{"id":324185,"date":"2026-08-18T17:54:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T17:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/324185\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T17:54:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T17:54:14","slug":"kids-living-without-parents-a-rising-problem-in-new-york-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/324185\/","title":{"rendered":"Kids living without parents a rising problem in New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

With family homelessness skyrocketing since 2022 in New York, so too is the number of teens, often homeless, left on their own \u2014 putting strain on school services, mental health resources and hospitals. \u00a0<\/p>\n

In Syracuse, about 10% of the district\u2019s students need services for temporary housing, said Janel Milana, director of student support services for the Syracuse City School District. But the number of students that need other services has grown as well.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cUnaccompanied youth is a growing concern in the city. We have seen it increase by over 9% in just a year span, and that\u2019s when a student not only loses housing but also loses guardianship,\u201d Milana said. \u201cThose stories are very different \u2014 from a student that feels unsafe and leaves home to a student that has lost their parent due to death [or] due to incarceration.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sometimes students are placed with other family members, and other times, they can go to a shelter. Through a federal program called the McKinney-Vento Act, a student can stay at the same school to help minimize disruptions to their routine. If students are within 50 miles of the district, SCSD will pick them up for school.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey maintain their educational experience through keeping the same teacher, their friends, having that consistency in their life that allows them to not add another element of anxiety or concern or change due to losing housing,\u201d Milana said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The exterior of the Booth House. (Spectrum News 1\/Emily Kenny)<\/p>\n

If a student gets permanent housing outside of the school district, but they were receiving McKinney-Vento services for the year prior to their transition to another building, they may come back to the city\u2019s school district.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they were a junior in high school and they were receiving McKinney-Vento services during the course of that school year, then they are allowed to come back for their senior year,\u201d Milana said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Onondaga County, the only shelter for unaccompanied kids between 12-17 is the Booth House in Syracuse, which has a capacity of 15 beds. Mithila Hasan, the director of the Booth House, said they are also seeing higher numbers.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a higher number of kids that are coming in that are truly homeless. However, the program at the Booth House is voluntary in nature, so kids have to want to come in,\u201d Hasan said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

A New York state comptroller report published in July, found that children make up a disproportionate share of the homeless population at 32% in the state, a rate that is double the rest of the country.<\/p>\n

Most kids stay there for about 30 days, Hasan said, but some stay longer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey get a case manager here to work on some of the circumstances that cause them to come here. We focus on education, employment, connecting them to positive people in their life, emotional and physical well-being and reunification,\u201d Hasan said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Hasan said they try to maintain normalcy for the kids living at Booth House including meals. (Spectrum News 1\/Emily Kenny)<\/p>\n

Marett Seymour is the program supervisor for case management at the Barnabas shelter in Syracuse, which is a facility that provides short-term housing for adults age 18-24.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve also seen an increase in street outreach of kids who are younger, who are unaccompanied,\u201d Seymour said. \u201cWe have a lot of youth whose families overall are homeless. There\u2019s nowhere for them to go, and they\u2019re living with an older sibling who has their own place, and you\u2019re overloading an environment that\u2019s already stretched.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Seymour and Hasan said an increase in violence among youth could also contribute to the problem as families that have been heavily impacted by violence get fed up.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t want the police at their house all the time. They don\u2019t want to deal with their kids who are getting put on probation or their violence is increasing, and they don\u2019t really know what to do with them because they\u2019re not listening at home,\u201d Seymour said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A bathroom inside the Booth House. (Spectrum News 1\/Emily Kenny)<\/p>\n

For children experiencing mental health crises, the only hospital Syracuse offers that can accommodate them is Upstate Golisano Children\u2019s Hospital.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

During a public hearing in May hosted by the Onondaga County Legislature, Christopher Lucas, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the hospital, said they have seen an increase of what they call \u201csocial admissions.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cChildren and teenagers abandoned by their guardians who feel unable to care for them any longer,\u201d Lucas said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2025, Lucas said there were over 60 children abandoned at the hospital because there was no appropriate place for them to go. He said there are three main factors that have led to this increase.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFirstly, there is a shortage of high-quality outpatient psychiatric services with parents often facing waitlists of up to a year. Secondly, there is a lack of intermediate-level services that can divert children from inpatient units or provide step-down following a psychiatric admission. Finally, and probably most importantly, there\u2019s a deficiency in the provision of residential facilities in the state that can provide longer-term treatment for children with chronic illness and behavioral problems,\u201d Lucas said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The exterior of Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital. (Spectrum News 1\/Emily Kenny)<\/p>\n

There are 10 state-funded residential treatment facilities in New York with three in Central New York, according to Justin Mason, a spokesperson for the state Office of Mental Health. Between the 10 facilities, there are 29 units, according to the department\u2019s website<\/a>, but it has also issued a request for proposals to expand residential treatment facilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOMH is committed to helping all children and their families access needed mental health treatment at all appropriate levels of care. Part of our approach to this issue is expanding community-based support, which helps families address these issues without having to seek hospitalization or residential treatment, which are both levels of inpatient care,\u201d Mason said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While there have been fewer beds available for residential treatment, Mason said there has been an increase in community-based support, which is meant to help keep children at home and receive mental health care.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While many factors contribute to the increased number of kids living without their guardians, no two stories are the same.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s all different types of scenarios that go into an unaccompanied youth, but that is a very important part of the story, one that is, to me, a growing concern in our city,\u201d Milana said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With family homelessness skyrocketing since 2022 in New York, so too is the number of teens, often homeless,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3478,288,257,8255,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,6317,200],"class_list":["post-324185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-app-local-business","tag-business","tag-central-ny","tag-emily-kenny","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-swarm","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}