Driven by those who’ve lived it.

Focused on the systems that cause it.

We lead with lived experience, organize across systems, and fight to end youth homelessness at the root.

Our approach to ending youth homelessness is rooted in lived experience and deep collaboration. Many of our leaders and staff have personally experienced housing instability. We believe those most impacted should shape the solutions.

We are a national coalition of young people, advocates, service providers, and policy partners. Together, we are transforming systems to make sure every young person has what they need to be safe, supported, and free.

Youth homelessness is not about individual choices.
It is about systems.

Each young person's experience is different. Some are pushed out after coming out as LGBTQ+. Others face violence at home, age out of foster care, or navigate poverty, racism, or mental health challenges without support.

These are not personal failures. They are the result of broken systems that have ignored or harmed young people for far too long.

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We organize to shift power, policy, and practice.

A Way Home America works across local, state, and national levels to change the conditions that cause youth homelessness.

Our approach is grounded in decades of advocacy and the leadership of Black, Brown, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ youth. We partner with communities, uplift lived experience, and use organizing, research, and policy to drive change.

Our Work

We move with core principles that create real change.

Intersectionality acknowledges the interaction of multiple social identities and how those identities separately and together are subjected to oppression and discrimination.

a. We unapologetically center the voices and experiences of black, Indigenous, youth of color, and LGBTQIA+ youth and all the intersections they bring, while upholding the factthat all of us have many identities.

Learning and growing are the results of struggle. Struggle causes change and liberation. As an initiative we strive to engage in Principled Struggle and work to foster and cultivate spaces for members, coalitions, and communities to move through conflict in a way that makes us better.

a. To do this, we each commit to:

i. Being honest and direct while maintaining compassion.

ii. Taking responsibility for our own feelings and actions.

iii. Seeking deeper understanding. (We ask and read first).

iv. Considering social positions and how they inform the response to conflict.

“A targeted universal strategy is one that is inclusive of the needs of both the dominant and the marginal groups, but pays particular attention to the situation of the marginal group. Targeted universalism rejects a blanket universal which is likely to be indifferent to the reality that different groups are situated differently relative to the institutions and resources of society. It also rejects the claim of formal equality that would treat all people the same as a way of denying difference.”

As a transformative initiative, we seek out those campaigns and activities that have the greatest potential to improve the lives of young people experiencing homelessness. We will reimagine opportunities to engage and win future fights that move us toward our long-term vision. We commit to transforming power dynamics and systems. We want youth at the front lines of marginalization to have full decision-making power when reshaping systems to work better for them.

Accountability refers to creating processes and systems that are designed to help individuals and groups be held responsible for their decisions and actions and whether the work being done reflects and embodies racial equity and justice principles

.a. We pledge to continually evaluate and analyze our work against the following questions:

i. How is the issue being defined? Who is defining it?

ii. Who is this work going to benefit if it succeeds? Who will benefit if the work doesnot succeed?

iii. How are assignments distributed among the stakeholders? How will a group know if its plan has accounted for risks and unintended consequences fordifferent racial and ethnic groups?

iv. What happens if people pull out before the goals are met?

v. Who anointed the people and groups being relied on for the answers to thesequestions?

vi. Are there opportunities to diversify respondents to these questions?

This work is collective.

Let’s move together.

Get Involved

Driven by those who’ve lived it. Focused on the systems that cause it.

Youth homelessness is not about individual choices. It is about systems.

We move with core principles that create real change.

Driven by those who’ve lived it.

Focused on the systems that cause it.

Youth homelessness is not about individual choices.
It is about systems.