One in 30 youths between the ages of 13 and 17 have experienced some form of homelessness over a 12-month period. That's a recent finding from a study out of the University of Chicago. The number translates to 700,000 adolescents nationally experiencing homelessness.
Locally, several organizations are working together to address the problem of youth homelessness in the region with a handbook of tools and resources. Enterprise Holdings, Legal Services of Eastern Missouri and Baker McKenzie all came together to work on the handbook.
Michael Andrew, senior vice president and general counsel for Enterprise Holdings, and Tori Dempsey, attorney at Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, joined KMOX to talk about the issue.
"A few years ago, a statistic had come out that in St. Louis City alone, 20% of the youth that live in our city experienced homelessness at some point during their adolescence, which is just an alarming number," Dempsey said. "Additionally, the most recent numbers that we have for 2020 show that there's been an increase in unaccompanied youth living in both St. Louis County and St. Louis City."
The increase in the city, she said, was 49%.
What leads to such high numbers in the area? Dempsey said it's an incredibly complicated situation, and that it's often different for each individual adolescent.
"A youth may be coming out to their caregiver, and they've been forced to leave the home because of that they've lost a parent. That is surprisingly, a very, very common issue why youth are experiencing homelessness and no longer have a parent to provide for them," Dempsey said. "We also have youth that are parenting, and when they become pregnant, they're also forced out of their home."
She added that other issues like abuse, neglect, or entire families experiencing homelessness can be a cause.
Dempsey and Andrew's respective legal firms decided to partner up to work on the issue after hearing those numbers.
"When you just hear about what these kids are having to go through, and the ability for us to take as attorneys, our kind of unique training and experience and create a resource that might help these children and help the services and the advocates that are trying to help them get through this," Andrew said. "Homelessness experience — for us it was a no brainer. It's aligned with the culture of our company. And part of what enterprise tries to do is make a difference in our local communities."
If you head to the website they've put together, you'll find a handbook of resources and information for homeless youth.
"What we want to do is make it a resource that the kids could access so they can get to it either through a computer or a phone or some other device," Andrew said. "We tried to put together a resource that a child or a young adult experiencing homeless could get to real practical advice to try to get them to the resources to work through whatever the legal issue was."
Hear more from Mike Andrew and Tori Dempsey on the handbook they've helped put together for homeless youth in St. Louis:
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