In a video posted on the Friends of Youth Outreach website, two ‘Iolani School girls detail the struggles — from drugs to sex trafficking — their unsheltered peers face on the street. “We need your help,” the girls plead, asking viewers to support efforts to create a safe 24-hour shelter for homeless youths.
As the state tackles homelessness, much attention has been focused on housing families or single adults under the federal Housing First program. But homeless youths, many of them teen runaways, have specific needs. They need a shelter where they can learn to become self-reliant adults.
Hoping to fill that void, Friends of Youth Outreach (FOYO) has set up an endowed foundation through Hawaii Community Foundation to raise $5 million for a full-time residential youth shelter. Although the location has not been secured, it’s a move that needs widespread community support.
FOYO is “hoping someone might donate that location,” said Jane Anderson, a founding member, who noted that over $100,000 has been raised so far. Every city that has grappled with homelessness has a youth facility, she said. Oahu should do no less, and must fill a growing need.
Currently, the Youth Outreach, or YO! drop-in center in Waikiki, serves 25 to 50 youths nearly daily, where they can get hot meals, a shower, medical and educational assistance, job counseling, lockers and nurturing from volunteers and staff.
But those services are only available 16 hours a week. In the early evenings, the youths head back to the streets.
The girls in the five-minute video describe how some homeless kids take drugs to stay awake at night, fearing something will happen to them if they fall asleep. They also broach how some of them are being drawn into sex trafficking. “We didn’t even know what that was,” the girls say. “It’s unacceptable.”
And they’re right. It is unacceptable that this sector of the homeless community — likely the most vulnerable — has somehow fallen through the cracks.
About a third of the homeless population in 2014 were people under age 25, and it’s widely believed that the number of homeless youth is greatly underreported, according to the 2014 Homeless Service Utilization Report. National statistics show youths aged 12 to 17 are more likely to become homeless than adults.
Friends of Youth Outreach envisions creating a licensed facility where disenfranchised youths are able to sleep safely at night under professional supervision. In addition, they would continue to receive the services that are currently offered through the drop-in center, including clean clothes, laundry facilities, personal lockers, GED education, counseling, job training and employment help. It would be a safe haven for young people who have too few options.
For years at YO!, teen runaways have made up most of its clientele. But the drop-in center is now seeing an increase in elementary school kids attached to older siblings or adults, and that’s alarming. The program has adjusted to the change and has been working with more families and schools to make sure kids stay in school. Building a shelter would be a natural progression to further help those in need.
YO! Program Director Carla Houser said that when officials cleared the Kakaako homeless encampments, unattached teenagers were overlooked as the city focused on relocating families to shelters. Houser and other staffers helped teens pack up possessions at encampments and haul them to the YO! center for storage.
Soon a Sand Island shelter will house singles and couples and even accommodate their pets. The state is now vetting sites for a homeless shelter that will serve families. Yet unsheltered and unattached youths so far have not been placed at the top of the agenda for any government-backed homeless shelters.
All sectors of the homeless population need proper attention. These youths “have left their homes for one reason or another. They’ve been swept out of Waikiki and swept out of Kakaako,” Anderson said. “It’s so, so tragic.” YO’s effort to create a 24-hour youth shelter deserves support to make that tragic situation, less so.
