plausible theory is that youth homelessness has not suddenly skyrocketed; instead, it has gone unnoticed. It may have been widespread for years, and data is beginning to trickle in that shows its extent. Many of the experts who were interviewed by the Voice say they believe youth homelessness has been steadily increasing since the 1980s, when the federal government ceased most direct funding of affordable housing.

"People talk about this group as the invisible homeless," said Shahera Hyatt, director of the California Homeless Youth Project. "Our society overemphasizes substance abuse and mental health as being pathways into homelessness, but really, many of these folks just don't have an economic and social safety net. We put an undue emphasis on personal responsibility on this issue, but that ignores the national crisis that is growing."

Kids living in vehicles

Victoria, a mother of four, moved to Mountain View last year because her husband had family in the area, and he thought he could find stable work in the bustling construction industry. Back in Los Angeles, her husband's boss didn't pay him for months and the couple drained their savings waiting for a paycheck that never came. At her request, the Voice changed her name to protect the privacy of her children, who attend local schools.

When the family arrived in Mountain View, the plan to bunk with relatives didn't work out ("family issues," Victoria said.) Instead, her husband's relatives gave them a car and for a time, the family of six squeezed inside the sedan and tried to sleep in a Safeway parking lot.

They began renting a trailer for $500 a month that had barely enough room to fit everyone. Her older children, ages 12, 10 and 8 years old, sleep up in the trailer loft while her 2-year-old sleeps in a car seat. Victoria and her husband sleep head-to-head on the floor.

During last summer's grueling heatwave, Victoria said she often stayed up through the night to fan her children so they could sleep.

"I cry at night when I look at them," she said in Spanish.

The plight of Victoria and Francisco Vargas and their families is not unique. In Mountain View, homelessness has become harder to ignore, as several neighborhoods have transformed into de facto trailer parks for people living out of cars, RVs and trailers. As of March, there are nearly 300 inhabited vehicles throughout the city, nearly double the number from last year, according to city officials.

A series of new studies are beginning to show just how prevalent youth homelessness has become in the U.S. and especially the Bay Area.

The study with a widest scope came from a national survey of more than 26,000 people conducted by the University of Chicago Chapin Hall school. Unlike the routine on-the-ground counts, this study was a conducted in 2017 as a phone survey by the Gallup polling firm. Households with young people were called up and respondents were asked whether any youth had couchsurfed or been homeless over the past year.

From that survey, the study found that one in 10 young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 were experiencing some form of homelessness -- roughly 3.5 million people. Between the ages of 13 and 17, at least one in 30 were experiencing homelessness, or about one in every classroom, according to the study. Surprisingly, the Chapin Hill study found homelessness was prevalent in both rural and urban areas; it was a problem shared by San Francisco as well as South Dakota.

These findings are mirrored in a mix of other recently published reports. About one in 10 college students in California are homeless, according to a 2016 report by the California State University system. About one in five college students lacked enough food to eat.

More locally, the Santa Clara-based Bill Wilson Center surveyed South Bay community colleges and reported that 44 percent of students -- nearly half the student body -- identified a classmate who was experiencing homelessness. The study eliminated duplicate student names provided by those surveyed, Flores said.

While the growing body of research shows that youth homelessness is becoming widely prevalent, federal and state policy for the most part continues to ignore this segment of the homeless population. Most resources for homelessness are directed toward the so-called chronically homeless, who are defined as individuals with a disability who have been living on the street for a year or more. But focusing on helping only the most dire cases ignores the source of homelessness, experts say.

"People don't just fall out of the sky and one day become chronically homeless," said Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection. "The pipeline for homelessness is youth homelessness, and the failure to address youth homelessness is leading to more homelessness."

Michelle Le and Ana Sofia Amieva-Wang contributed to this report. Spanish translation was provided by Amieva-Wang.

This investigative report is the first in a two-part series on youth homelessness that was supported by a California Data Journalism fellowship from the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism.

Craving a new voice in Peninsula dining?

Sign up for the Peninsula Foodist newsletter.

