Youth Health and Housing Lab

The YHHL works alongside youth and community at the intersection of housing and health to advance health equity among youth experiencing homelessness. Based in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Pediatrics, YHHL and its partners apply academic research to learn more about barriers and facilitators of health equity, design and test youth-driven solutions, and implement those solutions together. 
 

Every night in Minnesota, approximately 6,000 youth face homelessness. Over 13,300 unaccompanied youth experience homelessness in Minnesota in a single year. BIPOC and LGBTQ+ youth are disproportionately represented among them, a result of systemic oppression and marginalization.

Health begins where we live, learn, work and play. When a young person lacks safe and stable housing, it takes a toll on their physical and mental health. While various local programs aim to help, many youth still face barriers to healthcare, public health supports, and social services. The system remains fragmented.
 

An integrated, equitable approach to meeting the needs of youth experiencing homelessness starts with including them in the conversations. Our team is committed to a strengths-based, anti-oppressive, trauma-informed approach rooted in Positive Youth Development: we uplift youth voice, and center equity in every aspect of the work.

We use a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) framework, a best practice in partnering with youth – the experts on their own lived experience – in efforts to improve their health and well being. We use the 9 Evidence-based, Guiding Principles to Help Youth Overcome Homelessness, developed by Minnesota’s Homeless Youth Collaborative for Developmental Evaluation, to guide our methods, messaging, and evaluation.

We approach with humility this work of dismantling systems of oppression and decentering whiteness: we recognize that we are part of a land-grant institution located on the traditional, ancestral and contemporary lands of Indigenous peoples. We acknowledge the University’s history – and that of medical schools in general – of perpetuating trauma in our surrounding communities that has led to harm and mistrust. We further acknowledge that the systems and sectors represented on our team, including healthcare, public health, and housing systems, have perpetuated harm to historically marginalized young people, and have the potential to continue to do so.

For the lab’s complete Equity and Positionality Statement, please email [email protected].

We monitor Minnesota legislation and support policies that dismantle structural oppression and address inequities for youth housing and health. With youth, we advocate through written and oral testimony; educational materials for, letters to and conversations with legislators; and authoring newspaper commentaries. 

Specifically, we support:
 

• Sustained, public investments in safe, supportive and inclusive shelter spaces for youth experiencing homelessness
• Embedded health and well-being supports, including shelter-linked mental health supports; harm reduction services for youth; and onsite healthcare service.
• Interventions that reduce the risk of entry into homelessness, e.g., housing voucher programs, emergency rental assistance.
• Access to non-judgmental substance use and harm reduction resources for youth experiencing homelessness, as well as entry into shelters without mandating sobriety.