Jurisdiction-specific youth homelessness data, as well as data about housing costs, is provided to contextualize a state/territory’s overall score. Eventually, we’d like to weigh state scores with data about rates of youth homelessness. But at this point, the available youth homelessness data is too unreliable to do this accurately. For example, data about the number of homeless young people under 18 and ages 18-24 is available from the Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) but this data is based on the annual Point In Time count, which is widely understood to be an undercount (especially for youth and young adults). Data about unhoused students in schools is also unreliable – reporting from the Center for Public Integrity and this study indicates that schools in many states are failing to fully identify homeless students.

As such, some jurisdictions with higher Index scores may also have higher rates of youth homelessness. Some are seeing progress in reducing youth homelessness over time and many jurisdictions with high rates of homelessness are also dealing with the highest housing costs in the country. Some of the higher-scoring jurisdictions with high rates of homelessness are better at identifying homeless youth because of state law and policy that requires them to accurately track the scope of the issue and/or because of youth homelessness infrastructure where it is easier to find and count unhoused young people.

Similarly, some jurisdictions with lower Index scores may also have lower rates of youth homelessness. Unfortunately, these lower rates might not be the result of good youth homelessness policy. Some of these states are seeing recent increases in youth homelessness, despite having low housing costs – a predictable outcome when there is anti-trans legislation targeting young people at risk of homelessness with brutal violence. And in some of these states, there may be unhoused young people in rural or suburban areas completely missed by PIT counts and who aren’t identified in school.