The Office of Homeless Youth (OHY) is charged with leading efforts to prevent youth homelessness. This hinges on moving further upstream through a targeted universalism framework, a cross-sectoral approach that prioritizes redesign efforts across health, education, employment, housing, homelessness services, financial systems, social services, child welfare, and the legal and carceral systems. By addressing structural factors and system inadequacies in these sectors, we can effectively prevent youth homelessness while also producing tangible, positive benefits for society at large—this is the heart of OHY’s vision for systems change.
Root causes
The 2021 Youth Homelessness Prevention Preliminary Strategic Plan (PDF) outlined the underlying reasons for youth and young adult homelessness, set a framework around prevention, identified gaps, and highlighted early recommendations and immediate next steps.
It found that Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), LGBTQ2+, and youth with intellectual or developmental disabilities experience housing instability disproportionately due to complex and interrelated structural, systemic, and individual or relational factors. Although individual and relational factors were the most highly cited contributors of homelessness, it’s important to note that structural factors and systemic gaps create the conditions that turn these risk elements into the actual loss of housing.
Strategic Plan
The state strategic plan on homelessness prevention, Shifting Services and Systems to Prevent Youth Housing Instability (PDF), was co-designed by a diverse group of young people with lived experience of homelessness or system involvement and caregivers who demographically represent the population most disproportionately impacted by housing instability in our state. This plan makes recommendations along four main pillars:
- Supporting whole family well-being
- Universal support for basic human rights
- Eliminating racism in systems and supporting youth and families impacted by them
- Shifting resources to Black, Indigenous and people of color communities
Prevention continuum
- Universal Prevention focuses on broad, population-wide measures to alleviate structural conditions that lead to youth homelessness, such as poverty, lack of affordable housing, and racism, in addition to education and identification strategies.
- Primary Prevention supports youth and families prior to system involvement, with an emphasis on preventing families from fracturing and keeping risk factors from turning into crises.
- Early Secondary Prevention is concerned with preventing initial system interaction (e.g., CPS, juvenile court, behavioral health crisis services) from leading to out-of-home placement (e.g., foster care, detention, inpatient behavioral health).
- Later Secondary Prevention strategies focus on preventing prolonged out-of-home placement (e.g., state dependency, incarceration, inpatient behavioral health) and housing instability upon exit.
- Tertiary Prevention strives to prevent exits from systems of care into homelessness and to ensure that, for those actively experiencing it, homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurring.
System involvement or “systems of care” are defined by RCW 43.330.720 as child welfare, inpatient behavioral health, juvenile justice (county and state) and programs administered by OHY. For a current housing status overview for this population, see DSHS Research and Data Analysis Division’s report, Homelessness Among Youth Exiting Systems of Care in Washington State (PDF).
OHY, Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), and the Health Care Authority (HCA) developed a webinar series with co-presenters from various partner agencies to dive deep into prevention efforts throughout the state.
- Part 1: Introduction webinar recording 4/9/24 (MP4) – webinar slides 4/9/24 (PDF)
- Part 2: Tertiary Prevention webinar recording 7/10/24 (MP4) – webinar slides 7/10/24 (PDF)
- Part 3: Secondary Prevention webinar recording 12/9/24 (MP4) – webinar slides 12/9/24 (PDF)
- Part 4: Universal and Primary webinar recording 6/16/25 (MP4) – webinar slides 6/16/25 (PDF)
Implementation
Implementing recommendations from the strategic plan requires intense collaboration across all sectors. This manifests in a variety of ways, principally through the governance of the prevention workgroup and its subcommittees, in equal partnership with the steering committee, and other collaboratives across state government and local communities.
Prevention Workgroup
OHY, the Department of Children, Youth & Families (DCYF), and the Health Care Authority (HCA) co-lead a prevention workgroup comprised of state agencies, community-based organizations, and young people and families with lived experience of housing instability or involvement with the child welfare, legal, carceral, or inpatient behavioral health systems. The prevention workgroup is the broader space for updates, networking, legislative coordination, and alignment of the subcommittees.
This workgroup fulfills Governor Directive 17-01 (PDF) and oversees implementation of the following efforts:
- The state strategic plan, Shifting Services and Systems to Prevent Youth Housing Instability (PDF)
- Efforts to prevent homelessness for youth exiting publicly funded systems of care, Chapter 157, Laws of 2018
- Efforts to provide housing stability and wraparound services instead of incarceration for youth who commit noncriminal status offenses (e.g., At-Risk Youth, truancy), Chapter 312, Laws of 2019
- Collaborations with DCYF to reform Family Reconciliation Services (FRS) in alignment with community-based service provision, Chapter 151, Laws of 2023
- Other related state initiatives
Prevention Subcommittees
The subcommittees are directly responsible for the refinement, operationalization and implementation of recommendations from the strategic plan. Subcommittees correspond with the respective stages of the prevention continuum, further creating connective tissue with other workgroups and initiatives across the state that intersect with their scopes of work.
| Universal Prevention | |
| Rachel Baxter (she/her) Health Care Authority Emerging Adult Stable Housing Policy Lead Rachel.Baxter@hca.wa.gov | Gavyn Tann (he/him) DCYF Adolescent Transitions Program Manager Gavyn.Tann@dcyf.wa.gov |
| Primary Prevention | |
| Rosemary Peterson (she/her) Office of Homeless Youth Education & Employment Manager Rosemary.Peterson@commerce.wa.gov | Open |
| Secondary Prevention | |
| Michelle Hankinson (she/her) DCYF Youth & Young Adult Housing Continuum Program Manager Michelle.Hankinson@dcyf.wa.gov | Regina McDougall (she/her) DCYF Family Practice Model Administrator Regina.Mcdougall@dcyf.wa.gov |
| Tertiary Prevention | |
| Dimitri Groce (he/him) Building Changes Director of Practice Innovation Dimitri.Groce@buildingchanges.org | Matt Davis (he/him) Office of Homeless Youth Systems Change Manager Matt.Davis@commerce.wa.gov |
Steering Committee
The Youth Homelessness Prevention Steering Committee (YHPSC) is an advisory body that brings the lens of lived experience all facets of implementation to ensure that those who have been most impacted are at the center of redesign efforts. The YHPSC is supported by Pro Se Potential, a community-based organization, and comprised of members reflective of the youth homelessness population across the state, particularly those most disproportionately impacted by homelessness and state systems.
Steering Committee members must be Washington state residents with a desire to create a world where no young person experiences homelessness, as well as meeting one of the below criteria:
- Young people, between the ages of 18-30, who have experienced homelessness, housing instability and/or systems involvement between the ages of 12-24. Systems involvement includes things like foster care, inpatient behavioral health facilities, juvenile detention, juvenile rehabilitation, county jail and state prisons, OR
- Caregivers (bio, kin, foster or informal) who have supported a young person, between the ages of 12-24, with the above-mentioned experiences. Professional experience in providing care to a young person through employment does not count as a caregiver.