Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth (NPHY) has been awarded an $800,000 federal grant to create systemic change across Nevada with and for young people experiencing homelessness. Through this grant award, NPHY will lead a project to grow the leadership capacity of young people experiencing homelessness to uplift youth voice throughout the state and create the first-ever statewide Nevada Plan to End Youth Homelessness. NPHY is the only Nevada grant recipient of the $51 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for the Youth Homelessness System Improvement (YHSI) grants, a new initiative from HUD that focuses on supporting systemic change and cross-community collaboration.
“We’re thrilled to be awarded this significant grant to create transformative change to the youth homelessness response system throughout Nevada and to bring brand new federal funds to our state,” said Arash Ghafoori, NPHY CEO. “Nevada has historically faced challenges with obtaining federal grants, so this award is even more meaningful, both for the impact we’ll make on vulnerable youth and for new dollars for Nevada communities.”
In addition to Nevada, YHSI grants were awarded to 38 communities in 26 states, Puerto Rico and Guam.
NPHY will both manage the grant and lead the statewide effort, working with cross-sector partners throughout Nevada to accomplish the grant’s goals. The objectives of the project are to improve the leadership capacity of youth with lived experience of homelessness through the creation and strengthening of Youth Action Boards (YABs) and to establish and grow partnerships across the state to better identify, understand, and address the needs of youth at-risk of or experiencing homelessness through system-planning at the statewide level. The primary activities of the grant include:
- Creating and building capacity for the Northern Nevada Youth Action Board in Washoe County, which will be undertaken in partnership with Eddy House, the only nonprofit in Washoe County dedicated exclusively to serving youth experiencing homelessness, who will serve as a subgrantee;
- Expanding and enhancing the Southern Nevada Youth Action Board in Clark County, in partnership with Nevada Partners, a nonprofit based in the Historic Westside in Las Vegas;
- Creating Nevada’s first-ever statewide Movement Youth Action Board; and
- Building the first-ever statewide Nevada Plan to End Youth Homelessness.
To accomplish these objectives, NPHY will lead a coalition of partners throughout the state. Partners who have committed to this project include the Southern Nevada Homelessness Continuum of Care, Northern Nevada Continuum of Care, Rural Nevada Continuum of Care, Clark County Department of Social Service, Eddy House, Nevada Partners, The LGBTQ+ Center of Southern Nevada, Nevada Indian Commission, UNLV Greenspun College of Urban Affairs, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada Homeless Alliance, HELP of Southern Nevada and St. Jude’s Ranch for Children. In addition to the $800,000 awarded by HUD, Clark County Social Service also has committed to providing NPHY with an $80,000 match award for this project.
Since 2001, NPHY, a Las Vegas-based nonprofit, has been the most comprehensive provider of services for youth experiencing homelessness in Southern Nevada by meeting urgent survival needs and fostering pathways for youth to reach independence. In 2017, to complement and extend NPHY’s direct services for youth and make lasting change around this critical issue, NPHY launched The Movement to End Youth Homelessness (The Movement), a focused, sustained, community-wide effort to address youth homelessness from all angles. For the past seven years, the Movement has led system-planning efforts in Southern Nevada, coordinated annual youth homelessness summits, and successfully advocated for state-level policy change. Last year, NPHY expanded the Movement’s local focus and took this systems-level change work statewide, holding the first statewide Nevada Youth Homelessness Summit in November 2023. This grant will build on these efforts and support the expansion and strengthening of this work.
NPHY collaborated with Nevada GrantLab to submit the grant application, which included input from young leaders, including current members of the Southern Nevada Youth Action Board and Northern Nevada Youth Action Board. Since 2020, the nonprofit Nevada GrantLab has helped other nonprofit organizations, local governments, and state agencies better access and maximize historically underutilized federal funding.
This grant comes at a time when Nevada is experiencing a growing youth homelessness crisis. According to HUD, the number of unaccompanied young people experiencing homelessness in Nevada increased by 14% from 2022 to 2023. In school year 2021 – 2022, 16,451 students were identified as experiencing homelessness in school districts across the state. Nevada also has the most severe shortage of affordable housing in the country, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
“We’re so excited to receive this support to ensure the voices of young leaders throughout Nevada are heard and recognized. This grant award will enable us to provide youth with lived expertise with compensation, training, and opportunities to travel to and present at our annual Summit, along with creating and strengthening statewide structures to ensure their voices are guiding the development of the homelessness services systems that serve them,” said Ghafoori. “In addition, this grant award will empower our Nevada communities to come together like never before to build a true statewide response to youth homelessness through the creation of the Nevada Plan to End Youth Homelessness. Youth homelessness is bigger than any one region of our state; and through increased collaboration and common goals developed through this planning process, we know we can more effectively reduce barriers, grow resources, and make a real difference in the lives of the most vulnerable young people in Nevada.”
About Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth
NPHY is the most comprehensive service provider for the thousands of homeless youth in Southern Nevada, serving hundreds of youth through core programs and touching the lives of thousands more through outreach each year. NPHY’s programs stabilize homeless teens’ lives, meeting their immediate needs and providing a safe, supportive environment and a path to self-sufficiency. Through work with homeless youth, NPHY creates productive, healthy adults who contribute to society. Strengthening and complementing the high-quality direct services for homeless youth, NPHY is dedicated to advocating for the Las Vegas Valley’s homeless youth population and serves as a leader in systems-level efforts to eliminate homelessness among Nevada’s youth. For more information or to support our life-changing work for homeless youth, please visit www.nphy.org.