Sign up now

Follow Mountain View Voice Online on Twitter @mvvoice, Facebook and on Instagram @mvvoice for breaking news, local events, photos, videos and more.

Young and homeless

Experts say youth homelessness is reaching a crisis

by Mark Noack / Mountain View Voice

Uploaded: Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 1:49 pm

At 23, Francisco Vargas is in the prime of his life. Just a few years ago, he graduated from Los Altos High School. He has a girlfriend, a steady job and he's taking night classes at Foothill Community College in hopes of getting an anthropology degree.

But he's been depressed, with a sense of hopelessness about his future in the Bay Area. It's a gloom that's been hanging over his whole family for two years, he said, ever since they were priced out of their two-bedroom apartment on Montecito Avenue in Mountain View. They couldn't afford the rent any longer, but they were determined to stay in the area where they had laid down roots.

His parents planned to sleep in his father's work truck while Vargas would bunk in his sedan. Then, a friend located a 15-foot-long aluminum trailer large enough for all three of them, and the family began living on the street in Mountain View's Jackson Park neighborhood.

Vargas told the Voice he has been pushing himself to stay productive in hopes of being able to afford to rent an apartment. His family might be homeless, but it's not indigent. His father works a landscaping job, and Vargas said he was recently hired as a maintenance worker for the city of Los Altos. His mother can't work, due to her arthritis.

In many other parts of the county, Vargas would not be considered poor. He has a smartphone, a car, a dog and a steady income. Meeting at a downtown cafe, he refused to let a Voice reporter pay for his meal.

Yet stable housing still remains out of reach. Even with two incomes, his family would have had to pay 75 percent of their earnings to pay rent on an apartment, he said.

Living in the trailer was supposed to save money, but given all the costs, it still feels like they're losing ground, he said. While they aren't paying rent, the family has to pay for a storage unit for their belongings, fuel to stay warm, vehicle maintenance and frequent parking tickets. The pressure his family is under makes it difficult for him to concentrate on his studies.

"I have to worry about school, but also about work, and now also about housing. And I have to keep constantly thinking about this, every day," he said.

"It feels like I'm trapped. But if you want to live in this area, what else can you do?"

California's housing crisis

That California has a housing crisis is no secret: decades of insufficient residential development created a distorted housing market that's heavily tilted against low-income renters. Locally, suburban Eichler homes that sold for $23,000 a half century ago are considered a bargain at $1.5 million. About half of all renters in Santa Clara County are considered cost burdened, meaning they're paying more than 30 percent of their total income toward monthly rent, according to U.S. Census data.

Following the recession, the cost of rental housing has rebounded with a vengeance. Since 2010, the median price for rental housing across the Bay Area has increased by $1,100 a month, surpassing almost every other region in the U.S. In Mountain View, monthly rents have increased by $1,470 over the same period.

This surge has been a windfall for older Californians who bought a house back when they were cheap and plentiful. California's housing crisis predictably dovetails with a growing homelessness crisis -- one that is falling hardest on the youngest generation. Youth homelessness has spiked across the Bay Area and other large California cities in recent years, leading experts to warn of a new generation plagued by unstable housing.

Last year, more than 2,500 youth under the age of 25 were considered homeless across Santa Clara County, nearly triple the number from just two years earlier. The number was derived as part of a biennial "Point in Time" homeless count.

The South Bay isn't alone: the same count found homeless youth rates spiking in other parts of California. In Los Angeles County, 2,493 additional homeless youth were counted, a 93 percent increase; about 530 more in San Diego County, an 85 percent increase; and nearly 700 more in Alameda County, a 230 percent increase. This was all compared to just the last count done two years prior.

"Holy mackerel!" Lorraine Flores said she remembers thinking when she first saw those numbers. As an associate director at the Santa Clara-based Bill Wilson Center, which provides services to at-risk youth, she helped organize the 2017 count in Santa Clara County.

