To Be Young and Homeless:

“Because these children are not sleeping in parks or begging on subways, the fact of their homelessness is largely invisible — outside the context of a homeless shelter, they just look like children. And while I did meet families in New York who said they’d ridden subways overnight with their very young kids or slept outdoors with teenagers, these parents were taking a big risk — failing to provide adequate shelter for one’s children can result in having them removed from one’s care by the Administration for Children’s Services, New York City’s child welfare agency. Yet because we don’t see homeless kids asleep in our streets — and because the shelters and residences they shuttle in and out of tend to be in the city’s poorer neighborhoods — their plight has not provoked the outcry that the rise in homelessness did in the 1980’s. Nevertheless, these children make up 40 percent of the nation’s homeless population, and for the time they remain without homes, and for who knows how long after, homelessness is the defining fact of their lives.” New York Times Magazine