It’s a group driven by two large converging forces: an economy that has been especially brutal on young people, and the large numbers currently exiting foster care.
Tony Torres, 22, sits in his room at a temporary housing unit in Seattle’s University District on Oct. 3. Torres recently received emergency housing after being homeless for four years.
Twenty-two-year-old Tony Torres sags, exhausted, onto the pavement just beyond a skate park where kids from this affluent Seattle suburb, Bellevue, flip tricks off ramps to the beat of a boombox. This is a safe place to hang out until he knows whether he’ll get a bed on this night at the nearby YMCA, which donates its rec room as a shelter for young adults at night.
His odds of getting a spot to throw a mat on the floor are about one in seven.
Torres is joined by a few other worn-out looking young people, who sling their packs down and slump against the wall. They’ve all been on their feet all day, moving from park to park, job application to job application, library to library — anywhere they can hang for a few minutes before being asked to move along.
Young adults are the new face of homelessness.
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