Her team put more effort than ever before into the job. Flores recruited homeless youth to serve as guides, who helped her team chart out common "hot spots" where street youth would gather, such as Rengstorff Park in Mountain View and Greer Park in Palo Alto. They spent seven hours on the count, nearly double the time spent any previous year, Flores said. If she had her druthers, they would've spent the whole day walking the streets if it meant getting a more accurate number.

Still, when the numbers came back, Flores said she felt her stomach sink a little -- 1,650 more homeless youth in Santa Clara County than recorded in 2015. That figure is likely still an undercount, she said.

"It was an alarming number, but at the same time it also made sense for why we're seeing so many homeless youth at our center, and on our waiting list," Flores said. "And I have to believe there's far more homeless youth than any of these counts have found."

Like Santa Clara, counties across the United States made a concerted effort in 2017 to count as many homeless youth as possible. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Department, the chief government agency in charge of homelessness, provided an incentive, stipulating that 2017 would serve as a baseline that future years' funding would be compared against.

These numbers are likely just scratching the surface, capturing only a fraction of the true number of young people who lack stable housing, according to experts. Homeless youth are notoriously hard to track -- at a glance, many street youth may look like any other teenagers. Compared to the general homeless population, they tend to avoid shelters, soup kitchens and service agencies where unhoused individuals would normally be counted. Many of them are struggling out of sight.

As homeless survey teams were out on a January morning in 2017 to canvass the streets of Mountain View, they may have counted Vargas and his family living in their trailer. But there would be no way for this survey team to know about his relative and her baby, who were sharing a bedroom in someone else’s Mountain View apartment. The same goes for his classmate who is couchsurfing in East Palo Alto. All of these unstable living situations meet most definitions of homelessness, but they are almost always missed in homeless surveys, according to experts.

Couchsurfing and doubled-up sharing of bedrooms, garages and other spaces is believed to account for 75 percent of the homeless youth nationally, according to the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

Far from perfect, the regional Point in Time count offers one snapshot of homelessness, said Dr. Colette Auerswald, an associate professor at University of California at Berkeley who has closely studied youth homelessness. She strongly believes all the Point in Time numbers should be seen as a crude baseline, the outermost layer of a deep-rooted problem, she said. If it were to get a grade, she would give it a D- for accuracy.

For a slightly better study, she points to the data provided by the McKinney-Vento law, the landmark 1987 bill that created the first federal homeless program. As part of that study, McKinney-Vento has been expanded to require school districts to assign a staff member to be a liaison tracking homeless students and gauging the nature of their living situations.

The most recently reported numbers, from 2016, shows that about 1 in 20 public school students in California are homeless. The vast majority of homeless students -- about three-quarters -- are living doubled up with multiple family members or others sharing the same room. Here is a data map of the high school and unified school districts. Here is a data map of elementary and unified school districts.

But the McKinney-Vento data has its own flaws. The school data only tracks students 18 years old and younger who are enrolled and don't drop out of school.

"I'm old enough to remember when homelessness was rare," Auerswald said. "What we have now just didn't exist. Period. There was poverty, but it wasn't anything like this."

According to Auerswald and others, things have gotten so bad in the Bay Area that people are starting to believe that homelessness is normal. Doubling up in a single room or sleeping on a colleague's couch sounds like a typical Silicon Valley living situation for many millennials. But for anyone who has to endure such unstable housing for prolonged periods, it is essentially the same as homelessness and carries many of the same issues, said Sparky Harlan, executive director of the Bill Wilson Center. Especially for young people, lacking stable housing can have huge negative repercussions on their development, education and future prospects, she said.

"Every homeless person starts out on a couch," Harlan said. "Depending on what day it is, a youth could be sleeping on a friend's couch or they could be out on the street. They go back and forth, and the idea they're two distinct populations is inaccurate."

A more plausible theory is that youth homelessness has not suddenly skyrocketed; instead, it has gone unnoticed. It may have been widespread for years, and data is beginning to trickle in that shows its extent. Many of the experts who were interviewed by the Voice say they believe youth homelessness has been steadily increasing since the 1980s, when the federal government ceased most direct funding of affordable housing.

