We Count, California! A Statewide Capacity‐Building Effort to Improve Youth Inclusion in California's Point‐in‐Time Homeless Counts

• Author: Jessica S. Lin,Laura Petry,Colette Auerswald,Shahera Hyatt
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.232
• Published date: 01 September 2017
• Date: 01 September 2017

We Count, California! A Statewide Capacity-Building

Effort to Improve Youth Inclusion in California’s

Point-in-Time Homeless Counts

Jessica S. Lin, Laura Petry, Shahera Hyatt, and Colette Auerswald

As is the case across the nation, youth in California experiencing homelessness are often

undercounted and overlooked. We Count, California!, a collaboration between the California

Homeless Youth Project and the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health was

formed to support California communities in better counting and describing their homeless youth in

the 2015 Point-in-Time (PIT) count. Project activities included a series of trainings across the state,

provision of seed grants to communities conducting youth-specif‌ic count activities, and provision of

one-on-one technical assistance to two nonurban, under-resourced pilot sites. Despite considerable

increases in the energy, commitment, and funding dedicated to youth counts across California,

results of the 2015 PIT count were mixed. In this article, we discuss promising practices, successes,

and continuing challenges for youth-inclusive PIT counts. We conclude with recommendations for

local initiatives and policy-level interventions for developing a more accurate and inclusive picture

of youth homelessness in California and nationwide.

KEY WORDS: homeless, youth, census

Introduction

Homeless youth experience signif‌icant health and life course disparities, due

to interacting individual (e.g., substance use, mental health), proximal (e.g.,

familial neglect or abuse, food insecurity, interpersonal violence), and societal/

community determinants (e.g., structural violence) (Viner et al., 2012). Addressing

their health and well-being requires accurate data regarding the size and

composition of the population to inform the scope and components of policies

and programs. However, such data are lacking nationally, statewide, and locally.

Counts, when cited, often vary widely (Foster, 2010; National Alliance to End

Homelessness and The National Network for Youth, 2010; National Network for

Youth [NN4Y], 2015; United States Interagency Council on Homelessness

[USICH], 2012).

World Medical & Health Policy, Vol. 9, No. 3, 2017

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doi: 10.1002/wmh3.232

#2017 Policy Studies Organization

Homeless youth have been historically underrepresented in federally

mandated counts in part due to their hidden nature and tendency not to be found

in the same locations as adults, and in part due to structural barriers to their

enumeration (Dipshan, 2015; National Alliance to End Homelessness [NAEH],

2012; NN4Y, 2015). For example, unaccompanied minors are an especially

hard-to-count population, as they are often disconnected from the systems

intended to care for them and wary of service providers. Furthermore, concerns

regarding mandated reporting obligations have made some communities reluc-

tant to identify minors in count activities. Youth between the ages of 18–24 (also

known as transition age youth, or TAY) are also recognized to have been

undercounted prior to 2013, the f‌irst federal count for which they were

enumerated separately from the overall adult population.

This paper will describe our work to improve data collection for homeless

youth in California in 2015. As background, we will examine the importance of

youth counts; review the history of federal Point-in-Time (PIT) counts of homeless

individuals, and of the obstacles to youth inclusion within that process; and

describe f‌indings from our statewide assessment of the 2013 count, upon which

this initiative was based. Of note, our emphasis is on the sociopolitical contextual

factors inf‌luencing youth counts and not on our specif‌ic practical recommenda-

tions for conducting homeless youth counts, which are amply described in our

publicly available reports and materials (Auerswald, Lin, Petry, & Hyatt, 2013,

2014b; Lin, Petry, Hyatt, & Auerswald, 2015; We Count, California!, 2014).

In recent years, researchers and advocates have emphasized the importance

of considering the needs of homeless youth as a distinct subpopulation within the

overall homeless population (Bardine, 2015; Murphy, 2013; Thompson, McManus,

Lantry, Windsor, & Flynn, 2006). The need for accurate data has become more

urgent given federal policy goals. The Opening Doors plan for eliminating

homelessness, authored by the United States Interagency Council on Homeless-

ness (USICH, 2015), has put forth a goal to eliminate youth homelessness by 2020

(USICH, 2015). The f‌irst step outlined in the plan is an improvement in data

regarding the numbers and characteristics of this population.

In the United States, one of the primary data sources regarding persons

experiencing homelessness is the PIT count, a snapshot of homelessness on a

single day in late January (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

[HUD], 2014a). The PIT count has been federally mandated since 2005 by HUD

for communities receiving federal funding for homeless services. Regional or local

planning bodies coordinating housing and services funding for homeless families

and individuals, known as continuums of care (CoCs), are responsible for

conducting local PIT counts. Count results are consolidated and utilized federally

to track trends and inform program, policy, and funding decisions. Locally, they

are used by public off‌icials for planning and measuring progress toward ending

homelessness.

HUD’s mandate includes annual counts of sheltered individuals (def‌ined as

individuals living in emergency and transitional shelters or in hotels or motels

paid for by government vouchers) and biennial counts of unsheltered individuals

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