America's fastest growing homeless population? Kids. | The Excerpt
- - America's fastest growing homeless population? Kids. | The Excerpt
Dana Taylor, USA TODAYDecember 30, 2025 at 4:10 AM
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On the Tuesday, December 30, 2025, episode of The Excerpt podcast: The issue of homelessness continues to plague the U.S. One of the demographics hit hardest is students under the age of 18. USA TODAY Breaking News Reporter Christopher Cann joins The Excerpt to share his insights on how homelessness is shaping the future of America's youth.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
America's housing affordability crisis has led to a sharp increase in homelessness. And according to the latest count by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development or HUD, children under the age of 18 have seen the largest jump. Hello and welcome to USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Tuesday, December 30th, 2025. There are nearly 1.4 million homeless students nationwide according to the National Center for Homeless Education. Joining me to discuss this growing population of students and the long-term implications for them is USA TODAY Breaking News Reporter Christopher Cann. So good to have you, Christopher.
Christopher Cann:
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Dana Taylor:
You wrote that student homelessness increased 104% between 2005 and 2023. I mentioned the federal tally of roughly 1.4 million unhoused students, but you wrote that experts believe that's a vast under count. Why is that?
Christopher Cann:
The primary reason for that is just it's simply hard to track these students. Most of them are not in shelters or out on the streets. They're living primarily with other families in apartments or hotels. And for students, many don't tell their friends or teachers about their housing situation for shame or other reasons. And the same goes for parents who may feel that or may fear that their children may be taken away about child protective services, which is something I heard from a lot of parents.
Dana Taylor:
I want to get into why these students are considered a hidden population. You noted that 70% of them are doubled up. What does that mean?
Christopher Cann:
So across the US, there are hundreds of thousands of homeless students living with other families and apartments and houses and motels. In some cases, you could see three or four families in one apartment. Now, under the McKinney-Vento Act, which is a federal law that guarantees homeless students enrollment and transportation in public schools, these students are considered unhoused. But other federal agencies, most importantly, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, they have a much more limited definition of homelessness, which disqualifies the vast majority of unhoused students from receiving help from the agencies rapid rehousing aid, for example.
Dana Taylor:
And on average, Christopher, how much does the federal government provide per homeless student and does it put a dent in the problem?
Christopher Cann:
The federal government doesn't publish the exact statistic, like broken down per student, but a recent analysis from the Learning Policy Institute showed that during the 2019/2020 school year, McKinney-Vento allocation provided an average of $79 per homeless student. Now, there was a major influx of federal dollars during the pandemic, but those funds have essentially run dry. And as researchers will tell you, it's not adequate. And this leaves a lot of nonprofits, volunteer groups, and states themselves trying to fill the need. And I'll add that the McKinney-Vento program is set to experience a drastic cut in funding as the Trump administration dismantles the Department of Education, which has a lot of homeless advocates and officials worried for the future of the program.
Dana Taylor:
I want to circle back to the immense toll on both parents and students that housing insecurity can take. Can you share some of what you uncovered there?
Christopher Cann:
Homelessness can have dire effects on children's education and their future. Our research shows that homeless students have much higher rates of chronic absenteeism, for example, which means that they're missing a lot more class. They struggle with frequent school transfers and transportation. And as you can imagine, it's much harder to concentrate and study when you're living in a cramped space with other families or in a car, as some families are. Homeless students are on average about 20% less likely to graduate than their housed peers.
Dana Taylor:
And then in terms of those graduation rates, what are the long-term impacts here for these students?
Christopher Cann:
Researchers say that lack of a GED or high school diploma is the single greatest risk factor for homelessness as a young adult. So meaning that those who are homeless as children are much more likely to be homeless as adults. And that was the case with several parents I spoke to for this story.
Dana Taylor:
And can you share one of their stories with me?
Christopher Cann:
Yeah. So there was one family I spoke to, the mother, Teroya Jackson. She has grown up in Washington, DC for all her life, and now she has five children, and they're currently unhoused in a shelter in Washington DC. But when Teroya was a young girl, she was also homeless with her mother and had bounced around in Washington DC's shelter programs and recounted how difficult it was at the time, like trying to maintain a routine for herself and the kind of pain that she went through having to bring her children into a shelter just like she was in when she was a child.
Dana Taylor:
As you reported, it often falls to teachers or school staff to identify whether a student is housing insecure. Some school districts are building their own shelters and car sleeping lots. Do they see these remedies as a sign of innovation or as further evidence of failure in our housing systems?
Christopher Cann:
So the sleep lots, which is basically a parking lot where homeless students and their families can sleep in their cars and other temporary shelters, they're all seen as temporary measures. And they're seen as necessary because to address the rising number of homeless students, because as those numbers continue to climb, the money allocated to adjust the problem, especially from the federal government has not increased at the same rate. So they're just trying to fill a massive gap there in funding and resources.
Dana Taylor:
And then also trying to fill a gap are nonprofits who seem to be buckling under the growing need for assistance. Have we become too reliant on volunteers and charity systems to manage the issue of homelessness? What are you hearing there?
Christopher Cann:
Yeah, so these nonprofit groups and volunteers, they are very similar to states and school district themselves, just overwhelmed by the sheer number of children in need. They're trying to fill a massive gap in resources. And while they do great work, because they provide children with housing in some cases, school supplies, clothes, toys, food. It's just not enough, and they'll tell you that themselves.
Dana Taylor:
I wanted to ask about a particular nonprofit you mentioned in your story, Harvest House in Sarasota, Florida. Can you share some of their story here?
Christopher Cann:
Yeah. So Harvest House is a nonprofit in Sarasota that provides emergency housing assistance to families. And last year, the County Commission there slashed funding for the nonprofits emergency family shelter, which was the only one in the county. And speaking with the Sarasota Herald Tribune, which is part of the USA TODAY network, the CEO of Harvest House, Dan Minor, described a heartbreaking moment when he had to turn away a family of six, which included four children who were living out of the back of a U-Haul truck. He had described the kids that was shellshocked and said that because of the slash in funding, they had to refer that family to other resources maybe to find a place to stay, but that they couldn't themselves hold them.
Dana Taylor:
Christopher, after speaking to a mother, you mentioned Teroya Jackson who was left homeless after vacating an apartment that gave her daughter lead poisoning, so she had to leave. After digging into schools and nonprofits, what would you like us to understand about how this crisis is currently playing out in hotels, doubled up apartments and homeless shelters?
Christopher Cann:
I think the biggest thing here to keep in mind for listeners is that just bringing awareness to the issue, most people have no idea how many students in this country are packed into hotels with others, struggling to stay focused in schools, relying on taxis or volunteers to take them to class every day. And with this issue having such drastic impacts on children's futures, it's critical that more people realize the severity and prevalence of the crisis. And looking ahead, I think it'll be interesting to see what happens with the Federal McKinney-Vento Program and whether the Trump administration, the changes that they'll be implementing will have any large impact on it, as a lot of people anticipate.
Dana Taylor:
Christopher Cann is a USA TODAY breaking news reporter. Thank you so much for being on The Excerpt.
Christopher Cann:
Thank you.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our senior producer, Kaely Monahan for her production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts at usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. I'll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY's The Excerpt.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: America's growing number of homeless students | The Excerpt
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