When you look inside a dumpster, what do you expect to see? Trash, of course. What you don’t expect to see in there is a kid.

Unhappily, some kids are reduced to “dumpster-diving” in order to survive. Maybe they’ll find the remains of an office-worker’s lunch. Maybe they’ll get lucky and locate some cans and bottles they can redeem for cash. Fifty pop cans will pay for a hamburger and fries!

One such kid was Michael. Raised by an abusive grandfather, Michael finally couldn’t stand it any longer and took off. He was 18. He lived rough for a while, then crashed with friends, only to be thrown back on the streets soon afterward. Rummaging through trash cans and dumpsters became a means of survival — if you could call it that. Eventually, Michael became severely depressed and was admitted to a hospital after suffering a nervous breakdown.

Two weeks later, he was back on the street.

In today’s major cities too many kids are treated like throwaways. Many have fled neglect and abuse at home. Others are abandoned or kicked out by families who don’t want to deal with them.

These are the kids who have given up on school, hang out on street corners, crash for short periods with friends or relatives, sleep rough in abandoned buildings or in vehicles, scrounging in dumpsters or engaging in petty theft simply to stay fed. These are the kids who eventually fall victim to gangs and get caught up in the drug culture, prostitution, and other criminal activity.

Many of these young people become homeless – perhaps as many as 3,000 a night in Detroit. A “point-in-time” survey conducted by Detroit-Wayne County Homeless Action Network last year estimated that there are at least 1,700 homeless young people between the ages of 16 and 20 living on the streets. If the age range were extended to include 21 and 22-year-olds, the number would certainly be higher. In 2001, the Covenant House Michigan Street Outreach team made contact with nearly 3,800 kids, many of whom are undoubtedly still out there.

Homelessness is a particular challenge for young people. Shelters catering to an adult population are bad places for kids on their own – frightening places full of chronically homeless people, many of them substance abusers and a high percentage of them suffering from mental illness or other diseases. Young people are easily taken advantage of by those who are older and more street-wise.

When a young person is homeless, clearly they are the first to suffer. Yet, it’s important to understand that this problem places a burden on all of us.

The costs are both social and economic. Because often they drop out of school and lack preparation for the world of work, today’s homeless young people are tomorrow’s unemployed and unemployable. Contributing nothing to the tax base, they require considerable expenditure of tax dollars in terms of welfare support, health care, and – tragically – the cost of maintaining a significant number of them in our prisons.

Worst of all, the failure of these young people contributes to the impoverishment of our communities, and denies us the benefit of their talent and energy.