According to a recent series of research briefs on youth and young adult homelessness by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, in the U.S., 1 in 10 young adults, or 3.5 million young people ages 18-25, experience homelessness in a year. Of that 3.5 million (73%) are homeless for one month or more.

For those young adults, homelessness means a variety of experiences, ranging from sleeping outdoors, or in abandoned buildings, or in emergency shelters, to sleeping in cars, or “couch surfing.”

Some groups of young adults are more likely to find themselves homelessness than others. That “more likely” list includes LGBTQ young people, those of color, young adults who are unmarried parents, and those who don’t have a GED or high school diploma.

Yet most dramatically, nearly half of the young adults who experience homelessness have been locked up—in their youth or in young adulthood, either in the juvenile or the adult justice system.

[For more of this story, written by Celeste Fremon, go to http://witnessla.com/why-so-ma...need-to-do-about-it/]