1 in 7 NYC Elementary Students Will Experience Homeless, Report Predicts

CHELSEA, NY — A new report cautions that one in seven New York City elementary school students will be homeless at some point in their academic careers if current trends continue.

The report, released on Wednesday by the Institute for Children, Poverty, and Homelessness, presents stark predictions for the future of homeless youth in New York City. The institute found that, largely across the board, the number of homeless students increased last year and would continue to do so absent dramatic change. (For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

Here are some of the report's main findings:

• Over six years, the number of homeless students in New York City increased by 50 percent.
• More than 140,000 students in NYC public schools have been homeless at some point in the last six years.
• If the increase in homelessness continues, the institute predicts that one of every seven public school students will be homeless at some point by the time they reach fifth grade.

Although the problem is particularly acute in the outer boroughs like the Bronx and Brooklyn, some schools in Manhattan are also seeing an increasing in homeless students amid the city's housing crisis. At Liberty High School in Chelsea, an estimated 27 percent of students were homeless in the last school year, up from 20 percent the year before. According to the institute's data, at the Chelsea school an estimated 126 of 463 students were homeless in the 2015-16 school year, the most recent year that the institute analyzed.

"In every school classroom, that’s two or three kids," Anna Shaw-Amoah, principal policy analyst at the institute, told the New York Times. "And the challenges are not just about whether you’re currently living in a shelter or a doubled up setting, but did they have that experience last year, or did they have this experience in kindergarten? The instability really travels with students. If you fall behind in one year, it’s going to be harder to get on grade level the next year."

Lead image via Shutterstock.