Young Voices Matter: What South Carolina’s Youth Are Telling Us About Homelessness
When we talk about homelessness, it is easy to picture someone sleeping on the street or staying in an emergency shelter. But for many young people, homelessness looks very different.
It can mean sleeping on a friend’s couch. Staying temporarily with relatives. Moving from place to place. Sleeping in a car, a motel, or somewhere that was never meant to be a home.
That is one of the clearest messages from South Carolina’s 2026 Young Voices Matter Youth Homeless Count. The statewide effort brought together agencies, Continuums of Care, volunteers, community organizations, and young people across the state to better understand the experiences of youth who are unstably housed. More than 40 outreach events were held statewide, and 331 young people participated in the survey.
The result is more than a number. It is a clearer picture of what youth homelessness actually looks like in South Carolina.
Homelessness is often hidden
One of the most important findings is also one of the easiest to overlook: many young people experiencing homelessness are not sleeping on the street.
Thirty-two percent of surveyed youth reported that they most often slept at someone else’s apartment or house. Another 21% reported sleeping in a place not meant for human habitation. Others reported staying in transitional housing, emergency shelters, vehicles, motels or hotels, parks, abandoned buildings, or other locations.
This matters because traditional definitions and counting methods can miss young people whose homelessness is less visible.
A young person who is moving between friends’ homes may not consider themselves homeless. A young person who has a temporary place to sleep may not seek help. And someone who does not identify with the word “homeless” may never walk through the doors of a traditional homeless services provider.
The report specifically describes the initiative as an effort to identify hidden youth homelessness and create data that can inform funding, policy, youth housing design, and prevention efforts.
Young people are telling us what they need
When asked what services would be most helpful, housing was the most frequently identified priority.
Among the 185 young people who responded to the question, 43% identified housing as a top priority. Jobs, food, transportation, and shelter services were also among the most common responses.
That response is not surprising, but it is important to hear directly from young people themselves.
Safe, stable housing provides a foundation for everything else. It is much harder to focus on school, employment, health, or long-term goals when you do not know where you will sleep that night.
And young people were clear that housing is not the only issue. The report also identifies employment and economic stability, mental health, family conflict, and difficulty navigating systems and services as significant barriers.
This points to the need for responses that do more than provide a bed or a temporary place to stay. Young people need pathways to stability that connect housing with employment, education, transportation, mental health support, and other resources.
Youth homelessness affects communities across South Carolina
The survey reached young people across all four regions of the state. Of the 331 respondents, 55 reported sleeping most nights in the Upstate, 68 in the Midlands, 164 in the Lowcountry, and 31 in the Pee Dee. Twelve respondents did not report a county in South Carolina.
The report also shows the scale of housing instability among younger students.
During the 2025-26 school year, 18,300 South Carolina students were identified as experiencing homelessness through the McKinney-Vento program. That program supports students experiencing homelessness by helping them remain enrolled in school, including through transportation and other services.
Importantly, McKinney-Vento uses a broader definition of homelessness that includes young people who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence because of housing loss, economic hardship, or similar circumstances.
The numbers show that youth homelessness is not confined to one community or one type of household. It is happening across South Carolina, often in ways that are difficult to see.
The data also tells us who is most affected
The young people surveyed were mostly between 18 and 21, with male and female respondents represented in nearly equal proportions. Among respondents who reported their race, 68% identified as Black or African American.
The McKinney-Vento data tell a similar story. Statewide, Black students made up a substantial portion of students identified as experiencing homelessness, with 9,406 Black students represented in the 2025-26 data.
Understanding who is experiencing homelessness is an important part of understanding where systems may be falling short and where additional support may be needed.
Listening has to be part of the solution
Perhaps the most important part of the Young Voices Matter initiative is not simply that young people were surveyed. It is how the campaign approached the process.
The initiative intentionally reframed the youth count as a statewide campaign rather than simply a data collection exercise. Organizers prioritized relationship-building and community engagement, used decentralized local leadership with centralized coordination, and brought outreach into places where young people already spend time, including recreation centers, small businesses, and churches. Volunteers and youth peers also helped expand outreach.
That approach matters because young people experiencing homelessness often avoid formal systems.
If we only look for young people in shelters, service offices, or other traditional settings, we are likely to miss many of the people we are trying to understand.
Instead, we have to go where young people are, build relationships, listen to what they are experiencing, and create systems that respond to what they tell us.
Young people are telling us where to start
The responses in this report are remarkably direct.
- “Stability and a roof over my head.”
- “A place to lay my head.”
- “Housing for people who age out of foster care.”
These are not abstract policy concepts. They are young people describing the things they need to build stable lives.
The 2026 Young Voices Matter report allows South Carolina to listen differently. The data helps make hidden homelessness more visible, but the voices behind the data tell us why that visibility matters.
Youth homelessness cannot be addressed by one organization, one program, or one community. It requires collaboration across housing, education, employment, health, transportation, and other systems.
Most importantly, it requires listening to young people themselves.
Because if we want to build systems that work for young people, we have to make sure young people have a voice in building them.
