America's housing affordability crisis has led to a sharp increase in homelessness.

And according to the latest count by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development or HUD,

children under the age of 18 have seen the largest jump.

Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt.

I'm Dana Taylor.

Today is Tuesday, December 30, 2025.

There are nearly 1.4 million homeless students nationwide, according to the National Center for Homeless Education.

Joining me to discuss this growing population of students and the long-term implications for them is USA Today,

breaking news reporter Christopher Kahn. So good to have you, Christopher.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

You wrote that student homelessness increased 104 percent between 2005 and 2023. I mentioned the federal tally of roughly 1.4 million unhoused students, but you wrote

that experts believe that's a vast undercount.

Why is that? The primary reason for that is just it's a vast undercount. Why is that?

The primary reason for that is just it's simply hard to track these students. Most of them are not in shelters or out on the streets. They're living primarily with other families in

apartments or hotels. And for students, many don't tell their friends, their teachers about

their housing situation for

shame or other reasons. And the same goes for parents who may fear that their children may

be taken away by child protective services, which is something I heard from a lot of parents.

I want to get into why these students are considered a hidden population. You noted that

70% of them are doubled up.

What does that mean?

So across the U.S., there are hundreds of thousands of homeless students living with other families

...