About Covenant House

Covenant House helps kids. They stop homelessness before it starts by providing not only food, shelter, clothing and immediate crisis care, but a variety of services to homeless, runaway and throwaway youth including medical care, educational and vocational programs, drug abuse treatment and prevention programs, legal aid services, recreation programs, mother/child programs, transitional living programs, life-skills training and street outreach.

Kids between 16 and 25 can drop in any time to have their basic needs met, and can choose to stay as long as they want to take part in any level of assistance. The Covenant House Outreach goes even further, heading out into problem areas to connect with street youth, and offer them a warm bed, hot meal, and a safe night.

Covenant House is the largest privately-funded agency in the Americas providing shelter and other services to homeless, runaway and throwaway youth. Incorporated in New York City in 1972, Covenant House has facilities in 20 cities throughout the United States, Canada, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua. Covenant House also operates crisis hotlines in the United States and Mexico. In addition, Covenant House and its member sites are leading advocates on behalf of street youth at local, state, national and international levels of government. Covenant House is a member of the Non-Government Organization (NGO) Board of Directors of UNICEF and has taken on a prominent role in The Campaign for U.S. Ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC.)

Covenant House sites are located in Anchorage, Atlanta, Atlantic City, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, Los Angeles, Managua, Mexico City, Newark, New Orleans, New York, Oakland, Orlando, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Tegucigalpa, Toronto, Vancouver and Washington, D.C.

Covenant House provided residential and non-residential services to more than 70,000 youth in fiscal year 2008. Residential and Community Service Center programs cared for 29,922, while Covenant House Street Outreach teams served an additional 40,453 homeless and at-risk youth on the streets in the 20 cities where Covenant House operates facilities.