Lack of funding, mental health resources hinder groups working with youth experiencing homelessness

Whether it’s an 18-month wait to get resources for youth with developmental disabilities or a lack of investment in homeless prevention services, groups working with youth experiencing homelessness say they face substantial barriers helping vulnerable children. 

Providers and nonprofits outlined some of their struggles when it comes to meeting the mental health needs of the vulnerable population at a recent forum put on by the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth.

The July 12 panel was a third in a series of forums hosted by NPHY to look at the various barriers and solutions faced by organizations working with youth. 

Homelessness in Southern Nevada has been increasing. The 2022 point-in-time homeless count, which measures the unhoused population during a single timeframe, identified 314 individuals as unaccompanied youth under 18 and young adults ages 18 to 24. 

Technical Assistance Collaborative, a group contracted by NPHY to assess youth homelessness in Southern Nevada, found in 2021 that 5,125 youth ages 14 to 24 depended on emergency shelters, transitional housing, or a combination of thereof.

That’s an increase from 4,252 in 2020.

Whether it’s socioeconomic factors, like housing insecurity or living in low-income households, or social factors, including families not accepting LGBTQ youth resulting in youths leaving home, there are many reasons youth enter homelessness. 

No matter the entry point, it can come with trauma and mental health needs. 

Arash Ghafoori, the executive director for the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth, said anxiety, depression and substance abuse disorders “have increased significantly since the beginning of the pandemic.”  

Youth struggling with housing and homelessness are especially vulnerable. 

But the lack of investments in mental health services along with structural barriers to mental health systems place constant pressures on organizations that work with youth experiencing homelessness. 

“As youth homeless providers, we have seen substantial increases to mental health issues among the youth we serve over the last several years,” Ghafoori said. “We must explore the homeless service sector and how it has struggled to respond to the increased needs.” 

Many of the problems providers and nonprofits face are the result of the lack of funding. 

While nonprofits can qualify for federal and local funding and grant dollars, grant money often isn’t fungible and must be assigned to specific purposes.

Kim Moore, the director of HELP of Southern Nevada’s Shannon West Homeless Youth Center, said the shelter has one on-site therapist for 150 youth. 

“Who’s going to pay for a full time psychiatrist at Shannon West of NPHY?,” she said. “Our housing dollars don’t pay for that. Some of our housing funding doesn’t even pay to order birth certificates. Funding is the number one barrier.”

‘Youth don’t belong in an adult shelter’

Panelists said the lack of livable wages for social workers and mental health providers along with low insurance reimbursement rates make it hard to attract and retain staff. 

Moore said it can take “18 months to get an individual with developmental disabilities into the appropriate system.”

“I know 18 months is a long time for someone with autism to sit in a homeless shelter,” she said. “They don’t do well.” 

The state, Moore added, also lacks group homes for youth with developmental disabilities. If they become violent, the only recourse is to send them into the adult system, she said. 

“Our youth don’t belong in an adult shelter,” she said. “Half of them don’t even belong in a youth shelter.” 

Dr. Lisa Durette, the chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at UNLV School of Medicine, questioned why Clark County doesn’t have its own mental health system.

“We have Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services and northern Nevada Mental Health Services,” she said. “These are agencies that trickle down through the (Nevada) Department of Public Health but it’s not the same as a county mental health system. It’s a huge deficit that we have in our state.”

She also said it’s uncommon. Across the county, from Los Angeles to South Carolina where she trained, “each county had their own county mental health system.”

“We have this in other parts of the US where a team of a psychiatrist and therapist and case worker get in a car, drive around and go to people’s homes and give them long-acting injectables, or their pills and we check in on them,” she said. “Interventions are going around the person to catch them like a bubble.” 

Along with more funding for continued services, panelists advocated for investments in additional solutions, including prevention and mental health screenings early on in schools. 

Dr. Robin Petering of the community advocacy group Lens Co based in Los Angeles, said youth are able to shine a light on problems within the system that are often overlooked. 

Youth from Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth have also recommended youth-driven policy solutions on panels and at the legislature through the years.

Petering said her organization hired youth to come up with ideas, which included a better understanding of how housing assessments for youth are scored.

“A lot of young people we heard said, ‘I was answering questions during intake and never knew it was going to be my score for my housing intake,’”  Petering said. 

She added many of them never understood “what these questions were” only to later find out the “whole entire housing path had to do with the one interaction.”

Another idea was for youth to be able to refuse housing placements that don’t fit without experiencing consequences. 

Many of the panelists have had clients, even outside of the youth system, who are matched with housing. 

In some cases, those options are in areas of town that are inconvenient for people experiencing homelessness or set them up not to succeed, like being placed in housing in drug prone areas while working through recovery.

When clients voice concerns over housing placement, they can be removed from consideration altogether. 

“It’s disheartening when a client can’t advocate for themselves and say they won’t succeed in this area of time,” said Vanessa Donze, who works with the Human Behavior Institute. “Instead, providers say they are off the list.”