Colorado’s Youth Shelters Are Using Trauma-Informed Design and Low-Barrier Entry to Provide Safe, Supportive Environments for Teens
Youth shelters in Colorado are responding to the recent rise in the state’s homeless youth population by providing supportive, safe, and social shelter environments for teens and young adults. These shelters have been built to cater to the unique needs of homeless teens, including the incorporation of trauma-informed architecture techniques that naturally put people more at ease in the space.
Youth Homelessness on the Rise
Unfortunately, like many other forms of homelessness, youth homelessness is currently on the rise. Numbers from the Denver area alone show a 10 to 25 percent increase during the time period of 2017 to 2021.
Of course, these are only the numbers of homeless youth that were able to be identified. It is likely many times more are going unnoticed or intentionally flying under the radar. Some researchers estimate that the number of teens in the Denver area aged 14 to 17 experiencing homelessness at one time or another during the course of a single year could be as high as 1 in 4. It’s difficult to know for sure, but what is known is that the need is currently greater than the available support.
Causes of Youth Homelessness
The root causes behind youth homelessness are many and varied, but always sad. It could be a situation where an entire family is displaced by eviction, poverty, a house fire, or another natural disaster that destroys their family home. Other times, youth are neglected, abused, or abandoned by those who were supposed to take care of them.
Up to 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ+, an extremely disproportionate share given that less than 10% of youth in America as a whole are LGBTQ+. That means that LGBTQ+ kids have a 120% greater risk of experiencing homelessness than their non-LGBTQ+ peers…