By Lourdes Medrano for Yes! Media. Broadcast version by Mark Richardson for Arizona News Connection, reporting for the YES! Media-Public News Service Collaboration.

For more than three years, 23-year-old Baneen Albotaify bounced from one friend's house to another, sleeping on couches or in laundry rooms while working on her college degree. The stress was high, but she couldn't afford a place of her own.

"I was really depressed. I was always in survival mode," says Albotaify, who lives in Tucson, Arizona.

After a friend told her about I Am You 360, a nonprofit that provides housing for young people, she applied for the program and her life began to change for the better. Albotaify is currently living in a studio apartment in a 10-unit building run by the nonprofit, alongside other formerly unhoused folks. She now works as an electrical technician and, after taking a semester off school, she plans to continue college in the fall.

By year's end, Albotaify and some of her fellow tenants are slated to move into a new I Am You 360 housing project: an eco-friendly tiny house village currently under construction that, when completed, will include 10 homes, a water-harvesting system, and a community garden.

"We want to set them up for success," says Desiree Cook, the nonprofit's founder and executive director.

Success, for Cook, means integrating unsheltered young people back into society as well-rounded productive citizens. With a place to live, Cook says, these young people will no longer be continually victimized in the streets. While living in the tiny houses, tenants will have access to not only various tools that will help them forge a new life, but also common spaces where they can build community.

"There's a difference between giving someone a house and giving them a house so that it can be a home," Cook says.

The tiny-house village will be Tucson's first, but in recent years, cities from Seattle to Los Angeles to Madison, Wisconsin, to Austin, Texas, have turned to these affordable and energy-efficient living spaces to shelter people experiencing homelessness. Although programs and resources vary greatly, tiny houses are usually a step up from overnight shelters and short-term transitional housing, because they can provide shelter for longer periods of time, and act as a bridge to permanent housing.

I Am You 360 settled on a construction method known as insulated concrete form for its tiny houses: interlocking modular foam blocks that are stacked and then filled with concrete. This method appealed to the nonprofit because it's more energy-efficient and more durable than wood-frame houses, which will mean more utilities savings for tenants in the long run.

"We want our homes to be more sustainable, so they can be here for generations to come," Cook says.

But housing advocates say the tiny house trend (like all proposed housing solutions) is not an end-all to homelessness if it doesn't include access to services people need to stay healthy and keep a roof over their heads.

"A lot depends on whether it's part of a coordinated strategy to reduce homelessness or just a form of shelter that's put out there with nothing else," says Steve Berg, vice president of programs and policy at the National Alliance to End Homelessness. "I think that's the key today."

The nation's homeless population totaled about 580,000 on a single night in January 2020, according to an annual survey by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Slightly more than 34,000 were unaccompanied young people, and of those, 90% were between the ages of 18 and 24. In Arizona, nearly 11,000 individuals were unsheltered.

The HUD count does not reflect the changes brought about by COVID-19, which exacerbated homelessness across the country. Berg says outreach workers have noticed a surge in the unsheltered population since the pandemic began. The 2021 count is considered incomplete because many cities did not conduct one, and HUD has yet to issue a 2022 report to Congress.

Still, these official surveys only include people staying in emergency shelters, transitional housing, bus stations, parks, and other temporary sites (not those like Albotaify, who are living in homes that aren't their own). Many are young people who age out of the foster care system at age 18 and end up living on the streets.

"We have to remove the temporary housing mindset," Cook says. "It should be about permanent housing so that these kids can thrive."

Cook's desire to help young people experiencing homelessness or foster care is rooted in her own experience. During her struggles with drug addiction, she became unhoused and was incarcerated, and four of her children were placed in foster care. After being released from incarceration, taking steps toward recovery, reuniting with her children, and getting married, she decided to lend a helping hand to a young population that she says is often stigmatized.

"Society has done so much damage to these kids," she says.

Cook established I Am You 360 in 2014 to provide free hygiene products to foster group homes. Seeing the other needs of foster youths motivated her to incorporate a housing component into the nonprofit's programming. Having a safe, affordable place to live is a significant step toward achieving stability and self-sufficiency, Cook adds.

Studies have shown that stable housing is key to people's overall well-being, too. That's something Albotaify can attest to. Last year, after moving into the 350-square-foot studio that was her space alone, her stress levels dropped, and she was able to focus on school and make up courses she had failed.

"It was honestly a dream come true," she says of her new home. "It has given me a lot of stability and improved my mental health."

