Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation was recently featured in Atlanta Daily World’s article that covers Atlanta’s youth housing crisis.
Roughly 12,000 metro Atlanta students ages 13-17 experience housing insecurity every day, driven by the lack of affordable housing, economic hardship, and family instability. The crisis falls hardest on Black youth (71%) and LGBTQ+ youth (28%). As Annie E. Casey Foundation CEO Lisa Lawson noted at the recent Atlanta Thrive Summit, unstable housing makes young people more likely to drop out of school, face justice system involvement, and struggle with long-term health.
That call is exactly what AVLF has been answering in Atlanta classrooms since 2016.
AVLF’s Role: Standing With Our Neighbors
At the recent Atlanta Thrive Summit hosted by the Annie E. Casey Foundation at Pittsburgh Yards, AVLF was recognized alongside organizations like Covenant House Georgia, Partners for HOME, and CareerReady ATL for our work keeping families housed and kids in school.
Our Standing With Our Neighbors program embeds legal help directly where families need it most: inside schools. What began as a single partnership with Thomasville Elementary has grown into a presence at nine Atlanta Public Schools, giving families facing eviction or housing displacement direct access to legal assistance before a housing crisis becomes a homelessness crisis.
The results matter beyond the courtroom. When a family stays housed, a child stays enrolled, stays connected to the same teachers and friends, and avoids the disruption that so often triggers the outcomes Lawson describes: missed school, involvement with the justice system, and lasting harm to wellbeing. Stable housing is protective, and legal representation is often the difference between a family staying in their home and a child becoming one of the thousands of Atlanta students without one.
Why This Work Continues
The scale of the crisis is daunting; nationally, more than 1.5 million children and youth experienced homelessness in the 2023-2024 school year alone, the highest number ever recorded. But the Summit’s message, and ours, is that solutions exist when communities are intentional about connecting young people to basic needs like housing.
AVLF will keep showing up in Atlanta schools, because every family we help stay housed is a child who stays in the classroom instead of on the streets.
Learn more about AVLF’s Standing With Our Neighbors program and how you can support this work by visiting www.avlf.org/swon