Utah youth homeless shelters face funding uncertainty amid federal cuts, freezes

When Shi Alex was couch surfing as a 17-year-old while facing an abusive situation at home, she found Kristen Mitchell, who forever changed the trajectory of her life. 

It started with hot meals. Then she started going to support groups. 

“She always gave me positive regard, no matter what,” Alex said of Mitchell, who at the time was volunteering for a youth outreach program in Ogden. “They just gave me unconditional support, and always made me feel like I was welcome to be there. So that kept me coming back, and eventually it snowballed.” 

Alex, now 29, has spent the last eight years working for a nonprofit that Mitchell co-founded soon after they met. That nonprofit is now known as Youth Futures, which became Utah’s first licensed homeless residential support temporary youth shelter in 2015, starting with 14 temporary overnight beds in downtown Ogden. 

Now, after 10 years, Youth Futures also operates overnight youth shelters in two southern Utah cities — St. George and Cedar City — offering not just a safe place to sleep for at-risk kids ages 12 to 18, but also provides meals, clothing, hygiene supplies, laundry services, computer access, and case management every day of the week. The nonprofit aims to reunify families wherever possible, but first and foremost seeks to help kids stay healthy so they can not only survive, but thrive.

“On a day-to-day basis, they’re just keeping you alive,” Alex said. “And if you’re not alive, you can’t recover, no matter what you’re going through. The open doors that they have are keeping so many young people alive and giving them the opportunity to reach their full potential.”

The nonprofit now serves an estimated 60 to 80 kids a day between all of its programs — or about 700 kids a year. 

“The reason we opened was to reduce suicidality and help runaway homeless youth,” Mitchell said. 

But Mitchell told Utah News Dispatch she’s worried that Youth Futures is facing an uncertain future. 

Under President Donald Trump’s administration and federal cuts approved by Congress, nonprofits like hers are facing a chaotic and precarious landscape. Federal funds that Youth Futures relies heavily on are either frozen or potentially on the chopping block. 

Mitchell said she’s stressing on a daily basis about whether she’ll have to cut services or make other “really hard decisions.” 

“The real risk is putting kiddos on the street,” she said. 

To Alex — who has experienced firsthand what Youth Futures can do to help vulnerable Utah kids — the potential of federal funding cuts could threaten not just youth homeless shelter options, but also life-saving services. 

“It would just be so heartbreaking,” she said. “I’m not the first or the last kid that this place has helped. So to have the uncertainty turn into a termination of services, there’s so many kids that are going to have to just rough it without the support. And that’s horrifying.” 

Uncertainty around federal funds for homeless youth

National homeless youth advocates have warned of “very strong uncertainty,” Mitchell said, about whether three-year federal Runaway and Homeless Youth Act (RHYA) grants will be reauthorized this year in October. 

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“This is the largest portion of our operating budget, and without it, it’s going to get really challenging to operate — if we can even continue,” Mitchell said. “If we don’t have enough funds to continue, we’re going to have to cut services (or) staff. And the majority of our staff lives paycheck to paycheck.” 

Under the RHYA Act, Mitchell said her nonprofit receives about $750,000 a year, which equates to about $250,000 for each of Youth Futures’ three locations, which she said each cost about $1.2 million to run. Those federal funds account for about 60% of her operating budget. Donations fund about 30% to 40%, she said. 

RHYA’s appropriations have technically expired, but have previously continued to receive funding under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Education and Workforce. It’s not yet clear whether those authorizations will continue this year. 

Last month, the U.S. Senate passed a bill to fund the government until Sept. 30, but cut $13 billion to non-defense programs and eliminated fiscal year 2025 earmark funding. That included $40 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Children and Family Services programs, according to the National Network for Youth, an organization that advocates for youth homeless service providers in Washington, D.C. 

Because the bill didn’t specify how the cuts should be implemented, “it will be up to the federal agencies to decide what programs some of the broad cuts that the bill dictates will come from,” the advocacy group said in a March 14 post, leading to uncertainty for programs including RHYA. 

“Programs important to youth experiencing homelessness, such as the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, were not explicitly mentioned in the bill,” the post said. “At this time, it’s difficult to say what that may indicate.”

National youth homeless advocates have been urging Congress to pass the Runway and Homeless Youth and Trafficking Prevention Act to reauthorize RHYA’s funds, but it’s not clear if or when it will be considered. 

While Mitchell waits for news about RHYA, other federal funds have already been frozen and taken a bite out of her budget — though not as big of a hit as if RHYA funds aren’t renewed. Phase 42 of the Federal Emergency Food & Shelter funds are frozen, holding up roughly $25,000 to $30,000 that Youth Futures relies on to pay for shelter and meals. Mitchell said she’s not sure how, but she’s working to try to find ways to fill the gap, which could include turning to lines of credit, which would only be a temporary solution. 

“We already fundraise like crazy,” she said, adding that Youth Futures relies heavily on those federal funds, and without them she worries about leaving vulnerable kids without help. “We’re (on) a very tight budget. We run a scrappy organization. I would love it if we didn’t have to be that way, but we have low overhead. And without (federal funds), it really risks our kids.” 

Youth Futures’ funding uncertainty comes at a time when the nonprofit is hitting its 10-year anniversary, having served what Mitchel estimates is more than 6,000 kids. 

“We’re trying to celebrate while having this really big concern for funding, which is extremely stressful,” she said. “We are just really looking for other donations, other contributions, gifts, to help us not have to rely so heavily on those funds.”

What’s at stake

Most of the kids Youth Futures serves come from poverty, Mitchell said, with about a third coming from families that are dealing with financial insecurity or homelessness. She said the nonprofit also helps “kids who have been rejected, kicked out, asked to leave by their parents.” 

“We’ve even seen kids who are dropped off on our doorstep by their parents who … they just don’t know what else to do. They’ve given up,” she said. 

Others come from “family discord” situations, she said, whether that means “religious discord or LGBTQ discord,” or disagreements over family rules and boundaries. 

For a nonprofit that seeks to help kids in areas off the Wasatch Front, like in southern Utah where homeless services for youth can otherwise be scant, Mitchell said she worries that if Youth Futures has to reduce its services, that could mean leaving kids in these areas on the street. 

“And that really sucks to have kids not have a place to be,” she said. “We often find kids in caves, in sheds, doubled up in households where there’s way too many people. Kids often getting involved in trafficking to survive. … They’re doing some really rough things, sexual favors and those kinds of things to either get money or a place to sleep or a meal. I mean, those are just terrible things. We really don’t want to go back to that.” 

Alex is not only a former client of Youth Futures, but she’s also now an employee. She worked her way up from a youth advocate, to a street outreach worker, to a case manager, to program manager of the Ogden shelter. She then went on to work in finance for the nonprofit where she wrote grant applications for the very federal dollars now at stake, before working in her current role as a quality assurance analyst, where she writes reports for grants and crunches data for the nonprofit. 

She’s also furthering her education. Alex said she’s on track to finish her master’s in social work. 

But now, Alex said she’s worried about what federal funding cuts could mean for not just herself, but also her colleagues. She said the cloud of uncertainty is causing “so much stress.” 

“The employees are angels. Absolute angels,” she said. “They’re dealing with really difficult situations. And they’re so good at it. So having that specific skill set, we need to fund people to provide those services. And if we don’t have it, everyone will be heartbroken.”