LOCAL STORY CREDIT: GILES CLASEN CREDIT: GILES CLASEN DENVER IS MAKING STRIDES TO REDUCE YOUTH HOMELESSNESS, BUT ISSUES REMAIN BY GILES CLASEN AND ROBERT DAVIS JOSHUA LEFT HOME after his grandmother began stealing from him to subsidize her drinking habit. Had it been something of lesser sentimental value, he may have overlooked it. Instead, Joshua said his grandmother stole his Magic the Gathering cards and sold them for booze. “She isn’t a violent drunk; verbal assaults are more her style,” Joshua explains. After one particularly incendiary incident, he reported her to the Denver Sheriff’s Department and has been staying in a city-funded hotel room on Colfax ever since. This isn’t his first experience with homelessness, either. At 15 years old, Joshua ran away for a week because his parents wouldn’t let him smoke pot. He camped in Boulder, but the looming threat of blizzard snow drove him back home. Now at 19, Joshua says it’s been particularly difficult to find work during the pandemic because he doesn’t have access to the internet. Most days, he panhandles downtown. He wants to get back home to Washington and says his mom is trying to scrounge up enough money to help. 6 DENVER VOICE March 2021 “I don’t think Denver is the place for me,” Joshua told the VOICE. BACKWARD SLIDE While Joshua isn’t alone on the streets of Denver, he represents an alarming trend — a growing number of unaccompanied youths are experiencing homelessness. Too old for the foster system and often overlooked for work, unaccompanied youth face an uphill battle in Denver as the city’s skyrocketing cost of living and competitive job market make it tough to leave the streets behind. According to the 2020 Point in Time (PIT) Count, which was conducted before COVID-19 began, 189 unaccompanied youth were experiencing homelessness in Denver. Eighty youths slept in emergency shelters, 55 were placed in transitional housing, and another 54 youths were unsheltered. Compared to 2016, this represents a net increase of six youths experiencing homelessness. The latest McKinneyVento numbers reported by Colorado’s Department of Education show Denver had a total of 1,849 homeless students, 108 of whom were unaccompanied, a 17 percent increase since 2016. Over the same time frame, Denver has drastically revamped its reporting of PIT Count data. Four years ago, the City released a detailed 11-page report that statistically compared the age and demographic information collected. A revealing data point is that youths between the ages of 18 and 24 years old made up the highest percentage of Denver’s homeless population in 2016. In comparison, data from the 2020 Count was released in a one-page fact sheet with an experimental online dashboard accompanying it. The dashboard itself doesn’t delve any deeper into the numbers; it merely reports statistics based on a user’s selected criteria. NUMBERS AND LIVED EXPERIENCE To better understand how to help Colorado’s homeless youth, the State’s Office of Homeless Youth Services (OHYS) developed the Youth Supplemental Survey (YSS) in 2016 to help bridge the gap between the state’s PIT Count data and the lived experience of homelessness. The survey is conducted in partnership with the state’s four Continuums of Care (COC): El Paso/Pikes Peak, the Metropolitan Denver Homeless Initiative Balance of State, and the newly formed Northern Colorado COC. Each COC is required to participate in the survey. However, not all have enough resources or volunteers to do a physical count. Instead, all COCs provide OHYS with sheltered youth counts for the relative ease of pairing it with the PIT Count. The YSS data is then subdivided between youths who are enrolled in school and those who are not, according to OHYS Director Kristin Toombs. “Comparing school status amongst youth experiencing homelessness helps identify potential trends in demographics, social determinants, homelessness history,
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