"People talk about this group as the invisible homeless," said Shahera Hyatt, director of the California Homeless Youth Project. "Our society overemphasizes substance abuse and mental health as being pathways into homelessness, but really, many of these folks just don't have an economic and social safety net. We put an undue emphasis on personal responsibility on this issue, but that ignores the national crisis that is growing."

Kids living in vehicles

Victoria, a mother of four, moved to Mountain View last year because her husband had family in the area, and he thought he could find stable work in the bustling construction industry. Back in Los Angeles, her husband's boss didn't pay him for months and the couple drained their savings waiting for a paycheck that never came. At her request, the Voice changed her name to protect the privacy of her children, who attend local schools.

When the family arrived in Mountain View, the plan to bunk with relatives didn't work out ("family issues," Victoria said.) Instead, her husband's relatives gave them a car and for a time, the family of six squeezed inside the sedan and tried to sleep in a Safeway parking lot.

They began renting a trailer for $500 a month that had barely enough room to fit everyone. Her older children, ages 12, 10 and 8 years old, sleep up in the trailer loft while her 2-year-old sleeps in a car seat. Victoria and her husband sleep head-to-head on the floor.

During last summer's grueling heatwave, Victoria said she often stayed up through the night to fan her children so they could sleep.

"I cry at night when I look at them," she said in Spanish.

The plight of Victoria and Francisco Vargas and their families is not unique. In Mountain View, homelessness has become harder to ignore, as several neighborhoods have transformed into de facto trailer parks for people living out of cars, RVs and trailers. As of March, there are nearly 300 inhabited vehicles throughout the city, nearly double the number from last year, according to city officials.

A series of new studies are beginning to show just how prevalent youth homelessness has become in the U.S. and especially the Bay Area.

The study with a widest scope came from a national survey of more than 26,000 people conducted by the University of Chicago Chapin Hall school. Unlike the routine on-the-ground counts, this study was a conducted in 2017 as a phone survey by the Gallup polling firm. Households with young people were called up and respondents were asked whether any youth had couchsurfed or been homeless over the past year.

From that survey, the study found that one in 10 young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 were experiencing some form of homelessness -- roughly 3.5 million people. Between the ages of 13 and 17, at least one in 30 were experiencing homelessness, or about one in every classroom, according to the study. Surprisingly, the Chapin Hill study found homelessness was prevalent in both rural and urban areas; it was a problem shared by San Francisco as well as South Dakota.

These findings are mirrored in a mix of other recently published reports. About one in 10 college students in California are homeless, according to a 2016 report by the California State University system. About one in five college students lacked enough food to eat.

More locally, the Santa Clara-based Bill Wilson Center surveyed South Bay community colleges and reported that 44 percent of students -- nearly half the student body -- identified a classmate who was experiencing homelessness. The study eliminated duplicate student names provided by those surveyed, Flores said.

While the growing body of research shows that youth homelessness is becoming widely prevalent, federal and state policy for the most part continues to ignore this segment of the homeless population. Most resources for homelessness are directed toward the so-called chronically homeless, who are defined as individuals with a disability who have been living on the street for a year or more. But focusing on helping only the most dire cases ignores the source of homelessness, experts say.

"People don't just fall out of the sky and one day become chronically homeless," said Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection. "The pipeline for homelessness is youth homelessness, and the failure to address youth homelessness is leading to more homelessness."

Michelle Le and Ana Sofia Amieva-Wang contributed to this report. Spanish translation was provided by Amieva-Wang.

This investigative report is the first in a two-part series on youth homelessness that was supported by a California Data Journalism fellowship from the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism.

Comments

SC Parent
Cuesta Park
on Jul 13, 2018 at 9:05 pm
SC Parent, Cuesta Park
on Jul 13, 2018 at 9:05 pm

I don't consider a 23-year-old a "youth." Even legally, I believe anyone 18 or older is considered an "adult," and not a youth, juvenile, or a teen. It's amazing how people distort statistics.

