Homeless Children and Youth Act of 2025
The Homeless Children and Youth Act of 2025 would amend the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act to better serve homeless children, youth, and families, with a focus on local needs, education continuity, and data-driven accountability. Key changes include expanding who counts as homeless (extending protections to more youth up to age 24 and to those verified under other federal programs), broadening the circumstances under which a child or youth is considered homeless (including safety concerns from domestic violence and similar conditions), and strengthening the connection between homelessness services and education, early childhood, and higher education support. The bill also adds a new requirement for making HMIS (Homeless Management Information System) data publicly available and updated annually, and it emphasizes local planning and non-discrimination in grant awards, tying funding decisions to demonstrated local priorities and cost-effectiveness. In addition, the bill expands coordination requirements at the program level (e.g., school enrollment, Head Start and child care connections, and FAFSA-independent status for unaccompanied youth) and mandates stronger reporting to Congress about program outcomes and data quality. It preserves a rule-of-construction that ensures individuals defined as homeless are eligible for programs and that funding decisions are not biased against any subpopulation, while steering emphasis toward local plan priorities identified by participating communities.
Key Points
- 1Expanded definitions and eligibility for homelessness
- 2- Extends the definition to include homeless children and youth defined under other federal programs, up to age 24 for youth, and broadens the reasons a family or individual may be considered homeless (e.g., safety risks from domestic violence and other severe conditions).
- 3- Raises certain time thresholds, such as changing a 14-day shared housing rule to 30 days, and aligns definitions with other federal programs.
- 4Public availability and annual updates of HMIS data
- 5- Creates a new Section 409 requiring HMIS data reported to HUD to be publicly available online, with annual updates showing counts, patterns of assistance, and demographic breakdowns (including women, age, disability, and length of homelessness).
- 6Strengthened accountability and grant scoring
- 7- Reforms grant evaluation to require that funding decisions be based on local plans and cost-effectiveness, while ensuring that proposed services for homeless populations do not receive preferential treatment over others without justification.
- 8- Requires annual homeless counts to include all individuals identified by any program funded under any federal statute.
- 9Enhanced cross-agency coordination for children and youth
- 10- Requires program operators serving families or youth to designate staff to ensure school enrollment, connection to early care/education, IDEA-related services, and other supports; unaccompanied youth must be informed of independent-student status for financial aid purposes.
- 11Expanded references to other federal statutes and reporting
- 12- Adds several federal statutes to the definition of “other Federal statute,” broadening the statutory ecosystem with which McKinney-Vento programs must coordinate (e.g., Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, Head Start Act, Child Care and Development Block Grant, Title IV rules, Higher Education Act, etc.).
- 13- Requires an annual Congress report summarizing activities, data, and policies, including how data might be duplicative and how it is addressed.