FUTURE STATE OF A SYSTEM FOCUSED ON TRANSFORMATIVE JUSTICE

• Communities are resourced to ensure that young people and their families have access to the networks and supports they need to experience physical, emotional, and economic safety and security. Physical and emotional safety are provided for in ways that are safe for, considerate of, and compassionate toward all members of the community. 

• Abundant resources are allocated to ensure young people’s basic needs are met and to prevent homelessness. Their physical and behavioral health and needs are provided for through trauma-informed and community-based care. Instances of physical and emotional violence and harm are addressed through community-wide, comprehensive, principled transformative justice practices.

• Racism, white supremacy, classism, heteronormativism, sexism, ableism, xenophobia, paternalism, ageism, poverty, and homelessness are no longer accepted as societal norms nor are they embedded or perpetuated through public services, legal systems, or in penal codes. Public systems no longer mete out punishment and harm and instead reinforce community connections and incentivize positive growth.

• Black, Indigenous, and other people of color and members of other historically marginalized communities no longer suffer disproportionately from the shortcomings of our political and economic systems. The school to prison pipeline is dismantled. Reparations are community-defined and paid. The rights and dignity of all are respected and protected. Immigration and migration are neither criminalized nor punished.  
  

We Pursue this Future in Solidarity

We recognize the harm that our current policing, legal, and incarceration systems enact and perpetuate. This harm is systematically and disproportionately inflicted on Black people in particular, as well as on communities of color more broadly and on members of LGBTQ communities. We support defunding these systems and mechanisms of surveillance and punishment in favor of investments in the supports and services our neighbors and communities need to thrive. 

We will pursue the transformative vision the New Deal in active solidarity with: 

• The Movement for Black Lives policy platforms to End the War on Black People and Invest-Divest;

• Campaigns to end youth incarceration, including but not limited to Youth First and Justice 4 Families, as well as visions for a more just future for all, such as those nurtured by Mariame Kaba and other transformative justice thinkers and activists; and

• The National Housing Law Center’s Housing Not Handcuffs Campaign, Services Not Sweeps Coalition, and efforts to advance the human right to housing and services as well as those to end the criminalization of homelessness.

• Our commitment, as a member of the National Coalition for Housing Justice, to use our platform and resources to dismantle racist institutions, to advance just policies, and to amplify Black voices and solutions.

This policy vision is shaped to complement broader and related efforts to transform laws and policies that criminalize poverty, youth, sex work, and other acts of survival for people of all ages. The policy vision of the New Deal to End Youth Homelessness is focused on the needs of young people at risk of or experiencing homelessness and transforming the laws and policies that harm young people and jeopardize their safety.

We commit to build solidarity with other coalitions and movements advocating for and creating alternatives to criminalization, surveillance, and incarceration in our pursuit of the New Deal to End Youth Homelessness.