National Youth Homelessness Partnership products
The National Council on Youth Homelessness identified four core priorities in 2025 that have guided the work you will find on this page:
- Research & Data
- Youth Leadership & Decision-Making
- Housing
- Decriminalization
In addition, they continued work that was started under U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness in collaboration with national and federal partners in the areas of prevention and youth reentry. The resulting products can also be found here.
Check back often as we continue to update this page with our work!
Research and Data Action Team
The Research & Data Action Team works to strengthen how research, data and lived expertise are used to better understand and address youth homelessness.
The team explores ways to make research more meaningful, inclusive and useful for young people, communities, researchers and systems working to prevent and end youth homelessness.
A key focus is creating opportunities for young people with lived experience to move beyond being subjects of research and into meaningful roles in shaping research questions, processes, findings and the actions that follow.
Product name: Researching for Change: Recommendations for Power-Sharing with Youth and Young Adult Co-Researchers (view/download PDF)
Description: This toolkit guides researchers through the process of incorporating power-sharing and Youth Participatory Action Research principles into their work.
Youth Leadership and Decision-Making Action Team
The Youth Leadership & Decision-Making Action Team works to strengthen the role, influence and decision-making power of young people with lived experience of youth homelessness.
The team explores ways to move beyond simply inviting young people to participate and toward creating meaningful opportunities for youth to shape programs, organizations, research, policies and systems that affect their lives.
Through resources, tools, learning opportunities and collaborative approaches, the Action Team supports communities and organizations in creating spaces where young people can meaningfully shape the systems intended to serve them.
Product name: YEER Overview for Organizations (view/download PDF)
Description: The Youth Equity Evaluation Rubric (YEER) was developed as a tool – by and for lived experts – to assess the effectiveness of organizations’ engagement of lived experts as consultants, leaders and decision-makers on 10 key standards. This overview describes the tool, its use and the value it brings to organizations seeking to assess and enhance their engagement of lived experts.
Housing Action Team
The Housing Action Team brings together young people with lived experience, community partners and other stakeholders to strengthen how communities prevent and respond to youth homelessness.
The team focuses on identifying gaps, sharing promising practices and developing practical resources that help communities create more coordinated, youth-centered housing systems, while cultivating a vision of communities that employ equitable development practices that are good for all humans and our planet.
Its work explores the full continuum of housing from prevention and early intervention to crisis response, housing acces, and long-term stability while keeping youth voice, choice, leadership and lived expertise at the center.
Through collaboration, learning and resource development, the Action Team supports communities in building systems where young people can access safe, appropriate and sustainable housing and the supports they need to thrive.
Product name: Foster Youth to Independence (FYI) Housing Voucher Information Session Series (video)
Description: Drawing on research conducted by the Housing Action Team, this series brings together communities to share their experiences navigating the FYI process and shares resources to enhance community capacity to use FYI as one tool in the effort to prevent and end youth homelessness.
- FYI Information Session #1 - Integrating FYI planning into your YHDP/YHSI applications
- FYI Information Session #2 - Lessons learned on connecting FYI with YHDP/YHSI
Decriminalization Action Team
The Decriminalization Action Team works to better understand how the criminalization of young people experiencing homelessness shows up across communities and to identify strategies that can reduce its harm.
The team creates space for communities to recognize patterns, share experiences and lessons learned, and build collective knowledge and power to push back against practices that criminalize young people.
Its work includes exploring how communities can safely and intentionally collect, protect, share and use information to inform advocacy and action.
Prevention Advocacy Work Group
The Prevention Advocacy Work Group focuses on developing resources for thinking systemically about opportunities to change mindsets and skill sets in systems and communities that orient us toward getting upstream to prevent young people from ever having to experience homelessness.
Product name: Preventing Youth Homelessness: A Toolkit for Engaging Communities (view/download PDF)
Description: The Youth Homelessness Prevention Toolkit provides a foundational introduction to preventing youth homelessness before a young person reaches a housing crisis.
The toolkit helps lived experts, advocates, providers, community leaders and youth-serving organizations understand what prevention can look like and begin identifying ways to build or strengthen prevention efforts in their communities.
Rather than presenting prevention as a one-size-fits-all approach, the toolkit encourages communities to consider their unique strengths, barriers and opportunities for change.
Youth Reentry Work Group
The Youth Reentry Work Group collaborates with national partners to consider ways that bridging systems and sectors can enhance our ability to holistically support young people impacted by the juvenile and criminal legal systems as a strategy that is both prevention and intervention of youth homelessness.
Product name: Coming Home: Recommendations for Holistically Supporting Youth & Young Adults During Reentry from Incarceration and Detention (view/download PDF)
Description: This toolkit offers system leaders, providers and advocates a holistic approach, with concrete recommendations, for supporting youth during reentry.