Seventeen-year-old Aster Powell moved in with a close friend last year near Sunriver and started working at an entertainment center to pay for food, gas and his $400 rent bill.

With extra money from his first paycheck, he bought a tent and a propane stove.

Those items were a safety net for Powell. Growing up in Central Oregon without stable housing — a trailer with frozen and leaky water pipes, a house without heat or electricity and a tent at Tumalo State Park in the middle of winter — Powell knew how quickly his situation could change.

After bouncing back and forth between subpar living conditions with both parents, Powell left home. His family never had money growing up, while other factors put him at an even higher risk of youth homelessness: he is transgender, Latino, diagnosed with autism and ADHD and walks with a cane or crutches due to a physical disability.

The Central Oregon region and the state as a whole have some of the highest rates of homeless youth who are unsheltered, with about 4 out of 5 not in shelter, according to the most recent national assessment. The 2024 Point-In-Time Count found 328 homeless people were under the age of 24 in Central Oregon, nearly one-fifth of the total count across the region.

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Of homeless youth counted in Central Oregon in 2023, half of them were living on their own as “unaccompanied youth,” about double the proportion of the national average. The proportion of homeless youth under the age of 18, as compared to those 18 to 24, also far exceeds the national average.

Homelessness agencies say these data are imprecise and likely an undercount.

Though rates of youth homelessness are high, 2024 was an exciting year for leaders tackling youth homelessness in Central Oregon. Two first-of-their kind regional planning efforts brought together youth and young adults, service providers, local government leaders and others to discuss holes in the system, setting the stage for new solutions in 2025 and beyond.

“To say that we’re going to solve youth homelessness in a year or two is unrealistic,” said Julie Lyche, executive director of Family Access Network, a nonprofit dedicated to connecting youth and families to basic needs and housing resources. “These plans give us a starting point and help us prioritize where we want to be going, which in some ways is half the battle.”

Incorporating youth voices

In 2023, the Homeless Leadership Coalition, a partnership of nonprofits responsible for managing homelessness in Central Oregon, received $1 million in federal funding earmarked specifically for youth homelessness projects. The money was allocated to J Bar J Youth Services to help rehouse homeless youth by providing rent assistance and case management services. Sixteen people are now enrolled in the program.

The grant also kickstarted a process that could have broader implications for youth homelessness in years to come. Late in 2023, it created the local Youth Action Board, five members ages 16-24, most of whom have been homeless, putting young people at the center of the coordinated effort to end homelessness among their peers.

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Incorporating youth voices is an important part of the work, said Eliza Wilson, runaway and youth homelessness program director at J Bar J Youth Services.

“If we build a system or improve a system without their input, they’re not going to use it,” she said.

Wilson lived in local youth shelters when she was homeless as a young person in the 2000s. At that time, police took runaway teens with nowhere else to go to juvenile detention centers, she said.

Kids often leave home because they feel unsafe, or because of family issues or abuse, Wilson said.

“I remember the police picking us up, taking us to juvenile, waiting to see if our parents would come for us, and when they didn’t, we just had to sit there,” she said.

Youth and families need a different kind of shelter and transitional housing than the general homeless population, Wilson said. Resources have grown in that department, most recently with J Bar J’s transitional housing triplex on Wilson Avenue in Bend. That added to a similar project completed in Redmond in 2023. Dozens of beds are available for youth and families through The Loft and Grandma’s House in Bend.

Still, the options are limited for youth without a place to go. The youth board recommended advocating for a new “scattered site” shelter model by the end of 2025.

“Having these localized, smaller homes and supportive housing for our teens is a pretty awesome model, and something I hope we can expand upon,” said Lyche, adding that helping teens develop a rental history is a crucial component to getting housing as a young adult.

Seeking a safe place to go

Another project idea came from the first-ever Deschutes Civic Assembly, a meeting where governments, nonprofits and many local residents deliberated and then delivered a set of recommendations on youth homelessness. A top item was the creation of a central hub service and recreation center for teens.

“A lot of us dealing with homelessness never had a safe place to go,” said Anthony Angell, outgoing co-chair of the Youth Action Board who has been homeless most of his life.

Angell, 25, entered Oregon’s foster care system at 14. With no landing place upon leaving the system four years later, he ended up moving to Central Oregon to live out of his car.

According to a federal report, 25% to 30% of youth who are homeless have previous experience with the foster care system. Improving the foster system by helping kids transition and providing life skills was high on the civic assembly’s list of recommendations, citing anticipated reforms as a result of the Wyatt B. v. Kotek settlement in May. The case was a class action lawsuit on behalf of mistreated foster children.

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For Angell, finding basic resources and help with life as a homeless young person in Central Oregon was challenging not necessarily because the resources didn’t exist, but because he didn’t know where to find them. By the end of 2025, the youth board hopes to set up a bilingual crisis line to provide information about services and push out information with a website, brochures and other marketing.

State level advocacy

The youth board also hopes to influence policy changes, specifically the 10-day drop policy, an Oregon law that requires school districts to withdraw any student who misses 10 consecutive days of school without an excuse. Youth Action Board member Paige Press, a sophomore at Bend High School, said the policy is a “huge limiter” not only for keeping students enrolled, but for maintaining kids’ access to important resources at school.

Press said the board wants to advocate to the state and Bend-La Pine Schools to modify the 10-day drop policy.

The policy, a state requirement to align funding formulas, does not bar students from returning to school, said Scott Maben, communications director with Bend-La Pine Schools. Students are added back to active enrollment upon their return.

Powell, who grew up in Central Oregon without stable housing, is on track to graduate with an honors diploma from La Pine High School in the spring, despite being forced to choose at times between attending school and dealing with other life responsibilities. He’s missed calls from doctors, insurance and Social Security while in class. He skipped school to help his friend and housemate get a driver’s license while their mother worked a long shift to ensure the family could pay rent.

“It’s rough when you have to skip your own education just to get someone something that they need,” Powell said. “If it’s between us making rent and me missing a day off my education, I’ll take a day off my education.”