Housing Security: Breaktime • Connor Schoen
Reweaving the Safety Net: Innovating Against Youth Homelessness
Youth homelessness is a crisis hiding in plain sight. Unlike chronic homelessness, it doesn’t always look obvious—these are young people who may seem like classmates, coworkers, or friends, while quietly struggling with housing insecurity.
In this episode of unNatural Selection, we sit down with Connor Schoen, co-founder and CEO of Breaktime, to explore how his team is innovating new ways to identify and engage youth in need. Connor shares how Breaktime equips young people with not only jobs, but the soft skills and resilience required in a world where technology is rapidly transforming the value of hard skills.
We discuss what it takes to truly understand the needs and challenges of this population, how to engage them in ways that foster trust and opportunity, and how to equip them with the skills to navigate a rapidly changing social landscape during one of life’s most vulnerable and confusing periods—youth.
