Homeless count survey results released; more than 400 FCPS students considered “displaced”

LEXINGTON, Ky (WTVQ)- It’s being called a growing crisis: homelessness affecting students in the Fayette County Public School system. Community leaders addressed that crisis Tuesday, while releasing the results of a homelessness street survey completed last month.

The street survey was conducted on August 30th and it shows that around 2,410 people are homeless in Lexington. But out of those, 453 are students within the Fayette County School system.

Leaders say more needs to be done to help remove these barriers to learning.

“We have a problem. That awareness has to happen because winters coming around the corner,” says T.C. Johnson, the liaison for FCPS’S McKinney-Vento program.

Johnson says many of those students and their families are homeless because of evictions and disasters. Many having to double up with other families, live in transitional housing or shelters, or live in cars, parks, and even campgrounds.

That’s where the McKinney-Vento program comes into play. The program is part of a federal law that works with students to ensure they are protected from homelessness. Johnson says they’re only a month and a half into the new school year and they’re already at the halfway mark of the entire number of homeless students in the 2022-2023 school year.

“It’s across the board. Its not just a certain area of town. But its whole entire area of Lexington,” says Johnson.

Students like Grayson Daniels, a 4th grader at Meadowthorpe Elementary says it breaks his heart that his fellow classmates are facing homelessness.

“I think its not fair that a kid would have to go out of school and have nowhere to go,” says Daniels.

Daniels is petitioning the government to set aside money from a budget surplus to create affordable housing for kids who are without homes.

“I feel bad for them. I’d like to help them.”

Another possible solution: The Catholic Action Center is re-implementing a community wide effort called the Give Kids A Home campaign. It helps raise money for the McKinney-Vento program. Donations will be collected through January 31, 2024.

“We are hopeful that this Mckinney-Vento program, which already does amazing work and helping our kids who are not, don’t have stable housing, that these funds will be able to help them be in a home so they can learn. So we can cut down on mental illness. So we don’t have the same kind of problems learning,” says Laura Babbage, a board member with the Catholic Action Center.

Those who attended today say they plan to take their findings to the urban county council members- to hopefully encourage them to do more to help this growing crisis.