An Introduction to Homeless Teens
By Leslie Reynolds-Benns, PhD,
www.lesliereynoldsbenns.com

I never fathomed there were homeless teens. I never stopped to think of what happened to the runaways. When seen on the street, they are most often judged as drug addicts and juvenile delinquents--difficult children, disobedient. Who verifies the truth of that perception? Who looks more closely to see if they are the perpetrators or the victims? Or do they remain an invisible population? My state doesn’t allow people under the age of eighteen in shelters, unless accompanied by a responsible adult or their own children. This is a “family values” state, believing that all problems can be solved by strengthening the two-parent family. We can’t have unaccompanied children needing shelter. We have a system that deals with them–the punitive Juvenile Justice System and the Department of Family Services, which is under-funded by our legislature and has been under review for mismanagement.

I was enraged to find that children walk the streets daily, and what’s worse nightly, because there is no provision for them. Homeless Youth Resource Center opened in 1995 as a safe place where homeless teens could get food, donated second-hand clothing, and access to medical care. But the resource center’s hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The teens are on their own at night. What makes them prefer to break into abandoned buildings in five degree weather rather than go home?

Brad Simkins, director of the Resource Center, spoke of arriving at work one cold January morning, a time when my landlord gave the tenants keys to our laundry room to keep the homeless from sleeping in it’s warmth. It was five degrees outside with seven inches of new snow on the ground. A group of kids was waiting at the door to be let in, at 10 a.m. After they entered, one of the teens, acting particularly angry, stomped around, cussing and hitting things. Thinking that he would soon get it out of his system, Brad let him alone for awhile. When it became apparent that the youth wasn’t going to let go, Brad finally said, “Terminator, what are you so upset about?”

The youth turned to him and looked him right in the eye. “When I woke up this morning, the shoes that I was wearing were frozen to the ground.”

That statement was like a bucket of ice water hurled into Brad’s boyish-looking face. He realized that even though he works with these kids every day and feels that he knows them well, the reality is, he hasn’t got the slightest idea of what they’re going through. When the center closes at 6 p.m. each evening, he gets into his heated car and goes home to a hot-cooked meal in his warm house with a clean bed. “I empathize with these kids, and I do all I can for them, but I really haven’t got a clue,” the 40-year-old Simkins says.

Excerpted from Street People: Case Histories of the Homeless

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