A Shared Approach to Combating Homelessness
One in 30 Young People Experience Homelessness Before College Age
Our Partnership
To combat youth homelessness, we worked with the University of Houston and other community and academic partners for a national collaboration called REALYST: Research, Education and Advocacy Co-Lab for Youth Stability and Thriving. This collaborative project alongside the University of Houston sought to illuminate how various factors in an individual's life can contribute to homelessness with the goal of influencing policy and developing better near- and long-term solutions for the increasingly challenging problem of youth homelessness.
About DU Research
We leverage cross-institutional collaboration to address some of today’s most pressing challenges, producing interdisciplinary solutions that influence policymakers to effectively serve the public good. From Stanford to UChicago to NYU, we’ve refined our collaborative process through years of mutually beneficial relationships with institutions nationwide to understand and address challenges like climate change, HIV and youth homelessness.
DU’s current research efforts have been featured in news outlets like The New York Times. They include…
- exploring the effects of felony disenfranchisement.
- employing lasers as the medium for quantum science.
- using theatre to heal and rehabilitate inmates.
About the Project
REALYST is a national, multi-site collaboration between academic and community partners, with the goal of using research to understand youth homelessness, inform good policy and lead to effective solutions aimed at ending homelessness and housing instability among young people.
We collected in-depth detail on the experiences of young people experiencing homelessness across multiple cities and communities, looking at factors like gender, sexual orientation, race, education and time spent in foster care. That information was used to deepen our understanding of the problem and determine how solutions can be developed and applied on a community basis.
The project was a collaboration between DU, the University of Houston, the University of Missouri - St. Louis, the University of Southern California, Hunter College and Arizona State University, as well as a variety of community partners.