Youth homelessness is a complex and multifaceted issue, one that can’t always be explained by socioeconomic trends or simply blamed on poverty. And the numbers are unfortunately rising: According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the number of young people experiencing homelessness in Nevada increased by 14% from 2022 to 2023.
With the state facing the most extreme shortage of affordable housing in the nation, homelessness risk factors are only accelerating. Based on her own experiences, Nariya Gregory has some ideas about it, and they go much deeper than statistics.
“I think it’s mostly because of mental health. People have been struggling with their families and sometimes dealing with schools not understanding what they’re going through,” says the 20-year-old consultant and advocate, who first experienced homelessness at the age of 12 with her family. “Sometimes people end up on the streets because their family is sabotaging them or putting them through a mental crisis. It may cause you to run away or sometimes to give up on yourself.”
Gregory did not give up, even though she faced homelessness again as a teenager. She enrolled in the Independent Living Program through the local nonprofit Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth, lived with NPHY while graduating high school, bought a car, enrolled in college and started working full-time. Now she speaks about her experiences and works with NPHY and other organizations to help redevelop the systems and programs aiming to eradicate the problem.
At this month’s eighth annual Nevada Youth Homelessness Summit at Las Vegas City Hall, Gregory gave an address about self-love, helping to spread awareness that homelessness is “not just about not having somewhere to go, it’s about the mental state we’re in when we’re going through it,” she says.
“There’s a fear of being judged. A lot of young people including myself have dealt with this, people judging me before even trying to understand my story, and not being willing to help. It puts a young person in a mindset that no one cares and it makes them avoid getting the help they need.”
The summit, presented by NPHY in partnership with Las Vegas Sands and the UNLV Greenspun College of Urban Affairs, aims every year to go beyond just creating more exposure for a population frequently described as invisible or voiceless. NPHY CEO Arash Ghafoori says the summit’s information-filled morning and action-taking breakout sessions in the afternoon are curated in the same strategic way the organization approaches the issue of youth homelessness.
“You have to approach it in a bookend way, so you have those high-quality services on the ground, programs that impact one youth at a time, and on the other end is systems-level advocacy,” Ghafoori says. “Those impacts we can achieve through events like the summit that can allow us to bring more funding to the community, and to pass laws that affect all young people in all corners of our state.”
As it did to most community conditions, the COVID pandemic exacerbated the complexities of youth homelessness in Southern Nevada. Ghafoori says the aftermath of the pandemic brought to light the mental health issues young people experience in homelessness, and also exposed the limited resources available in the community dedicated to this specific issue.
But he also explains how the local community is dedicating more attention and resources than ever before to build programs and infrastructure to battle youth homelessness. “We’re also getting better at seeing it and identifying it, and not just treating it as an afterthought. There’s been a shift in the local and federal government to put more attention toward it, because if we don’t solve this issue, not only will we have these young people who are not getting their shot, but then they’ll transition into chronic adult homelessness that has a generational negative impact,” Ghafoori says.
Southern Nevada government and organizations recently received an unprecedented amount of funding in more than $9 million from two federal grants. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded over $8.5 million to Clark County and the Southern Nevada Homelessness Continuum of Care, funds that will be dedicated to supporting young people facing housing insecurity. And NPHY was awarded an $800,000 federal grant to lead a project to grow the leadership capacity of young people experiencing homelessness—creating youth boards across the state with individuals like Gregory sharing their unique perspectives—and to create the first-ever statewide Nevada Plan to End Youth Homelessness.
Those investments will put a lot of power behind thoughtful programming devised by boots-on-the-ground organizations like NPHY.
“Nariya developed a youth-designed and youth-led focus group … and she really brought up important concerns about quality of care, not just the existence of care,” Ghafoori says of Gregory. “Something we’ve committed to do is create standards of excellence, just like when you go to the doctor and there are standards you expect that they’re trained on and held accountable to.
“Food and shelter are just the tip of the iceberg that’s needed, just to get [homeless youth] out of survival mode. These [grants] will put a significant dent in what we need to create infrastructure and programs to reach that level of quality of care. And it’s pretty cool the federal government is recognizing programs alone can’t solve this issue, there needs to be complete system coordination—and dare I say redesign—coupled with this investment. We really need to have a north star and common definitions of how to solve this issue.”
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