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In February 2024, the Office of Homeless Youth (OHY) and A Way Home Washington (AWHWA) released “Yes to Yes” Washington State: Unaccompanied Youth and Young Adult (YYA) Homelessness Landscape Scan. Funded by the Raikes Foundation and the Schultz Family Foundation, the report serves as a comprehensive reflection of the strides made since the last landscape scan in 2016.
In the 2024 report, more than 100 young people with lived experience, service providers, and stakeholders across the state were interviewed, resulting in a roadmap and vision for a Washington where unaccompanied young people can receive the help they need promptly and within their community. In these interviews, service providers and stakeholders emphasized that our work addressing YYA homelessness is far from done.
The report highlights remarkable achievements in the work to address YYA homelessness, including the near complete closure of the geographic service gap identified in 2016. In all, the findings show that even when faced with a problem as complex and dynamic as YYA homelessness, much progress can be made with focused funding and attention.
Read the full report on youth and young adult homelessness by Liz Harding Chao and Leeze Castro at A Way Home Washington.
Snapshot Data shows that between 2016 and 2022, YYA homelessness has decreased by 40% from 23,961 unaccompanied YYA to 14,410. This data didn’t exist when the last youth homelessness landscape scan was produced in 2016. The decrease is mostly among young adult (18 to 24) households. The vast majority of these households are single adults. It is notable that the decrease started well before the pandemic and continued throughout the pandemic, with a slight uptick between January and July 2022.