Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers asking for increased funding for programs serving homeless children.
In early 2015, actress and singer Miley Cyrus wrote to New York Gov. Singer-songwriter Cyndi Lauper, once a homeless teen, has helped bring national attention to the issue of youth homelessness. Over the past several years, the news media have increasingly focused on the problems of homeless, LGBTQ youth, including their likelihood of engaging in “survival sex,” or trading sex for basic needs such as food and shelter.
Research on homelessness and young people has consistently found that youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) are more likely to be homeless than their heterosexual peers. In 2013, the Congressional Research Service released a report estimating there are more than 1 million homeless youth in a given year and between 1 million and 1.7 million runaway youth, including “thrownaway” children – those who have been thrown out of the family home or otherwise abandoned. But it’s hard to know how many children do not have adequate housing and other provisions, partly because of their mobility. Other organizations estimate that the number of homeless youth is higher and is growing. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
More than 575,000 people were homeless in the United States in January 2014 – and nearly one-quarter were under the age of 18, according to the U.S.