More than $1 million in funding will go toward helping homeless youth. The $1.3 million grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development will support the Youth Homelessness System Improvement Program.

This is a unique grant because it recognizes the importance of the fact that while housing is a critical part of the solution, it is not the only part. So it’s kind of building these cross-system collaborations with, you know, other youth welfare systems, juvenile justice, criminal justice, education, health and services social, because many young people who are vulnerable to homelessness, are transversal. , you know, have service needs that touch all of these systems,” said Brittany Brakenhoff, research assistant professor at UNL CCFL.

The grant will help collect data on homeless youth and ways to better serve them.

“Improving access and collecting data on youth homelessness to better understand how to best serve this vulnerable group,” Brakenhoff said.

The grant is also expected to support the Youth Action Board, which collects feedback from young people who have experienced homelessness.

“I anticipate that what will be most impactful is that it has a lot of funding to support youth action councils, which is sort of the mechanism that we will use to get feedback from young people who have actually experienced homelessness, because they’re they’re really the experts on what’s going to work and what’s not going to work,” Brakenhoff said