From HUD’s Office of Policy Development & Research (PD&R):
In 2017, HUD awarded $33 million to 10 Continuums of Care (CoCs) in Round 1 of its Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program (YHDP) to develop and implement coordinated community approaches to preventing and ending homelessness of youth ages 14-24. Under contract to PD&R, Westat conducted a 4-year evaluation of this initial set of 10 YHDP sites. The evaluation employed a longitudinal, cross-site implementation evaluation that compared outcomes for the selected sites to outcomes of three non-YHDP comparison CoCs. The study seeks to understand three key areas: 1) the baseline status of the systems in place within each selected community that served targeted youth; 2) the changes to systems that improved access to housing and services for targeted youth over time; and 3) changes to how many youth were reached by local systems and their demographic composition. Through qualitative interviews with local stakeholders and youth serving on Youth Action Boards (YABs) , focus groups with youth experiencing homelessness, two waves of national CoC surveys, and analysis of Homelessness Management Information Systems (HMIS) data, the study found that the 10 YHDP sites studied were more intentionally designed to serve youth, increased coordination among community partners, and expanded youth-specific services when compared to the three non-YHDP sites.