Pearl Jam announced a statewide effort to end youth homelessness at a press conference in Seattle on Thursday. You can watch it in its entirety below, and read the announcement:
Every year, more than 13,000 unaccompanied young people under the age of 25 experience homelessness in the state of Washington – 1,500 experience homelessness on any given night in Seattle and King County alone.
Every person deserves a safe and stable home. To achieve this goal, Pearl Jam is banding together with two efforts — working in coordination — to end youth homelessness in King County and across Washington State.
These two initiatives will help prevent young people from becoming homeless in the first place, making it significantly less likely that they will ever experience homelessness as an adult.
The band will work with All Home on their initiative to ensure that every young person in Seattle and King County has a home by 2020.
All Home is already executing this work. By using real-time data to see which programs and methods are working–then scaling them up–they are building a coordinated system that is flexible and adaptable. Their efforts resulted in a 22% decrease in youth homelessness from 2017 to 2018.
Pearl Jam will also support A Way Home Washington’s “Anchor Community” initiative, a pilot program to end youth homelessness in four Washington communities by 2022.
“On behalf of The Home Shows, we’re excited to announce our support for these two coordinated efforts to end youth homelessness in Seattle and Washington State. This is the first major donation to come out of The Home Shows Fund, and we’re ready to continue our work with All Home and A Way Home Washington to help make sure every young person in our community has a home,” said Stone Gossard.
Just as our community came together around The Home Shows, these initiatives will bring together nonprofits, government agencies, businesses, schools, families, and the community, to connect young people with the services they need to exit homelessness quickly, and find permanent and safe housing.
A huge thank you to all of our partners and fans for making this possible. We look forward to announcing more in the coming days.
Read All Home’s community plan and visit A Way Home’s Anchor Communities page for more info.
