A Fair Housing Council review shows a doubling in the number of homeless students in Lexington over the last three years, but the city’s chief homelessness coordinator says the data may not be as grim as they seem on first blush.
Back in May, city officials touted a 26 percent dip in overall homelessness over the last two years and further data showing a chronic homelessness rate cut in half. Experts credited numerous initiatives, from a new dedicated Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention to a Housing First pilot project still under study by the University of Kentucky, but the latest numbers appear to reveal one exception: students.
According to the new analysis of local and state education data, reported in the Lexington Herald-Leader, the total number of homeless students in Fayette County leapt from 410 in 2012-13 to 795 in 2014-15.
"I don't doubt that it's increasing and it's certainly something that we need to be working on as a community, but I don't know that it's quite as alarming as the headline would present," cautions Lexington director for the Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention Charlie Lanter.
Lanter cites two outside factors likely contributing to the reported 94 percent increase: recent improvements in monitoring of student homelessness and a broader definition of homelessness than the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development model used by the city. Whereas Lexington's definition is generally limited to those living on the streets, in cars, or shelters, the new student-centered data include "people who are living with family members, people who are sort of couch surfing, staying with someone else but still trying to find a place on their own."
But the problem still warrants attention, Lanter notes, and he’s reaching out to local school district leaders to better coordinate efforts to provide more stable environments for affected students and keep at-risk families from becoming homeless.
"You know, a lot of times we're serving the same folks. If we're working with a family, we know those kids are in school, so [school officials] are working with that family too," he says. "So if we're going to try to prevent homelessness or rapidly rehouse a family, I think the more than we can communicate across the entire spectrum, not just the city and the school districts but also the shelters, housing programs, and education programs, the better we'll serve those families."
A 2015 Herald-Leader investigation found that the commonwealth suffered from the highest student homelessness rate in the nation.
