Ben Miksch, State and Federal Policy Associate

Nonprofit law firm Columbia Legal Services, working with the legal teams at Starbucks and Baker & McKenzie, just released this new tool to help thousands of Washington's homeless youth find safety and stability and understand their legal rights. It's called the Homeless Youth Handbook - Legal issues and Options, and it's a unique and comprehensive guide to the laws and other issues that affect homeless youth in the state of Washington. The Handbook’s 18 chapters cover topics from education, health care, and housing to consumer and credit issues.

As Columbia Legal Services attorney Casey Trupin puts it, "Properly understanding the law can mean the difference between finding a place to live or ending up sleeping under a bridge, being assaulted, prostituted, or worse."

The challenges homeless youth face are often deeply intertwined with legal issues, and this resource can make a real difference for young people in our state. The handbook is accessible online, can be downloaded as a PDF, and is even mobile-phone optimized to ensure that it's as easy as possible for youth to gain access to the information.

This resource is only useful if people know about it! Please help out our friends over at Columbia Legal Services and more importantly help out homeless young people all over Washington by spreading the word about this website so that teachers, youth workers, and others can ensure that their clients benefit from the handbook.

You can download the Homeless Youth Handbook here.

More about Columbia Legal Services here.

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