One in 27 students in the Poudre School District is experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity. ʹַ senior editor and reporter Leigh Paterson recently stumbled on that statistic and it surprised her. Paterson's reporting on youth mental health had suggested there was a problem, but this number told her the issue was more urgent than she had thought.
“It is on the radar of all of the school districts that I interact with and it is just a very difficult problem to solve because it involves so many overlapping social and systemic issues,” Paterson said.
She directed the new ʹַ series “Unseen but Everywhere,” airing Mondays on ʹַ this month. It brings together the lived experiences of unhoused and housing-insecure students. The reporters who spent time with those students — Rae Solomon, Emma VandenEinde and Lucas Brady-Woods — joined In The NoCo’s Erin O’Toole to discuss what they learned.