For the poor family of 6 that moved here because of family connections, it's sad that there are "family issues" preventing them from getting assistance from family. Those relationships can be dicey. But, it sounds like the family connection isn't what they thought it was and maybe they should consider where they can best provide for their 4 children Long-Term.

The studies conducted by the University of Chicago are presented in an extremely misleading or ambiguous fashion that is unsuitable for any scholarly work:
"From that survey, the study found that one in 10 young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 were experiencing some form of homelessness -- roughly 3.5 million people. Between the ages of 13 and 17, at least one in 30 were experiencing homelessness, or about one in every classroom, according to the study. Surprisingly, the Chapin Hill study found homelessness was prevalent in both rural and urban areas; it was a problem shared by San Francisco as well as South Dakota."
OK, so are these data nation-wide data? The article presents them in a context that supports the preceding paragraphs that this is a Bay Area problem, the the statistics are not presented in anything approach a relevant format. Looking at the statistics specifically, I think we can take comformt that only 3% of high school aged students are homeless. That the rate more than triples to 10% immediately following high school is more alarming. What safety nets are being lost in that timeframe (family, school, community, personality, psychological) and what is causing the rapid increase in homelessness rates in just a few years?

Another study: "These findings are mirrored in a mix of other recently published reports. About one in 10 college students in California are homeless, according to a 2016 report by the California State University system. About one in five college students lacked enough food to eat."
OK, what is the definition of "homeless"? I can see a lot of college kids sleeping on couches to save on expenses. And lacking enough food to eat? My wife picked blackberries on the side of the road for 2 meals a day (when they were in season) because she didn't have enough money for food. It happens. Thus far, these people have the strength to stay in college, like my wife, and create a better life for themselves.

Finally: "People don't just fall out of the sky and one day become chronically homeless," said Barbara Duffield, former policy director at the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth. "The pipeline for homelessness is youth homelessness, and the failure to address youth homelessness is leading to more homelessness."
Where is the study citation that shows that the 3% of 13-17 year olds who are homeless grow into the 10% of 18-25 year olds who are homeless? While I don't necessarily agree with the conclusion, for an article that cites a lot of studies, the linkage was not made for this conclusion.

More locally, the Santa Clara-based Bill Wilson Center surveyed South Bay community colleges and reported that 44 percent of students -- nearly half the student body -- identified a classmate who was experiencing homelessness. The study eliminated duplicate student names provided by those surveyed, Flores said.


mike
Old Mountain View
on Jul 13, 2018 at 11:09 pm
mike, Old Mountain View
on Jul 13, 2018 at 11:09 pm

this report by mark noack is a devastating indictment of our society turning its back on our children. a system that tolerates this numbers of homeless youth is a society in decline. there is no mass anger, no mass mobilization to address the issue.
we are now numbed by the effects of capitalism in our country and continue to believe that this failure is the product of failed personal responsibility and not a system failure. blame the victims and not the system that produces these results. End homelessness is the rally cry -- but there is no recognition of the root causes embedded in the politicsocioeconomic forces we so blindly accept

in the book nomadland we learn of tens of thousands of seniors on social security roaming the country in rvs looking for work. men and women picking sugar beats in minnessota, cleaning toilets at summer camp grounds in the sierras, trudging the concrete 12 hours a day in amazon fulfillment centers in arizona

where will this lead - your guess is as good as mine - autocracy, roving bands of hungry men and women, inter racial blaming (oh that is alreday happening), - etc

already the death rate for whites in America has been declining for 2 decades related to suicides, homicides, depression, drug and alcohol induced diseases. same as happened in russia after the fall

this can grow until something happens - ? what

what do you think


russell
Monta Loma
on Jul 13, 2018 at 11:14 pm
russell, Monta Loma
on Jul 13, 2018 at 11:14 pm

you wonder why the SC parent goes to such lengths to deny and counterthe problem that is so visible every day all around us


Humble observer
Another Mountain View Neighborhood
on Jul 14, 2018 at 4:03 am
Humble observer, Another Mountain View Neighborhood
on Jul 14, 2018 at 4:03 am

No, I wonder why "russell" evidently didn't bother to follow or even to think about the gaps, unexplained data, and unclear connections in the article, there for anyone to see, which "SC parent" carefully and patiently summarized. What's the value of mere reasoning (russell seems to say), when you can fall back on an offhand impression.

