On Tuesday morning, Mayor Ed Gainey, County Executive Sara Innamorato, and Congresswoman Summer Lee stood silently with more than 100 people in front of the City-County Building for three minutes and 50 seconds — representing the almost 3,500 students who are currently homeless across Allegheny County.
The symbolic gesture was part of the Homeless Children’s Education Fund’s annual Stand Up Rally, at which nonprofit, city, county and state officials gathered to discuss the need to better aid homeless children.
Homeless Children’s Education Fund CEO AJ Jefferson said that a state report showed the number of Allegheny County children experiencing some form of homelessness jumped by 12% in the 2022-2023 school year.
There were 3,500 homeless students in Allegheny County that year — up from more than 3,100 the year before. Statewide, the number jumped from a little over 40,000 students to nearly 47,000 in the same period.
Economic conditions, including inflation and inadequate wages, have exacerbated the problem, Jefferson said: 70% of the homeless students helped by the Fund experiencing economic challenges. The child poverty rate in the city of Pittsburgh also rose — from 26.8% in 2022 to 30.5% in 2023, according to the most recent data from the American Community Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau.
For struggling families with kids, “It's a pure dollars-and-cents challenge: They're not making enough money to cover the housing costs,” Jefferson said. “They're not making enough money to cover food and clothing and transportation.”
Homelessness among children doesn’t always look like sleeping on the street, she emphasized. It can involve couch-surfing or bouncing between locations frequently, or living in inadequate situations, like a car or a unit without plumbing.
Innamorato, who herself experienced homelessness when she was younger, said homeless youth often need varied types of support. But all of them, she added, benefit from the presence of compassionate adults.
“Sometimes it’s affordable housing, it's academic support, it’s mental health services. It's an adult who cares enough to help them connect to those resources,” she said. “All of their situations are different. But their right to succeed is not.”
She described the collaboration needed to address youth homelessness as a “team sport.”
The fight is “bigger than the classroom,” Lee added.
“Our schools are working with what they’ve got, and what they've got just isn't enough,” she said. “These kids need more than what the current system provides. They need us, Western Pennsylvania, to step up and say, ‘We care about you and we want you to live a healthy and thriving life.’”
Jefferson praised Gainey's $8.3 million plan to address homelessness in Pittsburgh, which City Council approved earlier this year. The plan set aside money for affordable rental housing for people experiencing homelessness or domestic violence, as well as for nonprofits seeking to acquire private units that could include dorm-style buildings.
She described the plan, along with the county-level "500 in 500" program, as a first step, but said there is still more to accomplish. The next level would be to expand the network of services to include agencies and organizations that help families beyond an immediate emergency.
“How are we helping these families become stable, productive, become productive?” she said. “That's where they don't fall back into the cycle of homelessness, because we've undergirded them with services and support to make them successful.”
Gainey emphasized the need to collaborate with federal, private and corporate partners, and highlighted his own efforts to push developers to incorporate affordable housing units into their plans.
“This is something that we have to take on all levels of government. Because the problem didn't get smaller, the problem got bigger,” he said. “Our priority should be: What are we doing to ensure that the least of us, our youth, are growing up in a stable environment, to where they see a future, and don’t worry about where they’re going to lay their head tomorrow?”
Jefferson said the Fund is advocating for a $5 million funding stream, known as the Statewide Education for Children and Youth Experiencing Homelessness Program, to be placed in next year’s state budget specifically to help homeless children.
“It’s not a lot of money per child, but it's needed resources,” she said. “Once we get that in the state budget, then that gives us an opportunity to go back and hopefully increase those dollars.”
