The number of homeless students in the US is the highest in over a decade according to a new study.
Most of the 1.5 million homeless schoolchildren stayed with other families or friends after losing their homes.
But 7% lived in abandoned buildings or cars, the report by the National Centre for Homeless Education showed.
It is often caused by job insecurity, unaffordable housing, domestic violence and recently the opioid crisis.
Living without a fixed address seriously impacts children’s education and health.
Less than a third of homeless students were able to read adequately, and scored even lower in mathematics and science, the report showed.
The most recent data was recorded in 2017-18 and was more than double the nearly 680,000 homeless students reported in 2004-05, the director of National Centre for Homeless Education told the New York Times.
The research measures the number of children in schools who report being homeless at some point during an academic year as as such does not show the total population of homeless young people in the US.