The 2026 Nevada Youth Homelessness Summit Celebrates 10 Years of Progress in the Movement to End Youth Homelessness

On November 13, Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth (NPHY) and Sands will present the 10th annual Nevada Youth Homelessness Summit, which officially kicked off the Movement to End Youth Homelessness back in 2017.

Since the Summit’s first convening, the Movement has grown from a grassroots Southern Nevada initiative into a coordinated statewide coalition that harnesses the reach and expertise of leading service providers and public sector institutions in collaboration with the private sector to advance solutions for ending Nevada’s high incidence of youth homelessness.

According to a statewide study on youth homelessness, nearly 3,000 unaccompanied Nevada youth accessed homeless services in the one-year period assessed, but the study noted that the true number of young people experiencing homelessness in Nevada that year could have been as high as more than 33,000 when applying national trends to Nevada population statistics.

Due to the complex and often invisible nature of youth homelessness, many young people who are staying temporarily with friends or family, living in daily-weekly motels or residing in other unstable housing situations often fall through cracks in systems and are missing from official counts.

The Movement was founded with one goal in mind: to create an impenetrable safety net that makes any incidence of youth homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring. The initiative drives the work required to reach that goal through advocacy, cross-sector collaboration, policy and legislative advancement, systems improvement, and youth leadership to design, build and ensure lasting solutions.

“In the beginning, no one thought the Movement could accomplish this type of expansive work, but a critical success factor has been earning the trust of the youth we serve and harnessing their perspectives and leadership to shape our actions,” Arash Ghafoori, CEO of Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth, said. “Along the way, we’ve had to be flexible and responsive to navigate some difficult obstacles – from the COVID-19 pandemic to funding challenges for youth homelessness programs – yet the Movement is stronger than ever. We have so much to be proud of over the course of these past 10 years of work.”

10 YEARS OF DREAMING BIG

Each year since its inception, the Movement has delivered continual progress toward the goal of ending youth homelessness.

 2017: NPHY and Sands hosted the first Southern Nevada Youth Homelessness Summit, which launched the Movement by convening key stakeholders for the first time to examine the intersecting issues that impact youth experiencing homelessness.

2018: Collaboration through the Movement led to introduction of the Southern Nevada Plan to End Youth Homelessness, the region’s first-ever sustained and collaborative community effort to combat youth homelessness.

2019: The Movement accomplished its first major policy achievement with the passing of AB 363, a Nevada state law that reduces the obstacles young people face in obtaining vital identification documents for gaining employment, furthering their education, opening bank accounts and obtaining stable housing.

2020: The Movement led collaborative efforts throughout the year to support young people experiencing homelessness as they faced new hardships around housing, employment, education, healthcare and more due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

2021: Legislative advocacy success continued with the passage of AB 197, a Nevada state law that strengthens unaccompanied minors’ ability to obtain critical healthcare services. The law enables youth to access physical, behavioral, dental and mental health services without parental consent, eliminating a dangerous four-month waiting period for services and simplifying the process for providers to verify their homelessness status.

2022: The Movement led the process to create the Southern Nevada Youth Homelessness Community Needs Assessment – an initiative to better understand the needs of youth experiencing homelessness in the region. In addition, the Movement Institute, a gateway for Nevada residents to access hands-on advocacy training focused on youth homelessness and related issues, debuted at Summit 2022 and became a forum to engage advocates outside of the annual Summits.

2023: The 2023 Summit marked a major turning point as it convened stakeholders from across Nevada for the first time. Now a statewide coalition, the Movement initiated the collaboration necessary for building a coordinated and comprehensive statewide approach to addressing youth homelessness.

2024: The Movement led efforts to receive new federal funding for systems-level coordination, youth leadership and youth homelessness programming, including the Youth Homelessness System Improvement and Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program grants, totaling over $9 million in new investments in Nevada’s youth homelessness system.

2025: Milestones included opening new youth housing facilities in northern and southern Nevada, system improvements through the launch of additional youth housing and coordinated entry programs, introduction of youth action boards to guide statewide work, and completion of the first statewide study to assess youth homelessness.

2026: The latest Movement accomplishments will be presented at the 2026 Nevada Youth Homelessness Summit on Nov. 13. The event also will feature presentations from young leaders with lived experience of homelessness, updates on the youth homelessness landscape in Nevada and insights for building youth homelessness solutions from national experts.

“Though we’ve had many milestones, the most important one I see as we head into Summit 2026 is how the Movement has changed the conversation around youth homelessness,” Ghafoori said. “Young people are no longer lumped in with the entire homelessness population and are now understood to have unique needs and dedicated service requirements. Based on the Movement’s leadership in educating about youth issues, our coalition also has become a go-to for a variety of issues and matters related to young people.”

 The 2026 Nevada Youth Homelessness Summit is presented by NPHY and Las Vegas Sands with support from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Greenspun College of Urban Affairs and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. To attend Summit 2026, visit nphy.org/summit26.