Emergency youth shelters can't meet the city's needs. Soon, Milwaukee could be down to one.
The Walker's Point Youth & Family Center was there for Hazel Scott and her daughter Nei'lanii when they were at their lowest point last year.
The shelter gave Scott and Nei'lanii a room and connected her with an in-house therapist, who helped her find a job and a day care for Nei'lanii.
"It really was like my home," said Scott, now 17.
Unfortunately, the south side shelter can't help youth like Scott for much longer.
In two months, it will shut its doors due to a sudden loss in federal funding. That leaves Milwaukee County with just eight emergency beds for youth and no shelters for teen parents amid a growing homelessness crisis .
"The loss of this funding will have a profoundly detrimental impact on the most vulnerable youth in greater Milwaukee," said Walker's Point Youth & Family Center executive director Audra O'Connell.
Last month, O'Connell said, the shelter was notified it would not receive the federal grant it has gotten for the past 38 years. The three-year Basic Center Program grant, from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is $200,000 annually — a significant portion of the shelter's budget.
O'Connell said the shelter was not given an explanation. She suspects it could have to do with the Runaway Homeless Youth and Trafficking Prevention Act , which was passed by Congress in the 1970s to fund youth shelters. Congress hasn't reauthorized the act in five years.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore and the Wisconsin Association for Homeless and Runaway Services have all reached out to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to track down an explanation. None have received a response, O'Connell said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the department's Administration for Children and Families said the agency "receives hundreds of applications each year."
"Due to the competitive nature of awards and the limited availability of funding, (the Administration for Children and Families) is not able to fund all requests," the spokesperson wrote.
The agency's Division of Runaway and Homeless Youth awarded 210 grants totaling more than $46.7 million in fiscal year 2024.
Pathfinders is the only other state-licensed youth shelter in Milwaukee. Between the two, they had 16 emergency beds for homeless and runaway youth. Without Walker's Point Youth & Family Center, the county will be down to half that.
Walker's Point Youth & Family Center is also the only shelter in Milwaukee licensed to house parenting teens and their families. About half of the shelter's clients in the past three years were pregnant or parenting a child, O'Connell said.
Tim Baack, the chief executive officer of Pathfinders and board president of the Wisconsin Association for Homeless and Runaway Services, said nearly 12,000 youth between 10 and 24 years old experience homelessness annually in Milwaukee County. That's an estimation based on national data from Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago and U.S. Census Bureau data.
"This is largely an invisible problem," Baack said. "We can't just lose half of our current capacity when we know the current number of beds is already insufficient."
No explanation for sudden loss of funding
According to O'Connell, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services notified the shelter it wasn't awarded the grant on Oct. 2 — the day after the grant cycle was expected to start.
"You don't expect that to just not come through without some kind of warning," she said.
O'Connell said the center's grant application scored high enough to be funded, but wasn't. She has emailed the department three times in the past month for an explanation, without success.
The organization was on track this year to help about 200 youth between 11 and 17 years old with shelter and another 500 youth through its free therapy services.
Both programs will stop Dec. 31 unless another funding source comes through, O'Connell said.
The shelter will have to lay off seven full-time staff members and four other employees.
The main reason youth come to the shelter is family issues, O'Connell said. Sometimes there is trauma and abuse at home, or they need separation to heal. Others face housing instability, sex trafficking and gang violence.
In the past three years, 81% of the center's clients have been youth of color and 41% have been LGBTQ+.
For Scott, staying at home wasn't an option. Both times she turned to the shelter were due to her tumultuous relationship with her mother, she said.
Scott's been in therapy at the center for over a year to process her relationship with her mother, the recent loss of her father and the stress of being a teen mom.
She recently finished high school early and celebrated Nei'lanii's second birthday. Now, Scott is applying to colleges in Milwaukee.
She is grateful for her therapist at the center. She often feels overwhelmed and isn't sure how losing access to therapy will affect her down the road, she said.
"It's not just therapy," Scott said. "They connect with me."
Youth can stay at the shelter for up to 21 days. While there, they maintain school attendance. They are given a bus pass to transport them to school and work.
They have one-on-one therapy, group therapy and art therapy at their disposal, as well as space to develop friendship with others. Each night, the youth and staff prepare family-style dinners.
Many of the youth staying at the shelter are struggling with mental health issues, O'Connell said. She is concerned that the shelter's closure will cause some to end up in juvenile correctional facilities like Lincoln Hills .
Milwaukee County pays a hefty price to house youth at such facilities. Lincoln Hills, Copper Lake and the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center cost taxpayers $420,000 per youth annually .
That's more than half of Walker's Point Youth & Family Center's $700,000 annual operating budget, O'Connell pointed out.
"It makes a lot more sense to fund programs like Walker's Point Youth & Family Center," O'Connell said.
O'Connell hopes to garner public support to keep the shelter operational. She contacted the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County for help. Both are looking into it, she said.
She plans to reapply for the Basic Center Program grant next year. If the organization is successful, the grant would take effect in October 2025.
"I'm not going to lose hope," O'Connell said.
Youth homelessness is on the rise, advocates say
Pathfinders can't shoulder the youth homelessness crisis alone in Milwaukee, Baack said.
Homeless youth look different from adults. Homeless adults might live in encampments, like at the park-and-ride-lots or near resources like Guest House of Milwaukee . But youth staying at encampments are at risk of exploitation by adults, Baack said.
More commonly, youth stay on friends' or relatives' couches. That means they often don't qualify as "homeless" under federal definitions, which makes it harder to get funding, Baack said.
Across the country, there is a growing need for youth shelters . However, Congress has failed to authorize the funding necessary to meet the need, Baack said.
Since the 1970s , Congress has reauthorized the Runaway Homeless Youth and Trafficking Prevention Act every five years. The law helps Congress determine the amount of funding for community-based services for homeless youth shelters, therapy and other support.
But Congress hasn't reauthorized the act since 2019 .
Pathfinders is in its third and final year of its Basic Center Program grant. Like Walker's Point Youth & Family Center, it will need to reapply and compete against other applicants next year.
"When Congress fails to award appropriate levels of funding, it forces all programs like ours across the country to compete for really limited funds," Baack said.
Gina Lee Castro is a Public Investigator reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. at
