With Pandemic-Era Funding Running Out, Schools Are Scrambling to Support Homeless Children as They Face an Uncertain Future
The American Rescue Plan-Homeless Children and Youth, or ARP-HCY, is ending. The pandemic-era relief program provided $800 million split between schools nationwide to fund programs for homeless children and their families through the school system. This allowed schools to identify and offer customized relief to homeless students who often find themselves ineligible for other services.
Funds from the program were required to be allocated by the end of September and used by the end of January. Schools that apply for extra time to use their leftover funds can extend this deadline, but no additional funding will be provided.
What Does ARP-HCY Do?
ARP-HCY funding is designed to help get and keep homeless students in school. Different schools are moving toward this goal in different ways. Funds from the program have been used to start or continue myriad programs in different schools nationwide. Crucially, they also allow time to identify and understand the needs of many unhoused or precariously housed students who may have fallen through the cracks with a more rushed, superficial survey.
The flexibility of the ARP-HCY funding allows people to get creative and respond to their unique needs within their communities. Some programs made possible by ARP-HCY provide motel vouchers for unhoused families, case management for rural families without access to other resource centers, transportation assistance, food, clothing, hygiene necessities, school supplies, and liaisons to manage these services. ARP-HCY gives a wide leeway into what services can be offered, as long as they’re for the primary benefit of homeless students.
Existing Programs Fall Short
Before the ARP-HCY was enacted, a handful of other federal programs ensured that homeless children had access to public school education.
The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act ensures that all children, whether homeless or housed, have equal access to free and appropriate public education. It is the largest federal program designed for homeless youth. However, it still only disperses about $129 million nationwide—a fraction of the size of the one-time ARP-HCY funding but delivered consistently for decades.
Many states have programs focused on helping homeless youth, varying in size and budget from infinitesimal to impressive. But still, the need outpaces the support.
Unfortunately, these programs are already underfunded and unable to reach all the people who could benefit from them. The fact is that homeless children don’t have the same access to education as housed children do. Oftentimes, teachers and school administrators feel like their hands are tied and budgets empty when it comes to changing that. And as the rates of childhood homelessness continue to rise, we need more funding for programs like these, not less.
Future Funding is Fickle
These programs designed to meet the unique needs of homeless students and their families are constantly in flux due to the lack of dedicated funding. Getting enough funding to continue existing programs or meet a new need is like large-scale panhandling. A patchwork of different grants, federal funding, state funding, and donations often supports them. This process can be stressful for program leaders and wastes a lot of time and energy that could be spent more fruitfully if permanent funding was secured.
Unfortunately, the need for these programs isn’t going away any time soon. With housing price increases continuing to outpace income and natural disasters destroying entire towns and neighborhoods in one fell swoop, programs for unhoused children should definitely be a line item included on the budget until further notice.
For Homeless Students, the Vicious Cycle Starts Early
As much as we’ve all become collectively disillusioned with the idea that a college degree is the golden ticket to happiness and prosperity, it is undeniable that not having a high school diploma or equivalent makes supporting yourself much more challenging. Without a high school education, jobs of any kind are difficult to come by, let alone jobs that pay enough to allow someone to save up enough to exit homelessness and stay in stable housing.
A basic education is the foundational building block that can set someone’s trajectory in motion for the rest of their life. Too often, we are letting our young homeless neighbors slip through the safety net unnoticed, never getting the opportunity to lay that foundation. Without that block in place, every other hurdle life throws at these kids becomes harder to clear.
They’ve already been dealt a difficult hand in facing the traumas of homelessness so early in life. Without support to overcome the unique barriers keeping homeless youth out of school, those disadvantages can continue to compound and compound. They’ll be much harder to overcome later in life if that even proves possible.
How Deep Does Our Hatred of Homeless People Go?
The idea of homeless children often induces cognitive dissonance in people’s minds. If they believe the propaganda that homeless people are only homeless because of some personal moral failing of theirs, but also believe that children are innocent and worth protecting, where does that leave them?
How we decide to provide for homeless children is a real test of how deep our cultural hatred of homeless people goes. Will we land uncritically on the side of “homeless people are bad, and if kids are homeless, then they must have done something bad too!” Will we see the existence of homeless children as an invitation to look deeper and come to terms with how homeless adults can also be victims of circumstance?
We’ll likely each land somewhere in the middle, but I hope that the culture as a whole shifts toward compassion enough that our collective will push our representatives to reinvest in homeless students.
