The number of homeless students has grown rapidly since 2005, and education officials say it is often difficult to determine which students are facing hardship.
Homelessness in the US to reach record high in 2024
The number of homeless people in the United States will reach an all-time high in 2024.
WASHINGTON – Troya Jackson moved out with her children after discovering that the paint in her apartment had caused lead poisoning in her daughter.
They couchsurfed for a while before moving to a homeless shelter for the summer. The hairdresser began looking for a rental property that would accept her hard-won housing voucher while caring for her five children, including a newborn and four-year-old daughter.
“It’s been very difficult,” she told USA TODAY. She said she has tried to send her oldest children, ages 14, 9 and 8, to school by paying for taxis to take them to and from class and finding quiet time to study, but it has been difficult in her small one-bedroom apartment.
Jackson and her family are not alone. Hundreds of thousands of homeless students across the country are staying in hotels, splitting up in apartments, or living in shelters. Most of them are with at least one parent or guardian, but many are unaccompanied.
The number of students struggling with housing instability has skyrocketed in recent years, continuing a decades-long trend and a worrying sign that the deepening housing crisis is hitting the nation’s youngest and most vulnerable populations.
In 2025, New York City reported 154,000 homeless students, the highest number in the city’s recorded history. Last year, the number of homeless students in California increased by nearly 20,000 across the state, an increase of 4% from the previous year, the fastest increase in the state in a decade.
The problem is not limited to the largest states or cities. Suburban and rural areas in states like Iowa, Indiana, and Florida also report an increase in student homelessness by 2025.
“This is happening across the country,” said Michael Gottfried, a professor of educational economics and policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “We can’t just say this is a rural problem or an urban problem. It’s everywhere.”
hidden population
According to the National Center for Homeless Education, there are approximately 1.4 million homeless students nationwide. The federal government’s tally also shows a 104% increase in student homelessness between 2005 and 2023, which experts say is still a vast undercount.
That’s because tracking these students is difficult, especially in areas where local institutions don’t share information with each other and often lack funding.
Homeless students frequently change schools. Some people do not tell their friends or teachers about their living situation. And the parents themselves kept a low profile for fear that their children would be taken away.
“We once asked a child, ‘What’s the hardest thing about living in a shelter?'” “I hid it from my friends,” recalls Jamila Larson, founder of the Playtime Project, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that takes homeless children to games and field trips.
Another reason homeless students are considered a “hidden” population is that more than 70% of them are “duplexes,” meaning they share housing with others. In some cases, three or four families may live in one apartment.
Therefore, it is often up to teachers and school staff to identify whether a student is housing insecure.
“It takes a lot of active work on behalf of the school to identify a student as homeless,” said Barbara Duffield, executive director of Schoolhouse Connection, a nonprofit organization that works on behalf of homeless youth. “But it’s the first step to asking them for help.”
American students are struggling ‘across the board’
The increase in homeless students reflects other alarming trends.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released its annual homelessness survey and found that 771,480 people, including adults, were living on the streets or in shelters, a record high for one night, the agency said.
According to HUD, the age group with the highest spike in homelessness is children under 18.
“All indicators show that children across the board are struggling,” Gottfried said, pointing to an increase in chronic absenteeism and a decline in children’s academic performance.
HUD blames the increase in the number of homeless residents on a worsening affordable housing crisis, rising inflation, stagnant wages and the end of coronavirus-era public assistance programs, including the expansion of the Child Tax Credit, all of which are “stretching the homeless services system to its limits,” the agency said.
Advocates and researchers say that while there are many factors contributing to the student homelessness crisis, affordable housing remains the most prominent and challenging barrier for youth and families.
“Ultimately, homelessness is a housing problem,” said Ann Owens, a sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “There aren’t enough affordable properties for families.”
The devastating cost of student homelessness
Growing up without stable housing can impact young people long after they leave the classroom.
Duffield said lack of a GED or high school diploma is the biggest risk factor for becoming homeless as a young person. The average graduation rate for homeless students in the 2022-2023 school year was 68%, nearly 19% lower than other students and 10% lower than poor but stable housing students, according to federal statistics.
Jackson was in and out of evacuation centers as an elementary school student and remembers how her mother struggled to keep her in class and away from danger. Decades later, she said moving to a shelter with her children was extremely painful.
