National report says homelessness rife among young adults

Kayla Cathcart was 18 the first time she was rendered homeless.

She was living place to place, staying wherever she could, splitting the rent with whichever friend had an extra couch, moving on a moment’s notice when it didn’t work out.

“I was never on the street exactly, wondering where I was going to lay my head,” Cathcart says, “but my housing just wasn’t stable.”

If she uses the word “stable” once, she uses it at least two dozen times over the course of a two-hour conversation.

“You have no idea what it’s like,” she says. “It’s ridiculous.”

In many ways, Cathcart is the “new face” of the young and the homeless, says Heather Wiegand, the chief operating officer of Every Woman’s Place/Webster House of Muskegon where she works with runaway and homeless youth. Wiegand is also the board chair of the Michigan Network for Youth and Families.

Young adults like Cathcart confound the stereotypes of “the homeless living in cardboard boxes on street corners or under bridges like we see on the news in big cities,” Wiegand says.

www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2011/01/americas_secret_homelessness_r.html