SEM-6050: Seminar: Homeless Youth in America

This course will examine the epidemic of youth homelessness including the history, policy trends, systems and movement for responding. Invisible, alone and thrown away, every night more than 1.3 million youth in the United States are homeless and vulnerable to abuse, disruptions to their education leading to long-term poverty and sex trafficking. These youth represent the failures of child welfare safety nets and juvenile corrections systems. In this course, students will learn about, explore and discuss youth homelessness including emerging policy issues and case law. This course will also examine the issues youth homelessness intersects with including race, racism, institutional bias, discrimination, bullying and harassment of GLBTQ youth. Students will meet and talk with leaders in the homeless youth field and be able to develop and propose promising policy solutions to youth homelessness because of this course. Students may take this course for 2 or 3 credits. Students planning to satisfy the long paper requirement in this course, and students who have already satisfied the long paper requirement and plan to write another long paper in this course, should register for three credits.