Youth homelessness in Northwest Michigan has dropped by almost 50% from last year – even while rates among adults remained steady.
Data from Northwest Coalition to End Homelessness (NCEH) showed that last May, 27 youth (18-24) were homeless in the region. This May, that number dropped to 13.
NCEH director Ashley Halladay-Schmant said the decline started back in 2017, when northwest Michigan was one of ten communities to participate in a Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program.
That program created an advisory board, rental assistance housing program, and a street outreach team — all just for youth.
“Every year since, we’ve seen dramatic decreases in the number of youth experiencing homelessness,” said Halladay-Schmant.
The strength of these programs, she said, is that the funding they receive could only be spent on youth.
“What we've seen is, when the federal government funds programs to the rate that they need to be funded at, we can actually do this,” said Halladay-Schmandt. “We can actually end homelessness for these populations.”
While noting the success, Halladay-Schmandt said root causes, like a lack of affordable housing, will still drive many more people to become homeless if not addressed.
On the national level, homelessness rates are recovering from an aggressive spike in which the number of homeless individuals jumped from 586,000 in 2022 to 745,000 last year.
In the release of the 2025 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report, HUD Secretary Scott Turner said, “The data is clear that the status quo of ‘housing first’ has failed to meaningfully reduce homelessness, resulting in crisis levels of people living on the streets.”
Housing first models, which was HUD’s dominant policy and funding standard since 2013, prioritize finding permanent housing as the first step in addressing homelessness.
Now, HUD is signaling a new direction under the Trump administration.
Last year, President Trump issued Executive Order 14321, titled "Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets", which instructed HUD and the Department of Health and Human Services to withdraw support for housing first policies and instead focus on homelessness services tied to mental health or substance abuse treatment.
That order was later followed by HUD’s attempt to shift billions in grant funding away from Housing First models and toward transitional housing and treatment-based programs.
A federal judge struck down that change yesterday, but more changes could happen in 2026.
Nationally, homelessness rates among youth and children have remained relatively unchanged since 2017, but there has been a consistent decrease in the number of homeless veterans in the same time.
Since 2009, the number of homeless veterans has dropped from 73,000 to 32,000 last year.
