WASHINGTON – After T'Roya Jackson discovered the paint in her apartment gave her daughter lead poisoning, she and her children moved out.
They couch-surfed for a while before moving into a homeless shelter over the summer. The hair stylist began looking for a rental that will accept her hard-won housing voucher – all while caring for her five children, including a newborn and her 4-year-old daughter.
"It's been extremely difficult," she told USA TODAY, recounting how she's tried to keep her oldest children – ages 14, 9 and 8 – in school, paying for taxis to take them to class and ensuring they have some quiet study time, a challenge in their cramped one-bedroom unit.
Jackson and her family are not alone: Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of homeless students are in hotels, doubled up in apartments or living in shelters. Most of them are with at least one parent or guardian, though many are unaccompanied.
The number of students grappling with unstable housing has jumped in recent years, a continuation of a decadeslong trend, and a troubling sign that a deepening housing crisis is hurting the country's youngest and most vulnerable people.
More:She was a school counselor for a decade. Now, her family of 5 is homeless.
In 2025, New York City reported 154,000 homeless students, the highest amount in the city's recorded history. Last year in California, the number of homeless students rose by nearly 20,000 statewide, a 4% increase from a year earlier, and the sharpest rise the state has seen in a decade.
The problem isn't limited to the largest states or cities. Suburban and rural communities in states like Iowa, Indiana and Florida also reported upticks in student homelessness in 2025.
"This is happening across the United States," said Michael Gottfried, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in education economics and policy. "We can't just say it's a rural issue or it's an inner-city problem. It's everywhere."
A hidden population
According to the National Center for Homeless Education, there are nearly 1.4 million homeless students nationwide. And while the federal tally represents a 104% increase in student homelessness between 2005 and 2023, it's still a vast undercount, experts say.
That's because it's difficult to keep track of these students, especially in areas where local agencies don't share information with one another or, in many cases, lack funding.
Homeless students change schools often. Some don't tell their friends or teachers about their living situation. And parents themselves have kept low profiles out of fear that their children would be taken away.
"We asked a kid once 'What's the hardest part about living in a shelter?' and she said, 'Hiding it from my friends,'" recalled Jamila Larson, the founder of Playtime Project, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. that engages homeless children in games and field trips.
Another reason homeless students are considered a "hidden" population: More than 70% of them are "doubled up," meaning they are sharing the housing of others. In some cases, three or four families are living in one apartment.
Because of this, it often falls completely on teachers or school staff to identify whether a student is housing insecure.
"It takes a lot of proactive work on behalf of the school to identify a student as homeless," said Barbara Duffield, the executive director of SchoolHouse Connection, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of homeless youth. "But that's the first step" to getting them help.
American students are struggling 'across the board'
The increasing number of homeless students mirrors other worrisome trends.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released its annual homelessness survey and found that 771,480 people, including adults, were living on the streets or in shelters – the highest number ever recorded on a single night, the agency said.
The age group that saw the largest jump in homelessness, according to HUD: children under the age of 18.
"All the indicators are saying that kids are struggling across the board," said Gottfried, noting increases in chronic absenteeism and a downtick in children's academic achievements.
HUD blamed the rise in homeless residents on a worsening affordable housing crisis, rising inflation, stagnating wages and an end to COVID-era public assistance programs, including the expanded child tax credit, all of which has "stretched homelessness services systems to their limits," the agency said.
Advocates and researchers say that while there are many factors contributing to the student homelessness crisis, affordable housing remains the most prominent and challenging barrier for young people and families.
"At the end of the day, homelessness is a housing problem," said Ann Owens, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. "There's just not enough affordable units for families to live in."
The devastating cost of student homelessness
Growing up without stable housing can have impacts on young people well after they leave the classroom.
Lack of a GED or high school diploma, Duffield said, is the single greatest risk factor for homelessness as a young adult. For the 2022-2023 school year, the average graduation rate for homeless students was 68%, nearly 19% lower than all other students and 10% less than students who were poor but had stable housing, according to federal tallies.
Jackson spent time in and out of shelters in grade school and remembers how her mother toiled to keep her in class and out of harm's way. Moving into a shelter with her own children decades later has been very painful, she said.
"When we first got here, I cried for like two weeks straight," she said. "But my little guys are really strong soldiers. They are what pulled me through."
