An effort to further reduce the number of youth and young adults living on the streets of King County is underway.
The End Youth Homelessness Now campaign, a regional effort by All Home, Seattle, and King County has a goal of ensuring every "young person" in the county has "safe and stable housing."
“We got to end it,” Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said during a news conference Tuesday. “We owe it to our children, but we owe it to ourselves and our future.”
The campaign says a Functional Zero Action Team works to make sure homeless youth are housed in 30 days or less as well as prevent youth from becoming homeless in the first place.
The most recent one-night count found 11,199 people experiencing homelessness in the county. It represents an overall decrease of 8 percent compared to the 2018 count which found 12,112 people experiencing homelessness.
All Home says there were decreases across all sub-populations, including families, veterans, and youth and young adults. According to the one-night count, an estimated 1,089 homeless individuals were unaccompanied youth or young adults - ages 18 to 24. A total of 82 homeless individuals were under 18, and 1,007 were 18 to 24.