Commemoration of National Youth Homelessness Outreach, Prevention, and Education (HOPE) Month

Today, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra issued the following statement to mark the start of National Youth Homelessness Outreach, Prevention and Education (HOPE) Month:

Every person in this country deserves a safe place to call home – especially young and vulnerable youth. Stable housing is essential to health and well-being.

November is National Youth Homelessness Outreach, Prevention and Education (HOPE) Month – an opportunity to acknowledge and embrace the challenges associated with youth homelessness and double down on our commitment to help those facing challenges.

In 1974, the landmark Runaway and Homeless Youth Act (RHYA) authorized community-based projects to provide critical services such as emergency shelter, counseling, and after-care supports to youth experiencing homelessness. Prior to the legislation, youth experiencing homelessness were often placed in juvenile detention centers as their only option for shelter.

I have the privilege of chairing the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. In September, USICH formally adopted and released Ending Homelessness Before It Starts: A Federal Homelessness Prevention Framework, which seeks to help governments, nonprofits, and emergency services develop cross-system approaches and best practices to obtain and make the best use of available resources. Our goal is to ensure that everyone has access to stable housing and essential services, enabling them to thrive and reach their full potential.

Preventing and ending homelessness requires a collective effort to understand and address its root causes such as housing affordability. We must also channel our efforts to address the health and social needs, including behavioral health, of many who are unhoused. I’m proud to be part of an Administration so deeply committed to ending youth homelessness and making it easier to access resources needed to change lives. We have more to do, but we are making progress. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, we have provided vouchers to more than 100,000 additional families, the biggest increase in 20 years, and states are now better able to use Medicaid to provide clinically appropriate services such as housing transition services and case management support to people experiencing homelessness. We are also doing everything we can to build more housing and lower housing costs; under this Administration, housing units under construction hit a 50-year high.

This month, join me in congratulating RHY and its grantees on 50 years of service to ensure the experience of youth homelessness is rare, brief, and nonrecurring.