Support the Runaway and Homeless Youth Prevention Act (S.262, H.R. 1779)

Hello,
I’m writing this letter to encourage you to support the passage of the Runaway and Homeless Youth Prevention Act (S.262, H.R. 1779) which protects homeless youth from being trafficked. Homeless youth need shelter, services, and treatment that are currently not being granted. This act will allow youth to be taken care of, thus preventing them from being victims of human trafficking.
S.262 and H.R 1779 are extremely important because we need to be more proactive in fighting human trafficking in our country. This act allows homeless youth to stay in shelters for up to 9 more days. These 9 days are crucial in getting the youth of the streets, thus preventing them from being trafficked. Human traffickers purposefully target runaway and homeless youth because they recognize their vulnerability and attempt to exploit it. This bill also increases services offered to runaway and homeless youth like suicide prevention services, mental health services, and gender-responsive services. There is an increased number of members of the youth LGBTQ community that are becoming homeless. This increase is due to physical and emotional abuse at home, rejection, and lack of support from family and friends. Because of this increase, we must focus on the specified services in order to protect them.
These reasons make it abundantly clear that S.262 and H.R. 1779 need to be passed in order to protect the youth of our country. At an increasing rate, homeless youth are being victimized by human traffickers and this bill can help to stop that.
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter and considering our opinion.