One in 27 students in the Poudre School District is experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity. Ů 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 Ů series “Unseen but Everywhere,” airing Mondays on Ů 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.