Advocate discusses the 'invisible epidemic' of youth homelessness

Vicki Sokolik is the founder and CEO of Starting Right, Now (SRN), a nonprofit that provides social and health services to homeless students in Florida.

Her new book, "If You See Them: Young, Unhoused & Alone in America," looks at youth homelessness through Sokolik's own advocacy work and from the perspectives of young people who have experienced life without a home.

ABC News' Linsey Davis sat down with Sokolik to discuss the book and how she thinks America can tackle the problem of youth homelessness.

ABC NEWS: In 1987, the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act was passed to protect the rights and safety of unhoused students in school. But it's not always easy to tell who's experiencing homelessness, to what extent and just how much support they might need beyond school walls.

With a compelling call to action, author Vicky Sokolik's newest release, "If You See Them: Young, Unhoused & Alone in America," challenges readers to look beyond preconceived notions of youth homelessness.

And she is kind enough to join us now. Vicky, thank you so much for being here.

So give us a sense of why you decided to focus in particular on the unaccompanied, unhoused youth, who we know are not eligible to participate in foster care because they did leave home on their own terms.

SOKOLIK: So my son actually brought a school friend home the second day of his senior year because she had announced in school that she was going to have to drop out to go work full time because her mom was not in a safe situation. And her and her boyfriend were actually my first understanding of an unaccompanied homeless youth.

ABC NEWS: And what kind of misconceptions would you say are still out there about the unaccompanied, unhoused kids?

SOKOLIK: So I think, for one, if somebody would have asked me 15 years ago or said to me, there's an unaccompanied, you know, there's a homeless youth that's on the street, my first reaction would have probably been, "Bad kid."

ABC NEWS: Runaway.

SOKOLIK: Correct. Didn't want to follow their parents' rules or doing drugs -- not at all. These are actually kids who are leaving home because of dangerous or unsafe situations. Sadly, almost 100% of the girls in our program have been raped in their home by family members. And 25% of the boys have come forward to say that.

You're not going to stay in that situation. You have to get out. We also see kids who have had parents who are under the influence for all different things or kids who have been sex trafficked. So it's not that they want to leave home. It's that they have to leave home.

ABC NEWS: Tell me about Starting Right, Now and why you decided that you wanted to have your own advocacy program.

SOKOLIK: So I did not decide I wanted to have my own advocacy program. My husband and I were literally just helping these kids out of our own home with our own money. And Mayor [Pam] Iorio [who held office in Tampa from 2003 to 2011] in 2007, called me and said "Would you come meet with me?" And when we sat down with her, she said, "Why does what you do work?" Because we had propelled these kids to college and military.

And I said to her "We're not passing out money. We're passing on opportunities and resources." She challenged me that if she helped me get a board of directors together, would I do it for her citywide? And I actually laughed. I was a mom hip shooting.

But since then, we've graduated more than 300 youth who are now back in our community as teachers and social workers and nurses and PAs and EMTs and firefighters, and really giving back to the community.

So now they're taxpayers and we have ended the cycle of generational poverty and homelessness, but it's through a very holistic program. We don't just give kids a bed, we give them a bed, plus resources and life skills so that they can actually propel and end that cycle.

ABC NEWS: Give us a sense -- we know you're in the Tampa area -- but what you think in the next few years this unhoused unaccompanied population might look like.

SOKOLIK: So right now, we know that there's 1.7 million of these youth that have been counted. That means that the school district or some shelter or someone gave them the distinction of an unaccompanied homeless youth.

I can tell you that that number is not correct, because when we go in to interview a student to make sure that they're truly unaccompanied and they fit our criteria, they have not been coded.

And so, it's probably double. We know that last year it rose 6%. This population will continue to rise. It's an invisible national epidemic. And the reason why it really matters is that kids are going to figure out how to live. And it may not be in the safest way.

ABC NEWS: Sure.

SOKOLIK: And so it makes communities weaker. Our community is stronger because of the work that we're doing. And I'm hopeful that we're going to be able to spread that across the country.

ABC NEWS: Well, we thank you so much for what you're doing locally and at large. Vicki Sokolik, thank you so much. I want to let our viewers know that you can purchase "If You See Them: Young, Unhoused, and Alone in America" wherever books are sold.