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California just made one of the country’s most significant public investments in addressing homelessness, including $116 million in its new budget to help identify and support students experiencing homelessness. It’s the first state in our nation’s history to invest resources on this scale to support this especially vulnerable population.
The striking part is that the funding is earmarked not for housing, but for schools, and specifically for the detailed work of finding and assisting the students whose families have nowhere stable to live.
Why is this such a big deal? Investing in a school system’s ability to identify and support students experiencing homelessness is one of the most effective long-term strategies for preventing chronic homelessness, and California’s historic investment should become a model for the rest of the country.
That work is harder than it sounds, because students’ experiences of homelessness are rarely immediately visible. It sometimes includes sleeping outside or in a shelter. It may include short stays in a motel room paid for one week at a time, then a week on a relative’s couch, the next in a car.
So these children — those in dire need of attention and support — go overlooked and uncounted. Last school year, California districts identified 298,254 students experiencing homelessness. The real number is almost certainly higher because identification depends on the very capacity most districts have never been funded to build.
The cost of failing to count these children is measurable. Students in California who experience homelessness graduate at a 76% rate against an 88% rate for their housed peers. Homeless students change schools more often, miss more days and often fall behind, because that instability taxes everything. It’s hard to study for a test when you don’t know where you’ll sleep. It’s hard to trust a teacher who you may not see next month.
This is why identification, as bureaucratic as the word sounds, has the potential to transform lives. Schools are the one public institution that almost every child touches consistently, even during periods of profound housing instability. If we’re serious about preventing homelessness across generations, schools are where we have the greatest opportunity to find children early and intervene in their lives before crisis becomes chronic.
A student who is identified as homeless can enroll immediately — either in their “school of origin” or in the district where they are temporarily residing — without needing documents a displaced family may not have. She can get transportation to stay in the same school after a move, instead of starting over each time her address changes. She can be connected to meals, counseling, academic support and an adult, such as a social worker or educational liaison, whose job is to help understand what’s happening at home.
For years, California asked schools to do this pivotal work with little or no dedicated money. The only allocated funding came from the federal government for a brief period in 2021, as a response to the COVID pandemic. That one-time funding reached just 97 of California’s 1,015 districts. The remaining districts were left to find these students on goodwill and spare time. For too long, whether a child experiencing homelessness was identified and helped depended less on how much they were struggling than on whether their district happened to have someone with the time to notice.
This isn’t a California peculiarity. It’s roughly how every state runs, which is why California’s budget decision matters beyond its borders.
Two of the strongest predictors of who becomes homeless as an adult include whether a person finished high school and whether they experienced homelessness as a child. Someone who carries both risks is on one of the steepest paths to chronic homelessness.
We know that increasing funding and investing in identification and support for this segment of students works. When federal pandemic relief briefly funded identification services in 2021, chronic absenteeism among students experiencing homelessness fell and graduation rates rose. When funding expired, the gains began to erode. Smaller efforts point in the same direction. During the National Center for Youth Law’s pilot program, which placed dedicated liaisons inside Monterey Peninsula Unified School District from 2018-2025, nearly all of the supported seniors graduated and went on to college or vocational training.
That’s what $116 million can begin to provide resources for: the standing capacity to find these children and keep them in school. Students and families experiencing homelessness will still face challenges, like food instability, substandard (or unaffordable) housing options, and lack of medical care. But schools staffed with compassionate and qualified adults tasked with seeing students who too often go unseen, can catch a child’s situation early and bolster the type of support they need and may even prevent future experiences with homelessness.
For decades, our country has failed to adequately support children experiencing homelessness. California has put money behind a bold idea that other states should follow: Invest in our children in schools where we are able to reach them, and support their education to enable them to thrive long term.
