Homelessness among babies and toddlers increased 23%. Experts say that's an undercount

Homelessness surged in metro Phoenix in 2025, after a dip the year before that caused city leaders to celebrate — perhaps, prematurely. Big picture, homelessness has risen dramatically since the 20-teens when there were around 5,600 people living on the street and in shelters. Today, the count is closer to 10,000.

And here’s a disturbing fact: experts say homelessness is rising not just among adults, but among babies and toddlers.

Jackie Mader is a senior early childhood reporter for the Hechinger Report, and The Show spoke with her more about it.

Edilsa Lopez

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Handout

Full conversation

JACKIE MADER: Last year, there was a report that came out that found there has been a 23% increase in homeless infants and toddlers, and that was between 2021 and 2023. So it could be, you know, different right now.

But, you know, experts really think that number was even undercounting. because they're, you know, this is a notoriously difficult population to count because they're not in school. A lot of times they're not in child care programs like Head Start, where this may be tracked. And as the report also found, you know, a lot of them are not connected to a program that could help.

LAUREN GILGER: So tell us what we know about the specifics here in Arizona. I know it's a small percentage of the overall population of very young children and infants, but it's still a good number, it sounds like?

MADER: Yeah, it is. So Arizona, it's a little more than 5,700 infants and toddlers are homeless. That's almost 2% of that total birth to age 3 population in Arizona.

But what's most concerning so Arizona's number has not been increasing, but the percentage of these children who are connected to either a home visiting program where a nurse would come maybe work with their parents and with the child at home, or an early learning program like Early Head Start, that percentage is decreasing.

And it decreased, you know, by a pretty large amount between 2021 and 2023. So that's concerning that these infants are especially not getting the help that they really need.

GILGER: So let's talk about why. I mean, obviously the first thing that comes to mind is housing costs, which have risen so much here and across the country. Is that the main driver here?

MADER: It's one of the main drivers. I mean, experts told me there's obviously housing costs and minimum wage or wages in general are an issue. And then also anyone who's had a kid knows it's really expensive, right? You have child care, which we know is so expensive here. Yeah, the rising cost of housing, you have the cost of diapers or formula and just all these extras that are happening at the same time.

There's also some other factors like some experts may mentioned to me, you know, at the point where you're having children, you may not be further along in your career where you're making, you know, your maximum salary that you may make down the road. And then there are also health issues like postpartum depression or anxiety, which was an issue for the mother that I profiled in my story.

You know, if a parent lost their job while they were pregnant or couldn't work, there's just this mix of factors that makes that time period really vulnerable not just the infants and toddlers, but these young families.

GILGER: So you mentioned how experts think this might actually be like an undercount. There might be very many more young infants and toddlers in this precarious position because of, you know, how hard it is to count.

Is one of the reasons it's difficult to count just the fact that families are afraid to tell anyone when they end up in this situation? Like, I can imagine they're worried that their children will be taken away from them.

MADER: Oh, definitely. That came up a lot during this reporting. So you have parents who are really scared that they will be judged, their parenting will be judged, that Child Protective Services will take their children away. So they're scared to say, right, like, we are homeless, I'm having trouble providing for my children.

And that seemed to be, you know, part of the reason we were seeing some families double up with others. I mean, that's also if you need somewhere to live and you have a friend or family who can take you in, that's obviously a good solution for a short amount of time. But people may not also consider themselves homeless in that case, if they do have a place to stay.

So there's both the fear of, you know, saying they're homeless, but then also maybe, you know, people have a really specific definition in their mind of homelessness. And so they may not consider themselves homeless if they are staying with a friend or family, but they are considered homeless. So that's another reason why these numbers may be low.

GILGER: Yeah. So tell us, Jackie, what does this look like for people? Like, can a family go to a homeless shelter? Like, can you support an infant in a place like that?

MADER: So some homeless shelters are geared more toward families, and you can take your infant there. So I talked to some parents who did enter the shelter system with their young children.

The parents I talked to, though, explained even if a shelter was kind of targeted for families, there was still a lot of fear and limitations, right? They didn't want their children to be too loud and, you know, maybe be disruptive where maybe they'd be kicked out of the shelter or they didn't want to put their child, you know, on the floor for tummy time, which we know is important. And so their child is mostly staying in a stroller or car seat or on the bed.

And, you know, there's also limits for, you know, spaces and shelters. So there are a lot of shelter systems that are full and can't take more families. And that's when you see these families make those really tough choices, like we'll go move in with a friend temporarily, or we'll live in our car.

GILGER: Yeah. OK, so tell us about some of the places that are trying to help families in this situation, these kind of specialized child care centers that are for little kids, for babies helping families get back on their feet, kind of from both ends.

MADER: Yeah, so I visited a child care program in Boston, and this program was so unique. I have visited hundreds of child care programs, and every kind of bit of this program was designed, keeping in mind, we have children in the program who, you know, have experienced trauma and instability.

So these programs also often offer like an additional support for parents. So this specific one offers coaches for parents to help them navigate earning their GED or going to training or working on their resume or, you know, learning English.

And then also navigating the housing system to find permanent housing so you can move out of the shelter system. So it's, you know, these really well thought out solutions.

GILGER: Yeah, I mean, kind of sounds like the perfect fix. How hard are those to find, though?

MADER: They're very hard to find. When I was doing research for this story, I had heard of one other, which was in Alabama. But it's pretty rare. When I was looking around, there were very few examples that I could find.

GILGER: Yeah. Do we know, Jackie, before I let you go, how homelessness at this age for infants, toddlers at this like crucial developmental time, like how it impacts them in their development?

MADER: Yeah, it's, it's huge. It has a huge impact on young children because this, these early childhood years, that's when their brain is developing the most rapidly. So if they're experiencing fear and instability, that stress hormone in their brain is really strong, and it can actually change their brain experiencing this kind of traumatic toxic stress for several years.

So there's research that shows if you experience homelessness as a young child, you will lag behind your peers in language development or literacy, or you may struggle with skills like being able to calm yourself down or transition to new activities. You'll see these effects with the young children in the shelter. Maybe they're harder to soothe or they, you know, cling desperately to a caregiver. And then you'll see them down the road when these children enter school just because their brains experienced so much difficulty at that really formative age.