Atlanta, Ga. is one of, if not the, fastest growing Southern city in the United States. Affordable housing, ample employment (in comparison to most places), and the infamous Southern-charm gives Atlanta an illustrious glow, beckoning droves of young graduates and professionals alike to the large metropolitan area.
However, many of Atlanta’s newer residents and even some of the great city’s longer residents are not aware of the contrast between the nuanced re-gentrification of Atlanta, to the overbearing homelessness statistics of this city.
Provided by the Metro-Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless (MATFH) website, MATFH states Atlanta has the fastest growing group of homeless individuals under 9 years of age in America. This is an alarming statistic for the youngest of Generation Y and the following generations in this metropolitan city.
Homeless youth may engage in harmful behaviors while in between or away from a permanent housing, leading to the almost inevitable “chronic homelessness” of these youth; where they are susceptible to reenter a state of homelessness, as they enter their quarterlife.
What is more alarming was the discovery of the trending increase of youths and young adult homelessness began while the first of Generation Y was growing-up in the 1980s and ’90s.
A study by Helvie & Kunstamnn, comparing homelessness rates in America from the 1970s to the 1990s showed a 14 percent increase in the number of homeless individuals under the age of 30, from 15 to 29 percent of the total homeless population in America.
Up until the 1970s, most youth homelessness cases were handled locally, leaving responsibility to city governments, like Atlanta, to best identify and fix their youth homelessness problems. Now however, the federal government is responsible for taking care of the unspecified problems entailed with Generation-Y youth homelessness – leaving a potential disjoint in identifying the specific needs for each city’s young homeless population.
As far as Atlanta, the city is ultimately a potential breeding ground for future quarterlife homelessness; MATFH states Atlanta is “the poorest city in the U.S. for children – more children in Atlanta live in poverty than in any other city.” With 71 percent of America’s homeless population located in cities, Atlanta is at quite a statistical disadvantage for the potential for homeless individuals aged 18-30 in the next few decades.
Ultimately it will take a deeper insight, and local centralization of homeless programs to understand how to end homelessness and its many causes before we can avoid the potential for any city, not just Atlanta, to be susceptible to having large, young homeless population.
Atlanta’s Homeless Youth