Margaret Olmos is Senior Director of Education Resource Opportunity and Equity at the National Center for Youth Law.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The article argues that California’s new allocation of $116 million in state funding to identify and support students experiencing homelessness represents a landmark investment, described as the largest dedicated state commitment of its kind and a potential national model for other states to follow.[1][4][13]
Building on this, the piece contends that directing resources to schools rather than directly to housing is a deliberate strategy, asserting that school systems are uniquely positioned to find children early, because nearly all students pass through them regularly, making school-based identification one of the most effective long-term approaches to preventing chronic homelessness across generations.[4][5][17]
The article further emphasizes that student homelessness is often invisible, explaining that it can include cycles of sleeping outdoors, staying in shelters, motels, relatives’ homes, or cars, and that such instability means many children go overlooked and uncounted; it highlights that roughly 300,000 California students were identified as experiencing homelessness last year, while research indicates that schools nationwide fail to identify a large share of eligible students.[6][18]
In addition, the piece links homelessness to measurable educational harm, noting that students experiencing homelessness graduate at significantly lower rates than their housed peers and face more school changes, missed days, and academic setbacks; it argues that once schools identify these students, they can immediately enroll them without typical documentation, keep them in their school of origin, provide transportation, meals, counseling, and connect them to a designated adult such as a liaison or social worker, consistent with practices under federal McKinney-Vento guidelines.[2][7][9][17]
The article stresses that, until now, California districts were expected to carry out this work with minimal dedicated funding, pointing out that federal pandemic relief under the American Rescue Plan briefly expanded support for homeless students and improved attendance and graduation outcomes, but that those gains began to erode when temporary funds expired, underscoring the importance of sustained state investment.[8][11][12][13]
Drawing on the National Center for Youth Law’s pilot in Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, the piece highlights evidence that placing dedicated liaisons inside schools from 2018 to 2025 led to nearly all supported seniors graduating and moving on to college or vocational training, and argues that the $116 million can begin to replicate such staffing and supports across districts.[1][4][15][17]
Finally, the article suggests that California’s move should inspire other states to invest in school-based identification and support for students experiencing homelessness, framing this as a bold but necessary shift in education and homelessness policy that aims to enable vulnerable children to remain in school and thrive over the long term.[5][11][13]
Different views on the topic
In contrast to the article’s optimism about the scope of California’s investment, some research briefs note that even recent increases in federal and state funding for students experiencing homelessness remain modest relative to the need, and that only a few states currently supplement federal dollars; these analyses caution that high-profile appropriations, including competitive grant programs, may still fall short of providing the comprehensive, long-term support systems that advocates envision.[8][12][13]
Moreover, investigative reporting and academic studies find that, despite longstanding mandates under the McKinney-Vento Act, many districts fail to identify large numbers of homeless students because staff are unfamiliar with the law, enforcement is weak, and families have limited recourse when schools do not comply; these accounts suggest that new funding, without stronger oversight and accountability mechanisms, may not fully resolve chronic underidentification.[6][10][18]
Additionally, policy analyses focusing on student homelessness argue that schools alone cannot meet the full spectrum of needs, emphasizing that young people require connections to stable housing, mental health services, food assistance, and other supports beyond the school setting; these perspectives contend that education-focused investments must be paired with substantial housing and social-service strategies if the goal is to significantly reduce youth homelessness and its long-term impacts.[14][9][17]
Some evaluations of pandemic-era programs highlight that federal relief funds targeted to homeless children and youth, such as American Rescue Plan funding, did improve identification and attendance, yet were explicitly time-limited; these assessments warn that reliance on temporary or competitive grants can lead to uneven access and uncertainty for districts, challenging the idea that such investments by themselves create a stable, enduring solution.[3][8][11]
Furthermore, researchers examining identification practices report that families often mistrust schools or are unaware of their rights, and that students in “doubled-up” situations or unconventional housing frequently do not disclose their status; these findings emphasize that, beyond adding resources, districts must address relational barriers through outreach, translation of materials, community partnerships, and non-threatening conversations, or else much of the potential impact of new funds could be blunted.[6][15][16][19]
Finally, studies of school staff perspectives indicate that capacity and training vary widely across districts, with barriers including limited awareness of homelessness policies, inconsistent identification processes, and particular difficulty reaching older youth; such work argues that without robust and ongoing professional development for teachers, bus drivers, counselors, and liaisons, as well as clear guidance from state leaders, funding increases may be absorbed into existing practices that continue to overlook many students experiencing homelessness.[10][17][20]
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