Companions and Animals for Reform and Equity Release 2026 Youth and Pet Inclusive Housing Report

By Julie Walker, NLIHC Project Manager, Opportunity Starts at Home 

Companions and Animals for Reform and Equity (CARE), an Opportunity Starts at Home (OSAH) Roundtable member, shared a new report, “Youth & Pet Inclusive Housing: A Practical Guide for Building Systems That Keep People and Pets Together,” which draws on the experiences of youth experiencing homelessness and service providers to explore how pet-related policies impact access to housing, healthcare, and supportive services. The report finds that while pets provide a source of stability and emotional support for many youth, housing and shelter restrictions make it difficult or impossible for youth to access services while remaining with their pets. Housing and youth-serving organizations can improve engagement and reduce harm by adopting pet-inclusive policies, and the report provides practical recommendations to reduce barriers, improve service engagement, and build more inclusive care systems.  

The report findings are based on focus groups conducted by researchers at the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work with 20 young adults (ages 18 to 25) who experienced homelessness while caring for pets, and interviews with 20 service providers working in housing, animal welfare, mental health, municipal government, and policy. Data were collected in urban and semi-urban communities in Colorado between 2024 and 2025.   

While most organizations want youth to access housing and other needed services, the researchers identified five barriers to access that youth with pets commonly face. These barriers include housing and shelter restrictions on pets, veterinary care and basic care gaps, transportation challenges, complex and inconsistent emotional support animal accommodation processes, and fragmented systems and stigma toward people experiencing homelessness with pets. Addressing these barriers to housing access for youth experiencing homelessness with pets requires coordinated action from policymakers, housing authorities, community leaders, and funders. The report’s authors provide five recommendations to build pet-inclusive care systems: 

• Expand pet-inclusive housing across the housing continuum 
• Invest in cross-sector collaboration between housing, transportation, healthcare, social services, and animal welfare systems 
• Increase access to basic needs and veterinary care  
• Strengthen workforce capacity by providing practical tools and training to service providers 
• Address stigma through public education to challenge misconceptions that shape service environments and policy decisions 

The authors emphasize that pet-inclusion is not an all-or-nothing decision for organizations and outline four levels of pet-inclusive organizational practice (traditional, pet-tolerant, pet-inclusive, and integrated) that organizations can move through over time. The report includes a pet-inclusive organizational self-assessment and practical and low-cost recommendations that organizations can implement, like including pets in intake forms, to have an immediate impact on youth with pets.  

Read the report. 

To learn more about the connections between housing and animal welfare, read the OSAH fact sheet.