Future tenants who are not already in the program (or living in the apartments) must be between 18 and 22 years old when they move into the 450-square-foot houses. They will pay $1 per square foot in rent, which includes utilities, and they can stay for two to three years. Half of the rent they pay during this time will be set aside in an escrow account, and when the young tenants move out, they will get that savings back to put toward the down payment on a house. I Am You 360 connects residents with nonprofit partners to guide them through the process of buying their first home and help find housing assistance programs that fit their needs.

In the next five years, the nonprofit plans to purchase the studio apartment complex it is currently renting and expand to build a second tiny house village modeled on the first.

The 10 young people who currently live in the apartment complex frequently gather at the I Am You 360 headquarters in a lounge filled with green, yellow, and orange furniture. Affirmations printed on colorful paper grace a wall next to a mirror, to encourage self-esteem development. "I am somebody," one states. Given the trauma they've endured in their young lives, Cook understands how difficult it can be for them to relearn how to trust others and themselves, and stop expecting the worst.

"We have to turn all that around, so that they're looking at the glass half-full, rather than half-empty," she says.

While temporary housing is important, Berg said that to help lower the number of unhoused people, it's imperative that tiny house programs across the country also incorporate access to a wide spectrum of services, whether on-site or through partnerships. That's why I Am You 360 offers assistance through partner organizations to help tenants find employment assistance and medical, behavior health, and other services.

The tiny house village will be built on land owned by I Am You 360, next door to the nonprofit's headquarters. This could facilitate more on-site program operations-like resident workshops on employment, education, financial literacy, and life skills-that don't require outside coordination or transportation.

Eventually, the former tiny house tenants will be living on their own, so Berg stresses the importance of connecting graduating program participants with landlords who will rent affordable housing to program participants, as well as help finding employment and obtaining medical care after leaving the tiny house village.

Cook says she spends much of her time working to raise awareness about the value of investing in the housing program. She says rising inflation in the past couple of years has already increased the cost of building each tiny house from $40,000 to $75,000, which makes fundraising to build them even more challenging but all the more important. The city recently allocated $500,000 to the nonprofit, an investment derived from federal stimulus funds. The money, Cook says, will go a long way toward providing housing for young people like Albotaify.

"This program gave me a safe space to live in peace," Albotaify says.

Cook emphasizes that people becoming unhoused is a community issue, not an individual failing. So possible solutions will come down to the investment and collaboration of communities.

"It's going to take all of us to work on it together," Cook says. That will take time, but the goal is to build a sustainable future rather than a quick fix. "It takes community compassion to invest for a long-term change."

Lourdes Medrano wrote this article for YES! Magazine. Medrano is an independent journalist in southern Arizona, where she writes about immigration, underserved communities, the environment and other matters of importance in both the United States and Mexico. A 2020-21 Knight Science Journalism fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she has written for various publications including the Washington Post, Undark Magazine, The Atlantic and Audubon Magazine. She speaks English and Spanish. Reach her via Twitter at @_LourdesMedrano


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The North Dakota Legislature is considering bolstering funding to help military veterans facing homelessness. Key voices say more details need to be sorted out. The state Senate this week unanimously approved a bill that, under its original intent, directed gaming tax proceeds from support organizations, such as pull tabs at an American Legion, to programs and funds for veterans with specific needs. Stable housing is among them.

Christopher Deery, veterans service director leads veterans services for Cass County, said during recent testimony that offices like his want to get a roof over the head of all past servicemembers. But challenges still get in the way, such as pandemic relief drying up.

"We have a lot of veterans with a lot of needs. We're slowly running out of options here, and we just need a little bit of help so we can get that number to zero," he explained.

The bill has cleared both legislative chambers without opposition. But a primary sponsor says because of changes during the voting process, there's still discussion about final language - namely what the funding levels should look like. That suggests additional votes this session. There was chatter during debate about opening the floodgates for support groups for other causes.

Through its Supportive Services for Veteran Families program, Community Action Partnership of North Dakota says it handled an additional 70 cases last year. Of those seeking help, all were either on the brink of homelessness, or already without a home.

Max Pontenila, program specialist veteran and program specialist for the group's Minot office, said as they cobble together resources, they're balancing the need of building trust with clients.

"As veterans, and this is true even on a personal level, raising your hand saying, 'Hey, I need help,' that is a hard experience," he said.

Advocates suggest that hard experience could become more common if the resources aren't there. Nationally, the number of veterans experiencing homelessness declined last year. But there was a 7% increase the previous year, marking the first such spike in a while.

By Angela Hart for KFF Health News.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the KFF Health News-Public News Service Collaboration

As flames engulfed a nearby canyon, dozens of residents in a sober-living home fled to an unoccupied building about 30 miles south. The evacuees, many of whom were previously homeless, watched helplessly as their home burned on live TV.

