Murray Announces $3 Million for Pierce County to Help Address Youth Homelessness

Murray helped establish the program delivering today’s award and has funded the program every year since its inception

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, announced $3 million for Pierce County from the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program (YHDP) which Murray helped establish in 2016 and has secured funding for every year since. The YHDP is an initiative designed to reduce the number of youth experiencing homelessness. The goal of the YHDP is to support selected communities, including rural, suburban, and urban areas across the United States, in the development and implementation of a coordinated community approach to preventing and ending youth homelessness.

“Every person deserves a safe place to call home and a roof over their head,” said Senator Murray. “We need to keep working to end homelessness in every way we can, especially among our kids, and the funding from this critical federal program will help young people in Pierce County find a safe place to call home. Still, we need to do so much more to both end homelessness and lower the cost of housing for everyone—that means building more affordable housing and delivering critical federal resources to help local communities wrap their arms around the existing homelessness crisis, and that’s what I’m fighting for as Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.”

Communities like Pierce County will use funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to create opportunities that are specialized to support youth experiencing homelessness. This includes rental assistance and wrap-around services to improve overall health and wellness in an effort to obtain and maintain stable housing. 

In Fiscal Year 2024 Senator Murray secured $107 million for HUD programs targeted to reduce youth homelessness, and in Fiscal Year 2025 she is fighting to protect this funding—alongside increasing housing investments across the board.

Senator Murray has also put forward several bills in recent years to support youths experiencing homelessness and to prevent them from experiencing it in the first place.

In August of 2023, Murray visited ROOTS Young Adult Shelter in Seattle for a roundtable focused on the issue and work happening in Washington state. At that event, Senator Murray announced her Preventing Youth Homelessness Demonstration Act, which would build on the YHDP program with two new grant programs for upstream interventions that help reduce the likelihood that individuals will experience homelessness like: a resource helpline, casework management, or support groups for youth or young adults and their families who are at risk of homelessness. The grants would also help entities assess the causes and the extent of youth homelessness within their communities. In Fiscal Year 2024, Senator Murray secured $3 million for a new youth homeless prevention demonstration program based on her bill to provide grants to state, local, and Tribal governments and non-profit community-based organizations to provide primary prevention services for youth at risk of homelessness, which she is working to continue in Fiscal Year 2025.

Earlier this year, Senator Murray also reintroduced the Higher Education Access and Success for Homeless and Foster Youth Act to remove barriers and provide support to help students experiencing homelessness succeed in higher education. 

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