“When I first came here, I cried for about two weeks straight,” she said. “But my children are really strong soldiers. They got me through.”
Homeless students also face other significant challenges, such as lack of transportation and frequent transfers. Research also shows that they receive disciplinary action at higher rates than their peers.
In Gastonia, North Carolina, Mary Renaud and her 13-year-old son moved out of their rented home after the landlord refused to treat mold that was making them sick. She had trouble finding an apartment to rent, so Renaud and her son slept in motels and couchsurfed for a while.
Renaud said she could see the immediate impact the experience had on her son.
“He’s been having trouble at school, so it’s affecting him,” she told the Gaston Gazette, part of the USA TODAY Network, in September. “He was suspended about three times because we didn’t have a place for him.”
Lots of sleep, shelter and student payments
Under the McKinney-Bent Homeless Assistance Act of 1987, the federal government allocates funds to states to identify homeless students and assist with transportation, housing, and other needs. But experts say the funding will never be enough.
An analysis of McKinney-Vento’s allocations by the Learning Policy Institute showed that in the 2019-20 school year, each homeless student received an average of $79 in federal funding. After a huge influx of federal funding during the pandemic, that money is starting to dry up.
The program’s limited capabilities face further headwinds from the Trump administration’s budget cuts to the Department of Education, which consolidated the McKinney-Vento program and slashed funding.
“I’m very concerned about what’s going to happen,” Duffield said, noting that McKinney-Vento liaisons across the country are tasked with tracking down homeless students and arranging transportation and other needs for them.
Another hurdle is that the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s definition of homelessness does not include dually-qualified people, leaving out the largest group of homeless students and families eligible for the agency’s rapid rehousing assistance.
That leaves a lot of the burden on states, local school districts, and a patchwork of nonprofit and volunteer organizations, all scrambling to find innovative ways to support the growing number of homeless students.
Across the country, school districts have begun building their own shelters to house homeless students. Some jurisdictions have taken further interim measures. For example, in Cincinnati, where the number of homeless students has jumped 77% over the past decade, the district plans to open a fenced-in parking lot next year where homeless families can sleep in their cars.
Meanwhile, New Mexico plans to expand a pilot program that pays homeless high school students hundreds of dollars a month if they meet with counselors, complete classes and maintain an attendance rate of 90% or higher. Oregon is testing a similar effort.
In many communities, families are forced to rely on volunteer groups and nonprofit organizations, which are often underfunded and underfunded.
In Sarasota, Florida, the nonprofit Harvest House had to close its emergency family shelter after county commissioners cut funding. Dan Minor, the organization’s president and CEO, recalled having to turn away a young family who were living in the back of a U-Haul truck.
“The kids seemed completely shocked,” he told the Sarasota Herald Tribune on the USA TODAY Network.
A long and difficult battle for shelter
Over the past year, Jackson has tried to protect her children and send them to school, a hurdle that at times seemed insurmountable.
After leaving the apartment in July 2024, Jackson and her children moved back and forth between relatives’ homes in Maryland and Virginia for several months. Jackson eventually tried to find a place at a local shelter, but the process was constantly met with closed doors and stifling bureaucracy, and she became discouraged.
“I had my heart broken a few times,” she said, describing some frustrating incidents, including the evacuation group changing its application requirements at the last minute. “We were going to move to my car. I didn’t know what else to do.”
After Jackson’s mother called a local nonprofit and begged them to help her daughter, the family was placed in a one-room unit, where they moved in July. In the months since, she’s given birth to her fifth child, gotten a housing voucher and started looking at rental properties.
Jackson said she has promised her children that she will leave the shelter soon and hopes to find an apartment near their children’s school.
“I haven’t told them I’m leaving the shelter yet,” Jackson said with a smile on a frigid Saturday morning in mid-December. “Especially around the holidays, they get really frustrated.”
She is already planning how to tell her children this news.
“I want to take them to see (the apartment) and tell them it’s their aunt’s house or something,” she said. “But once they see it, I’m going to surprise them and say, ‘That’s ours!'” …That’s my plan. ”
Contributed by Chloe Collins, Gaston Gazette. Saundra Amrhein, Sarasota Herald Tribune, Grace Tucker and Elizabeth B. Kim, Cincinnati Enquirer
