This summer camp offers refuge for NYC's record-high youth homeless population

WNYC News

As the population of children living in New York City shelters reaches unprecedented highs, with enough homeless kids to fill Yankee Stadium, a longtime summer camp is offering these young New Yorkers a chance to temporarily leave behind the trauma of congregate living — to just be kids.

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Camp Homeward Bound, now in its 40th year, will welcome about 360 children who are living in shelters or were formerly homeless to its annual summer camp about 45 miles north of the city. There, kids between 7 and 15 years old spend about two weeks swimming, biking, cooking, dancing and playing.

“Our kids are exposed to so much just by the fact that they've lost their homes, are living in shelter," said Tim Campbell, deputy executive director for programs at the nonprofit Coalition for the Homeless, which runs the camp. "Just the shelter application process in general can be so emotionally taxing for their parents and then also for them being exposed to that, because there's no space often for them to be away from that process."

“The kids that we serve try to take care of their parents or younger siblings," Campbell added. "When they're here, just part of what we're trying to do is say, ‘You don't have to worry about that right now.'"

For the last two summers, the number of children whom the camp serves has grown, and migrant children now make up about half of the campers, according to program leaders. Children come to one of three sessions that last 16 days and can return every summer, even after they move out of homeless shelters. Some come back to work as counselors.