The Journey Home on Capitol Hill

On Oct. 9, Covenant House is bringing together staff, board members, and advocates to meet with key members of Congress and their staff to discuss critical issues affecting youth experiencing homelessness and survivors of human trafficking. Together, we’ll meet with lawmakers and make our voices heard to create positive change for young people across the U.S., Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala. We will advocate for The Journey Home, with the goal of ending youth homelessness as we know it today.

It's not our first time on the Hill either. While we’ve always advocated for youth throughout our history, in the last several years we’ve focused precisely on the most effective policies that support our goals in The Journey Home. Our plan is divided into three focus areas: prevention, intervention, and restoration. Each of these is a critical step to reducing youth homelessness, by preventing youth from ever becoming homeless, intervening when they are in crisis, and providing restorative aftercare that breaks the cycles of poverty and homelessness. All these areas are deeply influenced by government policy, which is why we have several main policies we will focus on.

Our main areas of policy focus are:

1. Homeless Children and Youth Act: Aligning the definition of homelessness to increase access to housing and services for all youth experiencing homelessness.
2. Runaway & Homeless Youth and Trafficking Prevention Act: Ensuring youth experiencing homelessness have access to safe places to live, including transitional housing, and wraparound services, like mental healthcare, workforce development, legal services, and more.
3. Affordable-for-Youth Housing: Targeted meetings to engage and educate key congressional leaders about why access to affordable-for-youth housing is critically important to ending youth homelessness.
4. For Latin America: Protecting the safety and well-being of children and youth in Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala, including those returning to their country of origin voluntarily or following deportation.

We’ll also advocate for FY26 federal funding to support critically necessary support services for Covenant House programs, including workforce development, mental health, and targeting community projects.

Covenant House stands ready to be an objective partner for all government officials looking for proven solutions to reduce homelessness in the long term. With the support of the federal government and all our partners, we can greatly reduce the expected tripling of youth homelessness over the next 10 years.

While we take to Capitol Hill, you too can take action to end youth homelessness as we know it. Take the Action Pledge today, and stay updated on what you can do to help youth across the country.