New Policy Brief on Young Children Identified As Homeless in PA

Posted by HopePHL on November 4, 2025

This report is Part 1 in a series that seeks to inform state and local practitioners and policymakers about young children identified as experiencing homelessness in Pennsylvania. It updates an earlier summary using data from the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE). Part 2 will focus on data from the HUD Continuum of Care System in Pennsylvania and other sources.

Highlights of this report are:

• Overall, PDE identified 10,601 children birth through kindergarten as experiencing homelessness during the 2023-24 school year, representing a 4% increase over one year and a 13% increase over five years.
• The largest increase was in the category of preschool-aged children: a 3% increase in children identified over one year but a 32% increase over five years. We attribute this to numerous efforts, including our work with the School District’s Head Start program.
• Although infants and toddlers accounted for 34% of the 10,601 children identified in 2023-24, this represented a negligible difference over the last year but a 6% decrease over five years.

We offer the following recommendations:

1. The homeless housing and education systems need to increase collaboration in the collection and reporting of data, noting the different definitions used to identify and track homelessness, in particular partnering to address children living “doubled up”, a definition accounting for 70% of identified children enrolled in LEA prekindergarten through grade 12 in the 2023-24 school year which acknowledges children’s unique need for stability to grow and learn.
2. Locally, the homeless housing and the education systems need to cooperate to connect families experiencing homelessness to housing, especially for those living doubled up, with multiple families in one home.
3. Across the Commonwealth, there is an urgent need to better identify infants and toddlers and ensure their access to early learning programs like home visiting.

Read the full report.