Children should be worrying about nothing more than finishing their homework, making friends and finding someone to sit with at lunch, U.S. Rep. Summer Lee said Tuesday.
But more than 3,900 students throughout Allegheny County also are stressing about where they will sleep each night, according to the Swissvale Democrat.
She joined other elected officials and local activists on Tuesday on the portico of the City-County Building Downtown to call for more resources and legislative changes to support the thousands of students throughout the county who are homeless.
“Too many of those children are forced to struggle quietly,” Lee said.
Statewide, 52,347 students are homeless, according to data provided by the Homeless Children’s Education Fund. Of them, 1,156 attend Pittsburgh Public Schools.
Homelessness can impact students’ attendance, concentration and mental health, said Abigail Horn, director of the Office of Community Services at Allegheny County’s Department of Human Services.
AJ Jefferson, president and CEO of the Homeless Children’s Education Fund, said about 70% of homeless children are not living on the streets but are sleeping on other people’s couches, staying in motels or jumping from one relative’s home to the next.
“There’s no stability. You don’t know from night to night if you’re going to be allowed to stay in that home,” she said, explaining such situations leave kids in “fight or flight” all the time.
Advocates on Tuesday lined the stairs of the City-County Building on Grant Street with drawings representing homeless youth while officials read accounts from kids about the struggles of being homeless while striving to get an education.
One student’s account detailed the challenges of remote learning during the covid-19 pandemic and a violent altercation with her mother that forced her out of the home as a teenager.
Another, attributed to a 16-year-old named Tyler, described the “shame, sadness, fear” of being homeless and the desire to get an education to unlock better opportunities for his future.
During Homeless Children’s Awareness Month, officials urged people to advocate for resources and legislative changes that could help kids without stable housing.
Jefferson said a partnership between her organization, the Allegheny Intermediate Unit and Pittsburgh Public Schools is making more outreach workers available in schools to help connect kids with support services.
The Homeless Children’s Education Fund also is lobbying for state legislation that would waive fees for homeless kids looking to get driver’s licenses or other forms of identification, which often are required for employment opportunities.
The measure also would allow students who don’t have permanent addresses to use school or shelter addresses for such identifications and would permit teachers and social workers to sign necessary paperwork for kids to get the IDs.
Another measure the Homeless Children’s Education Fund is backing would provide $10 million in state funding for educational support for students experiencing homelessness.
“A children’s ZIP code should not determine whether they receive the support they deserve,” Jefferson said.
Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O’Connor and Lee advocated for more affordable and transitional housing. They pointed to an effort to convert unused offices Downtown into affordable housing as an example of such efforts underway.
O’Connor said other efforts to help homeless children include outreach from the city’s Office of Community Health and Safety to support people living on the streets and a recent expansion of the city’s Learn & Earn program, which connects kids with jobs.
“It takes all of us working together to solve this problem,” the mayor said.