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INTRODUCTION
New York City’s youth in crisis population consists of homeless and
runaway youth and youth involved in street culture and its informal
economy. In 2002, the New York City Association of Homeless and
Street-Involved Youth Organizations (“The Association”) developed a
State of the City Report as a strategic part of its agenda to provide
information about homeless and street-involved youth and the services
available to them. In addition to their monthly meetings, forums and a
public vigil, the Association has become a think tank informed by
clinical practice. The Association has developed the 2003 State of the
City Report to highlight the past year’s state of clinical, social and
population-specific issues affecting the homeless and street-involved
youth living in New York City.
Because the Association maintains a consensus-based, non-hierarchical
structure, members felt that it was important to share as much
information with its participants as possible. After generating a core
list of current topics of concern, Association members were sought to
write a review of each new issue. Writers defined the issue of
concern, its current state, noted the current availability of
services, explain gaps in those services and offered specific
recommendations. Unfortunately, without change, this report will
continue to grow as new issues add to the unmet recommendations of
previous issues.
The Association is a cooperative body of homeless youth service
providers. This report is not to function as a sounding board for the
hard work being done by the individual agency represented by a topic’s
author. This document is not an agency-specific resource guide, rather
a policy guide to offer insight to individuals, public agencies,
funders and lawmakers about the state of homeless youth living on the
streets of New York City. In reading this document, you will notice
that the estimates for total numbers of homeless youth vary in many
chapters. Though we have tried to be specific, the number fluctuates,
as do the existence of programs and their funding. The reality is that
no hard and fast data gathering tool has been used to match the
mobility of homeless youth. We hope, however, that the interest in the
exact number does not distract policy makers and funders from the fact
that there are a great number of youth that we do know about who are
underserved and deserve to be counted.
This is an organic document and will continue to grow and develop as
issues of concern arise. Homeless youth providers learn through their
work not to “own” the problems of the young people they serve, but to
patiently help them to identify and address their issues. Good
practitioners learn it, some do not. Young people need to control the
vehicle of their lives; they steer, speed up, signal turns and
sometimes wipe out. As service providers, we travel with the young
person through their experiences; simply reading from their map…this
document is the map New York City offers them to work with.
James Bolas, Editor
Empire State Coalition of Youth and Family Services
Emergency Housing,
p.9, est.: 20,000-30,000; Job Readiness, p.28, est.: over
20,000; Legal Issues,
p.32, est.: over 20,000; Street Outreach, p.54, , est.: 32,000;
Transitional Living Programs, p.61, est.:20,000-40,000.
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