LYNN – On Monday, young people told the story of youth homelessness in their own words.
Marylou Sudders, the state’s secretary of health and human services, visited Lynn Housing Authority & Neighborhood Development to meet with these young people and to launch a statewide awareness campaign, “Path to Help,” directected at youth at risk of housing instability and homelessness.
Symbolically, the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) has launched this first-in-the-nation statewide youth homelessness awareness campaign during the month of November, which is recognized as Youth Homelessness Awareness Month.
The campaign is aimed at connecting young people to a single place where they can find state-funded resources and programs that provide emergency housing as well as mental-health and substance-use help across the commonwealth.
The campaign is aimed at both prevention of homelessness and crisis intervention. Currently, about 3,800 unaccompanied youth and young adults of 18-24 years old experience homelessness in Massachusetts every year. One third of them are couch surfing at the average age of 17, and 18 percent are sex workers.
The EOHHS has chosen Lynn Housing Authority & Neighborhood Development (LHAND) to hold the campaign launch event because of the organization’s work with youth homelessness.
“Folks at LHAND and in Lynn have done such an amazing job over the last years of really creating a coordinated community response to youth homelessness,” said Ayala Livny, senior consultant at Interagency Council on Housing and Homelessness at EOHHS .
During the event, Sudders shared her own experience with youth homelessness and moderated a panel discussion with six young adults with lived experience of homelessness.
At the age of 17, Sudders lived in her neighbor’s living room and hid in the dorms while attending Boston University and had no place to go during several Thanksgivings, she said.
“I have never forgotten how scared I was that some authority figure would figure out what was really going on,” said Sudders.
Her experience led to a commitment to help people find pathways, Sudders said.
The panel talked about how youth homelessness hides in plain sight. The panelists said that sometimes people assume that everyone else has a place to be; that a well-dressed young adult can be experiencing homelessness, because there is no certain “look” to it; that youth become homeless because they are not accepted at home, have no parental support or they might be abused in their household.
“Can you imagine waking up into this world not knowing anything, and then you just don’t know anything for the rest of your life because you are just so scared and you are wondering where am I going to sleep, what am I going to eat, whom am I going to be with, where do I go?” said Deandre Avant, one of the panelists.
What people usually don’t understand is that youth experiencing homelessness really need guidance and support, said the panelists, that having a shelter doesn’t make it a home if you are being harassed there; that you can’t get a job without an address ― but you can’t get a place to live without a job; that a lot of programs and shelters are not catered to youth and they get mixed with 30-to-40-year-old adults who talk down on them, bully them, or sexually harass them.
Young adults might not seek help because of shame, lack of information about available resources, or absence of proof of homelessness. But panelists encouraged youth to ask for help and advocate for themselves.
“Be aggressive. Say you need help. Because if you don’t, you will be stuck in a place you don’t want to be,” said Alicia LaPorta, who represented Essex County on the panel.
“You don’t need to reach the rock bottom to ask for help,” said Catherine Canavan-Dysthe, Essex Youth Action Board member and Moving to College scholar.
After the panel, Merlinda Marseille-Philippe, lead coordinator with the North Shore Housing Action Group at LHAND, spoke about her division’s work in providing support for young adults experiencing housing insecurity and homelessness in Essex County. This year, NSHAG implemented a new hub model using four service providers (Younity in Gloucester, YouForward in Lawrence, the Haven Project in Lynn and the North Shore CDC in Salem) to build a community support network for their clients.
“Every day, every evening, every weekend and holiday we get these different calls, we hear these different stories. We do our best to connect them with resources, services and shelter, letting them know that they don’t have to figure it all out all by themselves,” said Marseille-Philippe. “This work is really hard. It could be exhausting. It could be draining. It could be humbling. It could be beautiful and rewarding at the same very time.”
The “Path to Help” campaign will utilize posters and ads at transportation hubs and online. If you are looking for help and resources for yourself, a friend or a student, please, visit mass.gov/pathtohelp or call 211.