When they awoke on air mattresses the next morning, loss set in. Some feared uncertainty. Others were jolted back to lives they thought they’d left behind.

“I had nothing but the clothes on my back. It just brought back all of those feelings of being homeless and a drug addict,” said one resident, Sean Brown. “Kind of like I was back at square one.”

The large two-story Altadena house, known to staff and residents as Art House, was surrounded by fruit trees and rugged mountains. For many, it was a safe space that enabled them to achieve and maintain sobriety, rebuild relationships, and hold down jobs.

Brown, 35, was among nearly 50 people displaced in January after the massive Eaton Fire destroyed one property and damaged another operated by the nonprofit Los Angeles Centers for Alcohol and Drug Abuse. Supported by public dollars, the organization provides housing and behavioral health treatment to people struggling with addiction, many who had been living on the streets. Operators say both properties are uninhabitable and that they are searching for permanent housing for those displaced.

“Our residents are still in temporary lodging. Right now we’re looking for something on an interim basis, but we still need to identify long-term housing for them,” said Juan Navarro, CEO of the nonprofit. “And we need even more beds. We’re seeing even bigger demand for treatment and services after the fires.”

In the weeks since one of the nation’s costliest natural disasters, it’s become evident that the Los Angeles wildfires have not only displaced people who had dug themselves out of homelessness and gotten into housing, but also dealt a blow to the region’s homelessness response. That far-reaching system of care formed by government agencies and local nonprofits has been buoyed by billions of dollars from the city, county, and state in recent years to combat California’s homelessness epidemic.

Now, wildfires are adding pressure to a system already under tremendous strain in getting chronically homeless people indoors. Homeless service operators and street medicine providers have been putting pressure on state and local leaders to allocate more funding to house people on the streets, but they are running up against competing demands for wildfire recovery — and tighter budgets.

“Many of the people we work with have already lost everything and they’re trying to rebuild their lives, and now there’s a whole other group of people doing the same thing and competing for the same resources,” said Jennifer Hark Dietz a licensed clinical social worker and the CEO of PATH, which provides services and housing for homeless people.

In recent years, state and local leaders have leveraged unprecedented investments to open thousands of shelters and temporary and permanent units. That’s helped Los Angeles County and the state notch meaningful gains, even as more than 187,000 people remain homeless in California, including 75,000 people across Los Angeles County.

The 2024 homelessness tally showed a 45% increase in the number of people who in the past year moved off the streets into permanent housing, and the number who moved from tents into temporary housing rose 32%, according to Va Lecia Adams Kellum, CEO of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which leads the countywide homelessness response system. That’s nearly 30,000 permanent housing placements across Los Angeles County.

And while homelessness rose 18% nationwide from 2023 to 2024, according to the most recent federal estimate, it increased only 3% in California. More strikingly, Los Angeles County reduced overall homelessness, albeit slightly.

The number of people living outside fell 5.1% in Los Angeles County, and in the city of Los Angeles, the number of unsheltered people dropped 10.4%.

That hard-fought progress is now in peril as the wildfires displaced tens of thousands of Los Angeles residents and destroyed more than 16,000 structures. Affordable housing, already in short supply, is being further strained.

Formerly homeless people who have experienced addiction, domestic violence, or mental illness now worry they won’t be prioritized for placements, despite losing their homes and qualifying for state and local homelessness initiatives to get people indoors. Many homeless people who have long waited for housing will be forced to wait even longer, as more displaced people face homelessness and compete for costly housing.

Homeless Again

It’s unclear how many formerly homeless people are homeless again. Street medicine providers and other front-line workers say some are temporarily living in hotels, while others moved in with friends or family members.

There’s evidence that some have fallen back into homelessness.

“We’re already seeing some people have moved into their vehicles because they don’t have the money to pay for even temporary housing,” Adams Kellum said. “Before the fires, we were already seeing very vulnerable people unable to manage their rents, so this competition for housing puts people at even greater risk for homelessness.”

Adams Kellum said coordinating resources and services across a vast region has led to major progress but that more money is needed to help move people from short-term to permanent housing.

For now, residents of the burned-down Art House will be allowed to reside in an empty building in Santa Fe Springs that the nonprofit had planned to redevelop for residential treatment, Navarro said. He said the nonprofit is looking for more stable housing for those displaced but that rehousing them at Art House remains out of reach for now.

Residents grieve the loss of the Art House’s transformative setting, which they call an “empowerment campus.” Brown said that he has embraced that ethos, even as he has been displaced and remains traumatized by the wildfires. He is currently working two jobs and taking classes toward a bachelor’s degree.