And why "mike," also without any serious scrutiny at all of arguments featured in the article and their limitations, instead characterized it rhetorically as a "devastating indictment" and used it as a stepping-off point for sweeping "politicsocioeconomic" theories.

In other words, one of three comments above, so far, was engaged enough to examine the article seriously and address it thoughtfully. That is what I think.


Someone who works with youth
Shoreline West
on Jul 14, 2018 at 7:41 am
Someone who works with youth, Shoreline West
on Jul 14, 2018 at 7:41 am

Thank you for a well researched article; the facts, hard to accept are an everyday reality for the families interviewed. Many families are afraid to seek assistance because they fear it could result in a CPS report, (homelessness in itself is not reportable), and while there is a paranoia about children being “taken away” by the social workers, on the flip side, with a report a family could have access to resources, including housing. But, because of the demand in this area, living in an RV is often a safer and more desirable alternative. As someone who works in the community, it’s easy for those more fortunate, those with a stable roof over their head to dismiss these facts— but it’s REALITY.
And, while technically a 23 year old is considered a “legal adult”, organizations such as the Bill Wilson Center work with what is called “transitional aged youth”, 18-24 year olds, which I believe was the age of the population surveyed.

I know what I wrote with infuriate the Internet trolls in here, for whatever reason, but I just wanted to commend the author on a well written article.

Thank you!


Resident
Old Mountain View
on Jul 14, 2018 at 6:35 pm
Resident, Old Mountain View
on Jul 14, 2018 at 6:35 pm

I would love to see a follow up article exposing how local residents support helping the homeless, all the while fighting against anything that would actually help them, such as increases in housing inventory (and density). These are victims of a housing shortage created by residents and their locally elected government, which eventually reflects their views. If you want to make an actual difference, lobby for building more residential units, doesn't matter if they're ownership or rental, and relax codes which make it ludicrously expensive to build here, making only luxury units cost effective.

I'm a home owner, I'm up to debt in my ears, and I would love to see house prices fall - a lot, so that we have a community that's a mix of people of different backgrounds, rather than a tech enclave.


Responsibility
Old Mountain View
on Jul 15, 2018 at 12:14 am
Responsibility, Old Mountain View
on Jul 15, 2018 at 12:14 am

Why isn't the story of the family that works in Los Altos, and goes to college in Los Altos, considered a problem for Los Altos? Why doesn't the family move their RV to there instead, and be even closer?

Why isn't the story of a family of SIX, where they can barely afford anything, a question of, "Hey, maybe don't have 4 kids if you can't afford them, and hey, while you're at it, don't move to one of the most expensive areas in the country at the same time?"

Why are these two things, which are both obvious matters of choice and desire instead of matters of necessities, considered a problem for the city of Mountain View to solve for these individuals?


mvresident2003
Registered user
Monta Loma
on Jul 15, 2018 at 10:35 am
mvresident2003, Monta Loma
Registered user
on Jul 15, 2018 at 10:35 am

@Responsibility nails it. So many of the comments show how current society and attitudes relate to entitlement, “rights”, “I’m owed”.

What happened to personal responsibility? And how the hell did 18-24 become “transitional adult”. You can guarantee my kids won’t be transitional adults at that age, they will be hard-working contributing members of society, not snowflakes whining about what they’re owed here.


@mvresident2003
Waverly Park
on Jul 15, 2018 at 11:33 am
@mvresident2003, Waverly Park
on Jul 15, 2018 at 11:33 am

Modern society values taking care of all its members, especially its most vulnerable. You're stuck in the Ayn Rand sociopathic world where everyone only cares about themselves, and we've thankfully moved past that.

