TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Youth homelessness comes in many forms.

Some children live in the family car. Some bounce from one motel room to the next. Others couch surf just to have a warm place to sleep. Most go unnoticed, their struggle for stability invisible to the greater community.

“Unless the person is sleeping on your couch, you don’t know it’s happening,” Traverse City resident Shenandoah Chefalo said.

This issue isn’t unique to Traverse City youth. This is an ongoing issue happening all over the United States. An HBO documentary named Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County, highlights the ongoing struggle of homeless children living in one of the richest counties in America, right across the street from Disney world.

The causes of homeless youth are usually put into three inter-related categories: family problems, economic problems, and residential instability according to The National Coalition for the Homeless. 

CNN’s John Sutter produced an interactive feature highlighting the tech boom in Silicon Valley causing cost of living to go up, in return making it difficult for families to afford housing, thus having a trickle-down affect on the children, which in return leads to youth homelessness.  

The Traverse City Human Rights Commission is working to shed light on youth homelessness in the region with a public forum Thursday (Nov. 19) from 7-8:30 p.m. at Garfield Township Hall, 3848 Veterans Drive. 

“This is a really big issue in the area, and people just don’t know a lot about it,” said Mattias Johnson, the commission’s forum chairman.

The coffee shop Purple Door Coffee in Denver, Colorado helps homeless and/or former homeless youth by employing them and teaching skills to leave homelessness behind. The National Network for Youth is working to create a system of resources to ensure that opportunities for growth, safety, and development are available to homeless youth everywhere.

Chefalo knows what it’s like to be homeless as a child; she moved around so much that she attended more than 30 schools before high school graduation. She’s now working on a book about her experiences, “Garbage Bag Suitcase.”

She’ll share her struggle with homelessness and foster care at Thursday’s forum alongside three other panelists: Child and Family Services Youth Services Supervisor Nichole Dilloway, Traverse City Area Public Schools’ Students in Transition Empowerment Program coordinator Abby Jordan, and Traverse City West Senior High School graduate David Van Horn.

In support of National Homeless Youth Awareness Month, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) is providing resources and guides to help families, educators, and policy makers better understand and deal with homeless youth.  

November is National Homeless Youth Awareness Month and cities like Traverse in Indiana are making an effort to spread knowledge about the different types of homelessness that affect approximately 1.7 million young people every year.

Elms write for The (Michigan) Traverse City Record Eagle.