Paul Rosales, a 24-year-old in recovery from meth, said Art House was a place of healing. “That’s where I found myself; it’s where I built my recovery. There was a beautiful orange tree, and the mountains were just a short walk away where you could meditate and watch the sunset.

“It was away from Skid Row. I knew I was safe,” Rosales said. “That’s all gone now.”

Residents say they’re grateful they aren’t on the streets, but anxiety grows by the day, especially for queer and transgender people who had formed a community there.

“It’s constant stress of not knowing if I’m going to be in a stable housing situation,” said Alexandria Castaneda, 29, who was addicted to meth but got sober after getting indoors.

Battle for Resources

Sarah Hoppmeyer, chief program officer for Union Station Homeless Services, which provides housing for people on the streets, said she worries about dwindling resources. She and other providers stressed the importance of not overlooking people currently stuck in homelessness, many of whom have been waiting years for housing.

“We don’t want the wildfires to de-prioritize people who were already experiencing homelessness,” she said.

Elected leaders have pledged to preserve the gains Los Angeles County has made in reducing homelessness by allocating existing resources and demanding more. Several voter-approved initiatives in Los Angeles are critical, they say, but so too is lobbying for state support.

“Without continued and expanded support and resources, we risk losing ground” in reducing the number of people living on the streets, said Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, chair of the county board.

Previous massive fires have led to increases in homelessness, including in 2018 in Sonoma County and in 2024 on Maui, whose homelessness rate soared the year after fires.

State Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, a Democrat whose district includes parts of Los Angeles County that burned in the wildfires, said she will continue pressing for additional homelessness funding as a member of the Senate budget committee. While Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration says the state has plowed an unprecedented $27 billion into local homelessness response and prevention initiatives, he didn’t include any new money for battling the homelessness crisis in his proposal this year.

“Unfortunately, this year we didn’t see additional money being placed into that fund,” Pérez said. “But we have to keep making these investments.”

Newsom said Monday the state should not continue to “fund failure.” He said he is open to negotiations with cities, counties, and state lawmakers so long as any new homelessness funding comes with greater accountability, meaning that local governments use the money to clear encampments, dismantle tents, and reduce unsheltered homelessness.

Newsom officials stressed that the state budget is tight — it’s narrowly balanced and under greater strain than in previous years, with threats from the Trump administration and the potential loss of critical federal funding for programs such as Medicaid. The governor said he is “hopeful that we can land on an agreement,” but he warned the state could claw back funding if local governments aren’t adequately addressing street homelessness.

“We have been too permissive as it relates to encampments and tents. We need them cleaned up,” Newsom said. “We’re providing unprecedented support. Now we need to see unprecedented results.”

Assembly member John Harabedian, another Los Angeles-area Democrat, said additional homelessness spending is critical for wildfire victims and to continue combating the crisis statewide.

“Those folks who were already homeless, who just got into some sort of housing stability but then lost it again — they’re going to need immediate attention,” he said. “Our system is failing people.”


Angela Hart wrote this story for KFF Health News.


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There are only 26 affordable housing units in Colorado for every 100 low-income households, according to a new report listing Colorado as the sixth least-affordable state in the nation.

The report links the lack of affordable housing to decades of underinvestment at both the federal and state level.

Kinsey Hasstedt, state and local policy director for Enterprise Community Partners in Colorado, said rents and mortgages have become too high for many essential workers.

"We've seen for a long time wages not keep up with the cost of living here," Hasstedt pointed out. "I think this is particularly true for folks who are working in lower-wage jobs, often having to work multiple jobs."

Eight in 10 Coloradans who work in low-paying jobs -- in education, health care and the service industry -- spend more than half their income just to stay housed. Private developers have constructed plenty of homes for top earners and investors. There are currently 22,000 vacant housing units in metro Denver alone, more than five empty homes for every Coloradan experiencing homelessness.

The Trump administration has fired federal workers and frozen housing assistance funds as it works to remake government and reduce waste. Hasstedt noted ending HUD's Green and Resilient Retrofit Program would put existing affordable housing stock at risk of being turned into market-rate homes.

"If we lose funds like that federal program, that are able to help preserve buildings and their affordability, then the addition of any new affordable development is really just going to be kind of adding to a bucket that's leaking out of the bottom," Hasstedt argued.

Colorado lawmakers are considering measures aiming to streamline homeless support infrastructure and keep people from losing their housing, including domestic violence survivors.

Hasstedt emphasized it is important to be strategic when investing limited public resources.

"We really need to be targeting and prioritizing those funds to the households and the people of Colorado who need them most," Hasstedt contended. "What we have seen in recent years is an interest from lawmakers in directing those funds into serving higher-income households."


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