[Portion removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language]


Grant
Cuesta Park
on Jul 15, 2018 at 1:10 pm
Grant, Cuesta Park
on Jul 15, 2018 at 1:10 pm

@Responsibility - your eugenic beliefs are showing.

@mvresident2003 - Prepare to be surprised. Unless things change drastically, "at that age," your kids will either be mooching off of you because the costs versus available wages ratio will be so high that they'll either have to get help or move elsewhere, or they'll be in college accumulating precedent-breaking amounts of debt. If you're rich, more power to you and best of luck to your kids, but you should learn to get out of Silicon Valley more often and see the difference between wealth and productive membership of society.


mvresident2003
Registered user
Monta Loma
on Jul 15, 2018 at 1:39 pm
mvresident2003, Monta Loma
Registered user
on Jul 15, 2018 at 1:39 pm

We're not rich and yes, my kids will almost certainly be moving elsewhere, as will we. There's no way we can afford to retire here and we will miss our friends and family but life's about choices we so far we've tended to make smart, often hard, ones. I have no expectation that I should be able to stay here just because I've lived here the past 20 years.

And don't tell me to go outside of SV, I grew up outside of SV, I've lived quite a few places as an adult outside of SV, most of my family are in different states, I know very well what it's like elsewhere. There's no place I'd rather live than right here and yet again, we will be moving upon retirement as we won't be able to afford to stay here. And before you wish me a speedy trip, don't bother, it's a ways off so I'll be around for a while. Lucky you!


catabyte
Registered user
another community
on Jul 18, 2018 at 6:58 pm
catabyte, another community
Registered user
on Jul 18, 2018 at 6:58 pm

"I have no expectation that I should be able to stay here"

I wonder... do you ever go to a fast food place or a restaurant? Shop at a grocery store? Shop anywhere other than online, for that matter? Do you enjoy having weed-free public spaces? Potholes filled? Expect a receptionist to answer the phone when you call a business? Enjoy clean offices and hospitals and restrooms? Get your car washed?

Need I go on?

Do you expect all those people to commute 2+ hours each way to their jobs from "cheaper" areas? Is our public transit system sufficient to enable those folks to travel that distance without having to pay for the gas & maintenance & insurance on their cars that would pretty much obliterate the money they are making?

Can you imagine a city filled with only tech workers, lawyers, and perhaps doctors... and none of these other people? How would that city even function?


ResidentSince1982
Registered user
another community
on Jul 19, 2018 at 4:57 pm
ResidentSince1982, another community
Registered user
on Jul 19, 2018 at 4:57 pm

The article is doing a good job of pointing out how complicated the situation is. I don't see the particular issue about being young and homeless. It seems more like a situation of overall homelessness. It appears to be more of an economic thing. In the past the poorly paid workers could scrounge some subpar place to live, but the nature of those subpar places has deteriorated. It's the income gap causing these problems. There seem to be too many people being paid too much, driving up the rates charged for housing locations. The economy is causing this by being too uneven in its compensation of citizens.

For example, some of the seedy motels have been taken over by better paying customers. Older SRO apartment buildings have been demolished to make room for the HQ of 23andMe. It seems to me the only "fix" is public housing, but when the article documents people moving to Los Angeles to Mountain View and being homeless here, that doesn't speak well of the chance for improving things by adding housing in just one city in the State.


Landon Rust
Registered user
Old Mountain View
on Sep 12, 2018 at 10:04 am
Landon Rust, Old Mountain View
Registered user
on Sep 12, 2018 at 10:04 am

I love this by Barbara Duffield...brilliantly stated, ""People don't just fall out of the sky and one day become chronically homeless," said Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection. "The pipeline for homelessness is youth homelessness, and the failure to address youth homelessness is leading to more homelessness." If we can solve youth homelessness, we can solve a lot.
- Landon Rust | OCL Web Link


Don't miss out on the discussion!
Sign up to be notified of new comments on this topic.

Post a comment

Sorry, but further commenting on this topic has been closed.