Voices of Youth Count Comprehensive Report: Youth Homelessness in America

Voices of Youth Count (VoYC) is a mixed-methods, multicomponent study that documents the prevalence and incidence rates of homeless youth in the United States, and describes the population’s characteristics, service gaps, and interventions of selected communities. The study uses a definition of youth homelessness that is broader than the definition in use by HUD, and includes both explicit homelessness (i.e. youth living on the street, in shelters, and in transitional housing) and unstably housed youth who are couch surfing or precariously housed. Due in part to the broader definition of homelessness utilized, the study finds that one in 30 youth ages 13-25 experienced some form of homelessness during the previous year. The study also identifies several high-risk homeless youth subpopulations, observes comparable rates of youth homelessness in rural and urban areas, and develops a rigorous methodology for future counts of homeless youth.