Homeless students face other significant challenges, from lack of transportation to frequent school transfers. They also experience a higher rate of disciplinary action than their peers, research shows.
In Gastonia, North Carolina, Mary Lenord and her 13-year-old son moved out of a house they were renting after their landlord refused to treat mold that was making them sick. She had trouble finding an apartment she could rent, so Lenord and her son slept in motels and couch surfed for a while.
Lenord said she could see the immediate effect the experience had on her son.
"It is impacting him because now he is getting in trouble at school," she told the Gaston Gazette, part of the USA TODAY Network, in September. "Since we haven't had a place, he has gotten suspended like three times."
Sleep lots, shelters and student payments
Under the 1987McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, the federal government allocates money to each state to identify and assist homeless students with transportation, housing and other needs. But that funding is far from adequate, experts say.
An analysis by theLearning Policy Instituteof McKinney-Vento allocations showed that during the 2019-20 school year, federal funding provided an average of $79 per homeless student. And while there was a major influx of federal dollars during the pandemic, those funds have started to run out.
The program's limited capabilities are facing more headwinds from Trump administration's cuts to the Department of Education, which will consolidate the McKinney-Vento program and drastically cut its funding.
"We're very concerned about what's going to happen," Duffield said, noting that McKinney-Vento liaisons nationwide are the ones tasked with tracking homeless students and setting them up with transportation and other needs.
Another hurdle: The Department of Housing and Urban Development's definition of homelessness does not include those who are doubled up, excluding the largest demographic of homeless students and families from the agency's rapid rehousing aid.
This leaves much of the burden with states, local school districts and a patchwork of nonprofits and volunteer groups – all of which are scrambling to find innovative ways to help the increasing number of homeless students.
Nationwide, school districts are starting to build their own shelters to house homeless students. Some jurisdictions are taking even more temporary measures. For example, in Cincinnati, where the number of homeless students has jumped 77% in the last decade, the school district next year willopen a fenced-in parking lotwhere homeless families can sleep in their cars.
New Mexico, meanwhile, is set to expand a pilot program that paid homeless high schoolers hundreds of dollars per month if they met with a counselor, completed their coursework and maintained over a 90% attendance rate. Oregon is testing a similar initiative.
In many communities, families are forced to rely on volunteer groups and nonprofits, which are often underfunded and stretched thin.
In Sarasota, Florida, the nonprofit Harvest House had to close its family emergency shelter after the county commission slashed its funding. Dan Minor, the organization's president and CEO, recalled having to turn away a young family that was living in the back of a U-Haul truck.
"The kids looked completely shell-shocked," he told theSarasota Herald-Tribune, part of the USA TODAY Network.
A long, difficult fight for shelter
Over the past year, Jackson faced what at times seemed like insurmountable hurdles as she's tried to keep her children sheltered and in school.
After leaving her apartment in July 2024, Jackson and her children bounced between relatives' homes in Maryland and Virginia for months. Jackson eventually set out to find space in a local shelter – a demoralizing process in which she was constantly met by closed doors and stifling bureaucracy.
"I broke down a few times," she said, describing several frustrating incidents, including one in which a shelter group changed her application requirements at the last minute. "We were going to move into my car. I didn't know what else to do."
After Jackson's mother called a local nonprofit and pleaded for them to help her daughter, the family was placed into a one-room unit and moved there in July. In the months since, she's given birth to her fifth child, obtained a housing voucher and began touring rental units.
Jackson said she promised her kids they would be out of the shelter soon and is hoping to find an apartment close to her kids' schools.
"I haven't told them yet that we'll be leaving the shelter," Jackson said with a smile on a frigid Saturday morning in mid-December. "They've been getting real antsy, especially with the holidays."
She's already planned how she'll break the news to her children.
"I want to take them to view (the apartment) – I'll tell them it's their aunt's or something," she said. "But once they see it, I'm going to surprise them and say, 'It's ours!' ... That's my plan."
Contributing: Chloe Collins, Gaston Gazette; Saundra Amrhein, Sarasota Herald-Tribune; Grace Tucker and Elizabeth B. Kim, Cincinnati Enquirer
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:US schools in crisis as number of homeless students jumps
