Big Promises

The end of a recent campaign to end youth homelessness in Washington’s King County was unsuccessful and has yet to get started again. The End Youth Homelessness Now Campaign, supported by federal grants and $1.2 million dollars from philanthropists had a bold timeline of eliminating youth homelessness by 2021. The percentage of homeless youth housed in 2020 remained unchanged from before the campaign - 31%, making up only less than a thousand people. In King County, youth homelessness had been on the decline before the campaign launched. Since 2016, unaccompanied youth and young adults under 25 dropped from 14% of the entire population in the county homeless counts to 8% — fewer than 1,000 people — in January 2020. According to a draft version of an analysis obtained by The Seattle Times, youth homelessness could be solved with a $27.5 million infusion if the system continues operating as it has. But if the system’s performance were to be improved even modestly, the problem could be solved, the gap analysis said, with as little as $12.5 million. The funding for a campaign like this, though still under where it needs to be, can be met easily. Though a modified structure needs to be implemented, because King County has made sweeping promises about homelessness before. In 2005, local leaders launched the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness, and by 2015, local numbers were worse than had ever been counted. Sadly the director of this campaign left and has yet to be reestablished under a new face. Although the campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, there’s a silver lining that shows promise for a restructured second attempt, and that seems like it won’t be far off before we see a similarly focused campaign emerging.