Elevate North Texas identifies three main reasons youths become homeless: the family doesn’t want them anymore, someone at home was hurting them, or their home simply doesn’t exist anymore. On top of that, homeless youths face a number of barriers when they are out on their own. For one, there’s not enough shelter beds for them. Across the country, there are only 4,117 shelter beds available for homeless youths, according to Elevate North Texas.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) defines youths as those between the ages of 18 and 24, but there are children younger than five years old who also become homeless.
After8toEducate serves homeless individuals between 14 and 21, Ara Grimaldo Saintus, the organization’s executive director, said. The group's drop-in center, the Fannie C. Harris Youth Center, is a place homeless youths can go for clothes, food and case management.
After8toEducate also has a shelter with 35 beds that’s run by another organization, Jonathan’s Place, which is licensed to serve people from newborn to 17 years old. People in that age range needing housing can go through the intake process with Jonathan’s Place to stay at the After8toEducate shelter. Only students enrolled in DISD can take advantage of the shelter space, but the drop-in center serves all youths 14 to 21 regardless of school district.
Some of the youths who use the drop-in center aren’t homeless, but they still need the resources that it provides.
A lot of the people After8toEducate serves are LGBTQ+ individuals who were kicked out their homes after coming out to their parents or legal guardians. “I would say 40% of the youth that we serve fall under that criteria,” Saintus said. Others might be getting out of jail, aging out of foster care or fleeing an abusive household with nowhere else to go.
“A lot of them are running away from abusive homes and are just tired of being abused so they end up at After8 at the drop-in site,” Saintus said.“In our community we really don’t know that we have homeless youth." – Ara Grimaldo Saintus, After8toEducate
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Homeless youths face different challenges from homeless adults. Many shelters won’t take them in because they’re still minors. Because they’re younger, they may lack identification and personal records required to get the help they need.
“It’s just really hard to navigate that space,” Saintus said. “When they’re 18, they’re technically adults but when we see them they’re still kids. They’re still youth. A lot of them have a lot of trauma, so going to an adult shelter seems scary.”
Youth homelessness is sometimes referred to as an invisible crisis, but Saintus said it’s happening in our backyards every day.
“In our community we really don’t know that we have homeless youth,” she said. “That’s what we keep hearing. Even the kids, they go unnoticed. Even if they’re homeless in high school, they’re not going to share that they’re homeless because there’s stigma that comes around with that. So, they’re not looking for help or a lot of times people don’t even recognize they’re homeless or they’re unhoused simply because they blend very well.”
Saintus couldn’t be too specific for privacy reasons, but she shared several success stories that have come out of After8toEdcuate.
One of the first people to go to the drop-in center was able to get his ID, enroll in a training program, get a job and move back to his home state of Michigan.
The organization has also helped with cross-country family reunification. Two sisters ended up downtown at the Greyhound bus station when their mom found out about After8toEducate and contacted the organization to help her daughters. The organization was able to use some of its funds to send the sisters back to their mother in Oregon.
Another homeless youth returned to Houston to her paternal grandparents with help from After8toEducate. The organization’s staff still keeps in touch with her. Today, she’s planning to go back to school to get her high school diploma and aspires to becoming a beautician. A 19-year-old youth would stay at a local shelter during the nights and go to the drop-in center during the day. Now, she has a home and a job at Wingstop and is attending barber school. She hopes to one day open her own barbershop.
Saintus shared another story about a youth who was sleeping in the woods a few weeks ago. The police found her in the woods and brought her to After8toEducate. She was a runaway who hadn’t been to school since the sixth grade. She’s 17 now and CPS couldn’t help, Saintus said.
“She was tired of living in the woods, so she was able to come here, take a shower, get a warm meal, get clothes, et cetera,” Saintus said. After working with a case manager, she was able to get into a transitional living program.
Saintus guesses about 80% of the youths After8toEducate serves have trauma from becoming homeless. That’s partly why the organization has a licensed master social worker who can help homeless youths through mental health issues. “We really look at it as a holistic approach,” Saintus said.
Elevate North Texas is focused on providing emergency housing to youths 18–24 through a couple of programs, Jason Vallejo, the organization's founder and executive director, said. One program provides a 30-day hotel stay for homeless youths. During their stay, the youth is provided with case management to connect them to the resources they need.
“We want to find out what piece of the jenga puzzle fell out that caused everything to come tumbling down,” Vallejo said. “We know that housing is just the first part and so we need to figure out what additional resources do they need to get back on their feet.”
Through case management, the organization tries to get youths connected to other housing options.
There's also a reunification and diversion program that aims to reunite homeless youths with family members or friends who can help provide housing. It also looks to prevent youth homelessness in the first place through diversion.
For example, some youths with apartments might get behind on rent and face eviction. In these situations, Elevate North Texas can mediate with the landlord to buy the youth more time to get caught up on rent. “In just about every situation, the renter is not just working one job but working two jobs and still having to decide ‘Do I eat or do I pay rent?,’” Vallejo said. “So, once the landlord hears that side of the story, so far 100% of the time they’ve always been on our side and worked out some type of payment plan.”
The organization’s first full year serving youths was 2022, when they served 135. In 2023, they served 206 people. Some 173 of them were either reunited with family or friends or diverted from homelessness all together.
There are two big groups that Elevate North Texas sees the most of. One is those aging out of foster care. “Three hundred youths age out here in North Texas every year, and at least half of those youths will end up incarcerated or experience homelessness within the first year of aging out of foster care,” Vallejo said. “That’s very staggering.”
The other group comes from the LGBTQ+ community. He said 40% of youths on the street identify as LGBTQ+, and over 70% of the people Elevate North Texas works with come from that community.“It’s just really heartbreaking.” – Jason Vallejo, Elevate North Texas
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“It’s just heartbreaking to know that that’s what we’re seeing,” he said.
The organization also works with many people coming from families who have recently lost their homes. “The families are saying ‘It’s everyone for themselves,’” Vallejo said.
There was one young man who came to the organization after his father was injured, leading to his losing his job, which resulted in the family losing their apartment. They were staying in their car for some time, but after getting into a wreck, “there was no place for them to stay anymore,” Vallejo said. “So, mom went into a women’s shelter, the dad went into an adult men’s shelter, the little sibling went into CPS and this youth had nowhere to go.”
Another substantial barrier for youths facing homelessness is the fact that there’s no central access point for them to obtain resources. “Our systems are failing our youth,” Vallejo said. “It’s just really heartbreaking.”
But help is on the way.
Dallas and Collin counties were awarded a $9.3-million HUD grant in September to address youth homelessness. Vallejo said the counties have been working for years to get this grant.
Housing Forward, the lead agency for the homeless response system for the two counties, will use the funding to create a youth resource center that will focus on reunification and diversion. It will also keep a real-time inventory of shelter bed availability and act as a central location where youths can be connected to the Homeless Response System’s Coordinated Access System to help them find a permanent home.
“We’re really excited about that,” Vallejo said. “It’s just going to take a lot of us coming together and pulling up our sleeves and getting to work and figuring out who’s playing what role in the whole thing.”
Not giving youth homelessness the attention it needs could have lasting consequences.
“If we don’t do something to address youth homelessness," Vallejo said, "today’s youth will become tomorrow’s chronically homeless.”
