Housing & Homelessness
More than one million K-12 students in America are homeless today. Whether that means sleeping in a shelter or crashing on a family friend’s couch, homelessness has disastrous consequences for every aspect of a child’s life – health, nutrition, education. In fact, every time a child is forced to move, it has the same impact on educational progress as missing a month of school. But federal agencies don’t even have a uniform definition of “homeless” for children. First Focus advocates an honest assessment of the family homelessness problem in America and a renewed federal commitment to ensure that no American spends his or her childhood homeless.
Resources
Biden & Congress must support the nearly 4 million families with children facing housing instability
Micaela McConnell, First Focus Campaign for Children | July 22, 2021 |
Housing should be a fundamental right for all children and families in the United States — not a privilege. Yet, the economic and public …
Letter: The first — and next — 100 days
Bruce Lesley | May 4, 2021 |
First Focus on Children sent the following letter to President Joseph Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris congratulating them on the achievements of their …
Fact Sheet: The REAL impact of COVID-19 on kids
| April 22, 2021 |
Way back at the beginning of this pandemic, a narrative took hold that kids are not affected. Now, more than a year in, it …
Statement: Rule change gives 55,000 children a lifeline
Michele Kayal | April 9, 2021 |
The Biden Administration has withdrawn a Trump-era rule that would have forced 25,000 mixed-status immigrant families from their homes, including 55,000 children. Bruce Lesley, president …
Fact Sheet: Kids and the American Rescue Plan
| March 30, 2021 |
The American Rescue Plan marks the biggest policy gain for children in the United States in decades. The comprehensive COVID-19 relief package passed by …
More than ever, we need Champions for Children — these are policymakers meeting the moment
Bruce Lesley, First Focus Campaign for Children | February 4, 2021 |
Our nation’s children face multiple challenges to their well-being stemming from years of a declining share of federal investments in their future, the COVID-19 …
An open letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris From America’s children
Bruce Lesley, Christine Cully | January 20, 2021 |
Dear President Biden and Vice President Harris: Congratulations on rising to our nation’s highest offices. We’ve been talking to America’s children about what the …
Report says more than 4,000 NY children lost a caregiver due to COVID-19
Averi Pakulis, Cara Baldari | December 11, 2020 |
Between March and July of this year, 4,200 children in New York State lost a parent or caregiver to COVID-19. Four-thousand, two-hundred individual children. …
Key Stats on the Effect of COVID-19 on Kids
Aubrey Edwards-Luce, Averi Pakulis, Cara Baldari, Carrie Fitzgerald, Christopher Towner (Former Staff), Conor Sasner, Kathy Sacco, Michelle Dallafior, Miriam Abaya, Olivia Gomez | November 19, 2020 |
The COVID-19 pandemic is doing more than exposing the racial, ethnic, and economic disparities existing in our society; it is compounding them, and so …
Child poverty surpasses pre-pandemic levels, with 2.5 million more children in poverty since May 2020
Cara Baldari | October 16, 2020 |
Journalist Jason DeParle of the New York Times is one of the leading media voices covering child poverty in the United States, and in …