National Network for Youth

National Network for Youth envisions a world where all young people have a safe place to call home with endless opportunities to reach their full potential. We are the nation’s leading network of youth, advocates, and community-based service providers dedicated to preventing and ending youth and young adult homelessness.

NN4Y centers youth with lived experience to transform systems through strengthening the capacity of communities to transform systems, increase access to community-based services, educating the public and policymakers, and advocating for policy reform.

To address youth and young adult homelessness, we must begin to and robustly focus on preventing all forms of
homelessness young people experience. These prevention efforts should be directed at:

1.the systems that are the biggest drivers of homelessness for youth;
2.the systems that see and serve youth at-risk of experiencing homelessness;
3.and the community-based service providers that youth and their families seek help and assistance from.

You will never end homelessness for all ages and stages without a significantly increased focus on homelessness among young people. The National Network for Youth fights to advance prevention and response strategies to combat all forms of homelessness that youth and young adults (YYA) experience.

YYAs experiencing homelessness have unique needs. Rather than addressing YYA homelessness as a sub-bullet in our national response with a primary focus on housing, we propose a holistic and whole-person approach. When the government endorses a comprehensive approach to preventing and ending youth and young adult homelessness, this empowers our states and community partners to improve their response and help ensure that our youth and young adults thrive and meet their full potential.

NN4Y works with our partners to advocate for policies to reform systems that put young people in vulnerable situations and strengthen communities' capacity to effectively prevent and respond to youth homelessness and human trafficking-- focusing on BIPOC and LGBTQ+ youth taking a cross-system approach that includes education, child welfare, employment, housing, and juvenile justice system reform.

We work closely with both federal agency staff and Members of U.S. Congress to advocate for national policies that work for young people. We leverage the relationships of our network to influence these policymakers.

Through our network, we encourage service providers and systems to leverage diverse resources and implement best practices for young people, even before they are required to do so by law.

We provide systems and community-level practice information about how rural, suburban, and urban communities can actively work to prevent and effectively respond to youth and young adult homelessness.

Through public presentations and social media, we educate the public and policymakers about the issue of youth and young adult homelessness in America and what actions they can take to decrease the number of young people who experience homelessness.

NN4Y has been doing this work for over 40 years and is the leading voice on youth and young adult homelessness in the United States.

NN4Y's work is informed by data, research, and a national network of over 300 human services providers with extensive frontline knowledge in addressing this issue. We engage and listen to the young people themselves, who know what it means to have no home and nowhere to turn.

Our robust network enables us to mobilize advocates — both youth and adults — quickly and at all levels to educate and engage policymakers. Together, our work results in positive, real-life systems change for thousands of youth across the country.

Informed by our connections to providers and young people, we have forged trusted relationships with policymakers who rely on our expertise to make sound choices for youth in the systems and programs they administer.

OUR COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION:

The Board unanimously approved a new three-year strategic plan, which makes a deep commitment to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion both internally and in the support we provide to our members. This is just the beginning. In the next three years, we will be rolling out robust training and research to inform system-level changes.

INVESTING IN AND STRENGTHENING THE WORK OF YOUTH PROVIDER AGENCIES:

Pivoted our work amidst the coronavirus pandemic to get information quickly to service providers, provide support to providers through weekly office hours, and supported our young leaders.

Successfully advocated for $25 million in CARES Act dollars to go to Runaway and Homeless Youth Act grantee agencies to help pay for the increased expenses in serving our young people amidst the pandemic.

We partnered with Baker McKenzie to create a guide for youth experiencing homelessness to access economic stimulus payment and tax resources for providers. Additionally, we advocated with Congress and the treasury to make it easier for youth experiencing homelessness to access these funds.

We wrote and submitted comments in opposition to proposed changes to HUD’s Equal Access Rule with our Policy Advisory Committee and National Youth Advisory Council.

We published and disseminated high-quality and responsive resource guides, fact sheets, and reports to educate and advise service providers, systems representatives, and policymakers.

In collaboration with SchoolHouse Connection and Family Promise, we co-hosted bipartisan congressional briefings about the coronavirus’s impact on youth and families experiencing homelessness.

We worked with our partners to draft and get the Emergency Family Stabilization Act introduced – a bipartisan bill
that would create a temporary emergency fund to serve children, youth, and families experiencing homelessness administered at the Administration on Children and Families at HHS.