SJSU Professor Lewis Aptekar

To end homelessness, youth and young adults need stable housing, supportive access to caring adults, and access to mainstream services that will place them on a path to long-term success, explains Dr. Lewis Aptekar. In addition, according to Dr.Lewis Aptekar , reunifying youth with family or a support system, when safe and appropriate, should be at the core of any approach to ending homelessness. Young adults may also require broader education and employment supports, and may need more short and long-term housing options, including rapid re-housing. To end homelessness for youth, we must: Prioritize family reunification or support as the initial intervention for youth experiencing homelessness. Most youth return home to family, and programs interacting with youth can facilitate that process when safe and appropriate. Basic programs already prioritize this, but other youth-serving programs and coordinated entry systems should also adopt it as an initial focus. Family in...

Lewis Aptekar has devoted a good portion of his career, not only as a teacher, academic and researcher, but as an author and practicing clinical psychologist, to the observation and study of homeless youth and children in street situations (CSS); particularly those throughout developing countries. Now retired from teaching, Aptekar has immersed himself within cultures throughout such nations so as to obtain a firsthand account of the daily struggles faced by members of the “street” and homeless population, as well as to better develop recommendations for coping with and finding solutions to such issues. The co-author of StreetChildren and Homeless Youth : A Cross Cultural Perspective (2014), LewisAptekar sought to provide the reader a closer examination of several factors of both the children in street situations and the actual situations they face, and of the current policies and procedures societies and nations have in effect regarding this population. He ended the book with...