Address Oregon's Youth Houselessness Crisis

Oregon currently faces a youth houselessness crisis with some daunting statistics:

In the top five states with the highest number of unaccompanied youth houselessness in the U.S.
8,278 youth in need of safe housing in Oregon
Youth experiencing houselessness are disproportionately African American, Indigenous, and LGBTQIA+
The high school graduation rate for Oregon's houseless youth is just 55%.

HB 2001 would provide youth with the following:

Increased access to existing shelter and support services such as mental health/substance use services, culturally specific services,street outreach, and other transitional housing options;
Increased access to existing host home ...

Oregon currently faces a youth houselessness crisis with some daunting statistics:

In the top five states with the highest number of unaccompanied youth houselessness in the U.S.
8,278 youth in need of safe housing in Oregon
Youth experiencing houselessness are disproportionately African American, Indigenous, and LGBTQIA+
The high school graduation rate for Oregon's houseless youth is just 55%.

HB 2001 would provide youth with the following:

Increased access to existing shelter and support services such as mental health/substance use services, culturally specific services,street outreach, and other transitional housing options;
Increased access to existing host home programs, like EMO's Second Home program, that provides UHY with stable housing and empowers them to graduate from high school; and
Emergency funds to prevent evictions and rapidly rehouse school-aged youth and families.

Contact your legislators today and call upon them to stand with Oregon's houseless youth by passing HB 2001 and fully funding the youth experiencing homelessness provision at $25 million dollars!

+

image of Address Oregon's Youth Houselessness Crisis

Email Your Legislators Today!

Contact your legislators TODAY and tell them to stand with Oregon's houseless youth during the COVID-19 pandemic!

Find your local rep

Compose your email

Subject:

As a constituent, I urge you to support Oregon's unaccompanied houseless youth (UHY) by ensuring that that Legislature brings back and passes HB 4039 in the potential July 2020 special session.

Oregon already faced a youth houselessness crisis even before the pandemic. Our state is tied for the highest rate of houseless youth, and 1 in 6 of these youth are unaccompanied by a parent or guardian. These UHY resemble our foster youth in that they are disproportionately survivors of physical and sexual abuse (up to 50% nationally), LGBTQIA+ youth (up to 40%), and former foster care youth (33%).

Additionally, combatting youth houselessness represents a key opportunity to bolster Oregon’s ongoing efforts to redress racial injustices. Racism touches every facet of American life—including the housing market—and impacts our children’s lives even before they are even born. As a result, 34% of UHY in the United States are Black and 51% are youth of color.

Years of underinvestment now imperil the wellbeing of UHY during this health crisis. Despite our youth houselessness crisis, Oregon state has yet to make a substantial investment in UHY. In the 2019-21 biennium, Oregon will invest only $2.5 million in UHY services while our neighbors in Washington invest $33 million, a per-youth investment 8 times higher than Oregon's.

I urge the Legislature to fund the service provider components in HB 4039 at the $2.8 million investment level. This level of funding will provide over 750 youth with access to youth shelters and the housing, meals and access to high school education made possible by Oregon’s host home organizations. These provisions passed unanimously out of both the House Human Services & Housing Committee and the Joint Ways & Means Committee during the 2020 session and will provide:
- $1.4 million to enhance Oregon’s existing networks of host home housing programs that match UHY with volunteer home providers, ensuring they have stable housing, regular access to food, and a supportive family with whom they can self-isolate.
- $1.4 million for shelter services, such as emergency housing, street outreach, culturally specific services, mental health & substance use services, and transitional housing options.

In the 2020 session, HB 4039 unanimously passed out of the House Human Services & Housing Committee and the Joint Ways & Means Committee but did not receive a floor vote in either chamber.

Investing in UHY will not only benefit Oregon’s public health but also its fiscal health amidst an unprecedented revenue shortfall. A large number of UHY go on to lifetimes of houselessness, becoming many of the 50% of chronically houseless American adults who first experience houselessness as youth. By averting the costs of lifelong houselessness, Oregon’s investments in UHY services generate a 400% return on investment.

Passing HB 4039 will help address today’s youth houselessness and public health crises while preventing tomorrow’s adult houselessness and budget crises. Now more than ever, I call upon you and your colleagues in the Legislature to stand with unhoused youth.

How we use the data you enter on this form

Do Gooder (the advocacy platform powering this online action) processes personal information from you that you enter on this form so that we can provide the functions and related services to you and The Campaigner (the organisation responsible for this online action) for their legitimate purposes, including possibly exporting it to other systems, and to effectively respond to enquiries and communications related to those services.

Specifically when you enter:

Your location data (residential address or postcode) it is used to locate your elected representative, to pre-populate your email signature and to provide The Campaigner with a visualisation of the location of the support for this campaign.
All other data you may enter, including your email address, name, telephone number, commentary and so on is used by The Campaigner to advocate for the campaign’s goals and where required may be sent to the target of the campaign.

The data collected by Do Gooder is also used by us in aggregate form to improve the service and may be held on your behalf outside your country of residence by our third party service providers. These providers are bound by contract to only use personal information on our behalf, in accordance with agreed terms. While the privacy laws of the country in which personal information is stored or transferred may be different from those in your country, we will always have safeguards in place when storing or transferring personal information. We will never sell, rent, loan or in any other way pass your information on to other parties other than to provide this service to you and The Campaigner.

The personal information collected by Do Gooder is held subject to a Data Processing Agreement between Do Gooder and The Campaigner in compliance with the EU's GDPR and Australian law.

Learn more about our privacy policy here

How is my data used?