A forum last Thursday at the Minnetonka Community Center shed light on the growing problem of youth homelessness, which falls largely under the radar in the suburbs.

The West Hennepin Youth Resource Forum, which drew 225 attendees, featured several youth advocates, a panel discussion, a video screening and a 23-member resource fair that included a wide cross section of service providers.

The event was geared around "what youth homelessness looks like, how to identify it and how to help" address it, said Scott Zemke, the executive director at Community Action Partnership of Suburban Hennepin (CAPSH) in St. Louis Park.

CAPSH collaborated on the event with the Hopkins-based Teens Alone and the ICA Food Shelf in Minnetonka. The agency led a similar event at Brookdale Library in Brooklyn Center in October 2014. Likewise, a third forum in the series is in the works for southwestern Hennepin County this coming spring.

The forum targeted schoolteachers, coaches, probation officers, and caseworkers — anyone who works with youth, according to event organizer Christine Hart, a community developer at CAPSH. "They're the first ones that youth might approach to ask for help," she said. "The more familiar they are, the more advantageous it is for helping youth who are at-risk."

At the event, Zemke, who leads CAPSH, provided some background about the state of affairs surrounding youth homelessness. For a long time now, the suburbs have seen a steady increase in poverty. "Poverty is easier to hide in the suburbs, simply because there is more geographic area and less concentrated poverty," Zemke said.

It stems from various problems not widely associated with the suburbs such as an aging population, changing demographics, teen pregnancy, youth homelessness, school dropouts and sex trafficking. Also, the Great Recession is a major factor, with the loss of jobs and home equity, unemployment and underemployment and wage stagnation, he said.

To add to that, the vast majority of homeless youth defy stereotypes. That is, they're not standing out on a street corner but are in school regularly, said Kristina Fruge, who is the community partnership coordinator for Faith Community Partnership in St. Louis Park.

Often, youth are "couch-hopping" or staying with friends. "They're serving you at the drive-through, and they don't want to stand out. Like typical teenagers, they want to blend in. They're invisible to the larger community," Fruge said.

Yet homelessness is on the rise among youth and the aging. On any given night in Minnesota, 4,080 young people have no place to call home, she said, citing 2012 data from the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation in St. Paul. Hennepin County has 500 homeless youth, and more than half are suburban, with many more unaccounted for, she added.

All kinds of hardship, sometimes unforeseen, can result in homelessness.

Sarah Granger, program director at Teens Alone, who sat on the event's five-person panel, said, "Youth can feel like they're in a stable neighborhood and with a stable family and then all of a sudden, something happens," to overturn that, she said.

In some cases, parents are overwhelmed and stressed out and "they don't have anything left to give." Or, a family is cramped into a small space and an 18-year-old is forced to move out. "We see throwaway kids, and we see families that want to be intact but can't be."

Often, homeless youth lack a support system, said Greg Hildebrandt, an area director for TreeHouse, a faith-based nonprofit organization that works with at-risk youth. Most of the young people he sees come from single-parent homes and they don't have other adults to "trust and fall back on." It means that "when they veer off-course, there's nobody to rein them back in."

Stepping up

Fruge, who first got involved in the issue when a couple of young people she knew personally found themselves in this predicament, has been encouraged by the fact that "once communities become aware of the needs, they do step up," Fruge said, citing various community programs, including a student-run food pantry at St. Louis Park High School.

Wayzata High School surveys students about risk factors, according to its social worker Alec Albee, who sat on the event's five-person panel. The school's website also has a tip line that gives people a place to voice their concerns about individuals, he said.

Every year the school produces a video that shares real-life stories about students overcoming challenges. In the video, it offers help confidentially, which has also been successful in connecting with youth, he said.

Panelist Lisa Ashley, a social worker at Hopkins High School, said, "There are two areas that are flags for us — attendance and academic performance. If those falter, we try to address it. It's intertwined."

The school's media center even allows some students to check out Wi-Fi hot spots when they don't have Internet access at home. "We try to break down as many barriers as we can," she said.

"If a youth feels successful, there won't be as much conflict," at home and elsewhere. "We try to schedule kids in places where they'll be successful," she said.

Granger of Teens Alone shared the story of a client whose first name is Shae. She arrived to Minnesota from Texas with the hope of building a relationship with her birth mother. That didn't work out, and she had nowhere to turn. After talking with a school social worker, though, she was connected to other resources, including Teens Alone, which made a big difference for her.

Today, the teenager is supporting herself. "It's a story of hope and collaboration. She has her struggles, but she's still a success story," Granger said.

Also, Shae serves on the advisory board for the organization. "It's a powerful thing to sit across from a youth and ask them what they want," she said. They usually don't feel that they have much choice in the matter.

Anna Pratt is a Minneapolis freelance writer. She can be reached at annaprattjournalist@gmail.com.