Systemic Contradictions in Serving Transition-Age Youth with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Who Are Experiencing Homelessness: What Are They Telling Us?

Students with disabilities accounted for 20.3% of all homeless students enrolled in public schools in 2021. This represents only students who remain in the public school system. The complex challenges in the lives of homeless students with disabilities become untraceable once they leave the public school system. Exiting from public school results in the discontinuation of special education and relevant services for transition-age youth (TAY) (ages 18-25) with disabilities. Often, TAY with disabilities transitions into adulthood abruptly, without adequate preparation and support, facing multifaceted challenges with a high risk of experiencing chronic homelessness.

Significant housing disparities are apparent among TAY with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) under current practices that emphasize severe visible disabling conditions regarding accessing to housing services, leading to long-term homelessness in their future. However, existing research has limitations in unveiling the multidimensional experiences and systemic barriers that TAY with IDD encounter during their transition into adulthood under the current public education and social service systems. Drawing on intersectionality and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), this study aims to reveal the intersection of disability and homelessness through the voices of youths with disabilities and their caseworkers who provide day-to-day services to them in homeless shelters.

This study uses intersectionality to disclose how disability and homelessness, as socially marginalized identity markers of differences in a stratified society under capitalism and ableism, interplay and perpetuate multiple oppressions. CHAT was selected to expose systemic contradictions accumulated at the interface of different systems and within each system serving homeless youths with disabilities. Between July and October 2022, a qualitative phenomenological study was conducted with eleven service providers who were interviewed via Zoom and four transition-age youths with IDD who were interviewed in person at homeless shelters in two metropolitan areas in Texas. The interviews were analyzed through three rounds of coding to identify emerging themes.

Four key themes emerged from the interviews: (1) A hole in a safety net; (2) Finding a needle in a haystack; (3) Cycle of frustration; and (4) Invisible needs within shelters. The results underscore how multiple vulnerabilities of homeless youths, including disability status, mental health and substance abuse history, limited family resources, and prolonged educational gaps, are susceptible to repeated involvement in emergency healthcare services, law enforcement services, and homelessness. The findings elucidate compounded oppression TAY with IDD experience under the systemic contradictions across the multiple systems that foster their trajectories of homelessness and ongoing invisibility or exclusion in policies, programs, and services that do not address their unique challenges.