Resources

Publications

Basic Rights of Youth in Shelter (2024)

This Practice Guide seeks to educate advocates and attorneys about best practices for challenging and preventing termination of services for youth and young adults across several housing programs, including identifying funding sources, ensuring compliance with current guidelines regarding “safe and appropriate exits,”  and filing law suits when and if necessary.

Access to Mental Health Treatment: Legal Guide (2024)

Accessing effective mental health treatment is a challenge for adults with housing, income, and comprehensive health insurance; for a young person without these resources, the challenge can feel insurmountable. This guide is meant to outline the legal rights and public resources that do exist for unhoused youth and young adults, ranging from states that remove unnecessary barriers and improve access to states that greatly restrict or block needed care.

Access to Mental Health Treatment: Advocates Guide (2024)

This companion guide is a resource for advocates looking to improve the legal landscape for unhoused youth to access mental health treatment in their state. With state specific suggestions and summaries of relevant Youth Homelessness Index policy scores, it is our hope that this guide will not only inform but also inspire effective advocacy efforts across the country.  

Alone without a Home: A National Review of State Laws Affecting Unaccompanied Youth (2019)

This report provides a state-by-state review of laws in 13 key issue areas that affect the lives of unaccompanied youth experiencing homelessness. Topics include status offenses, emancipation statutes, health care access, consent and confidentiality statutes, and juvenile justice system statutes. It also offers an overview of the range of approaches taken by jurisdictions and the relative prevalence of these approaches and includes detailed indexes where advocates can find the relevant laws in their state or jurisdiction. Importantly, the report also provides recommendations for policy changes in each of the 13 issue areas, with a view towards strengthening the supports available to unaccompanied youth.