About Us

The Need For School on Wheels

There are over 290,000 homeless children in California.

Homeless mothers and children are now the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population, and the percentage of kids who are homeless in the U.S. is greater today than at any point since the Great Depression.

In Los Angeles alone, there are over 25,000 homeless kids from Kindergarten through Grade 12 enrolled in Los Angeles County School Districts and we know that this under-represents significantly the size of the school-aged homeless population in Los Angeles.

Every child needs an education to have hope and a chance for success, and the homeless child is no exception. If School on Wheels can close the gap for these kids, our program has the potential to help stop the cycle of homelessness and to relieve school districts of a tremendous capacity and resource burden.

Homeless Statistics

Finding accurate statistics regarding the number of homeless children is very difficult. Most counts do not specifically identify numbers of children or include families staying in motels or children in group foster homes. Some statistics are point in time and do not fully capture the number of people who experience homelessness over the course of a year. Many parents and children do not identify themselves as homeless because of prejudice and shame. For all of these reasons, no one estimate is the definitive representation of the number of homeless people. We provide some of them below to present the magnitude of the problem.

United States

One in every 50 American Children go to sleep without a home of their own each year.
Approximately 1.6 million children are homeless annually in the United States.
Of the 3.5 million people who will experience homelessness over the course of a year, nearly half is part of a family seeking shelter. 25% are children under the age of 18 years.
There are almost 800,000 children and youth served in foster care each year in the United States.

California

More than 292,624 California children experience homelessness each year.
Of the 2,200,000 children living in poverty in California, thirteen out of every one hundred (13%) are homeless. (www.homelesschildrenamerica.org)
Families with young children now account for 40% of the homeless population.

Los Angeles County

The number of homeless people in Los Angeles is higher than any other US urban area.
Approximately, 141,737 residents of Los Angeles County are homeless at some point over the course of the year.
Every night there are over 84,000 who are homeless in LA County.
Over 25,000 homeless youth are enrolled in LA County Schools.

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