Heroes Of The Homeless Crisis: How SchoolHouse Connection Is Helping People To Overcome Homelessness Through Education
The following is an excerpt from the “Heroes of the Homeless Crisis” Q&A with Barbara Duffield, Executive Director of SchoolHouse Connection. The Heroes of the Homeless Crisis series highlights leaders working at the frontlines of our national homelessness crisis. Here, Barbara discusses her experience specifically addressing child, youth, and family homelessness and touches on the difficult realities that many homeless youth and families face.
For the full piece, visit Authority Magazine’s Medium article here.
Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to ‘get to know you’ a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your personal background, and how you grew up?
I grew up in rural Michigan, the youngest (by seven minutes — I’m a twin) of four children. My parents were both raised in blue-collar families: my paternal grandfather worked in the steel mills of PA, my maternal grandfather was a butcher in a small village in OH, and neither of my grandmothers were allowed to finish high school. My parents were the first in their respective families to attend college, and my father ultimately became a children’s dentist. My parents worked incredibly hard to make sure that I had the opportunity to go to college. Coming from a rural community, I was enthralled to meet new people from different backgrounds at the University of Michigan in the late 1980s. It was there that the seeds of advocacy were planted and blossomed.
Is there a particular story or incident that inspired you to get involved in your work helping people who are homeless?
When I first moved to Washington DC, I interned at Foreign Policy Magazine (my interest was international affairs, at the time). A copy editor took me under her wing and introduced me to Project Northstar, an after-school tutoring program for children experiencing homelessness in the District of Columbia. Working one-on-one with children in Project Northstar was transformative. I saw their endless possibilities and potential — the same abilities and aspirations as any other child — but also the grueling deep generational poverty that threatened their futures. Seeing them struggle — but also seeing them succeed — inspired me to focus on education as a lasting pathway out of homelessness, one that transfers across generations. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to create and grow scholarship programs, and through them, I’ve been a part of many young people’s journey to self-realization through education. “It is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.” Brown v. Board of Education.
Homelessness has been a problem for a long time in the United States. But it seems that it has gotten a lot worse over the past five years, particularly in the large cities, such as Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, and San Francisco. Can you explain to our readers what brought us to this place? Where did this crisis come from?
In the big cities you mentioned, there has been a significant increase in visible homelessness — that is, homelessness principally among single adults living on the streets. But family, child, and youth homelessness is both longstanding and far less visible, because families with children and unaccompanied homeless youth are rarely visible on the streets or in encampments. Instead, most stay with other people temporarily because they have nowhere else to go, or in motels, or moving between many unstable situations. Family, child, and youth homelessness has never been only an urban problem, and it’s hardly a recent one. Nevertheless, it has gotten worse over the years. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, public schools identified and enrolled 1.5 million homeless children and youth, aged preK-12 — that’s the highest number on record. The U.S. Department of Education also estimates an additional 1.4 million children under age six are experiencing homelessness.
The causes of increases in homelessness are complex, and vary across regions. In some areas, the lack of affordable housing has gotten worse; in other areas, the opioid and methamphetamines crises have contributed. Deep poverty persists, particularly for young children. Domestic violence remains a leading causal factor for families, as does abuse and neglect, and the abject failure of the child welfare system for youth who are homeless on their own. Systemic racism, across all systems, has a pervasive impact on homelessness.
I’d also argue that the homelessness assistance system, such as it is, has contributed to increasing homelessness: the move to quick-fix, one-size-fits-all housing models; the defunding of services; and the de-prioritization and exclusion of most youth and families who experience homelessness from homeless services have contributed to entrenched homelessness. The bottom line is that we aren’t addressing the complex root causes, we aren’t supporting individualized and community-based solutions, and we aren’t prioritizing youth and families — we’re just trying to get the most visible people experiencing homelessness out of sight, without recognizing the steady stream into street homelessness, much of which begins in childhood.
To read more from Barbara and learn about the realities facing children, youth, and families experiencing homelessness, visit the full article on Authority Magazine here.
