Young Americans are living out of cars and using public facilities as families and schools close doors and prioritise budgets
A month before his 18th birthday, Jeffrey Williams found himself homeless. The condition did not come out of blue, as Williams, who was adopted at the age of four, was warned about the fact by his adoptive parents, who said they would not support him after he graduated high school.
"They kind of told me, growing up, that this would happen, but I didn't think that this was actually going to happen,” says Williams. It was the summer of 2008 and Williams, a varsity football player who had just graduated high school, had two months to go before starting college – and a spot on the football team – at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.
I was sitting there and realizing that there are so many homeless [young people] in New Orleans and they don't have a choice to be homeless or to go to school. They don't have the option to go to college, because of all these barriers presented to them. That really bothered me and moved me and I realized, at that moment, that I was going to become homeless."
It got to a point where I went and I printed out all my bank statements for the past three years, and I color coded and highlighted every single expense that I ever purchased to prove to them that I was not spending my money on clothing or things that I did not need."
It's embarrassing and demeaning to have to go into an office and explain to somebody why you don't have that typical American family, why you are homeless. We already have a mindset of what homelessness look like. We think: person on a bench, who is dirty. Maybe a scruffy old man.
We don't see these young flourishing youth that are clean and might have a decent haircut and clothes. These youth, they will go to a 24-hour gas station and bathroom to brush their teeth in, do their hair and pull themselves together to look presentable. But most of the time, they say it's just degrading to go and say 'I am homeless' because we have these pre-assumptions about people who are homeless, that they did something wrong or that they have horrible families."
Most often, we see the exact opposite – that student's homelessness is motivating them to get out of homelessness, to concentrate on their studies, to be as successful as possible. These are students you want on your campus, that you want to do everything you can to support them, you shouldn't be trying to close your doors to them."
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