Human trafficking survivors in the United States face a severe shortage of specialized healing and recovery services. Despite thousands of victims being identified each year, the capacity of trauma-informed therapy programs, safe housing, residential healing centers, and long-term care facilities remains drastically below demand. This report compiles data from law enforcement reports, academic studies, and nonprofit organizations to estimate the unmet need. We segment findings into two groups – Group A: Children (under 18) and Group B: Adults (18 and over) – highlighting hard numbers on waiting lists, capacity shortfalls, and the number of survivors left without services. All evidence points to a staggering service gap: only a few hundred to a few thousand specialized program slots exist nationwide, while tens of thousands of trafficking survivors require support lambstolionsinc.com canvasrebel.com.
There are currently over 10,000 human trafficking survivors in the U.S. who need healing services, but only a few hundred specialty program beds exist nationwide for trauma-informed care.
Florida reported 393 trafficked children needing placement in 2022–23; only 46 were placed in specialized safe homes — leaving 347 without appropriate care.
Nationwide, fewer than 100 dedicated residential beds exist for child trafficking survivors, with many states having zero beds.
Every bed has a waiting list, with minors often diverted to foster care, juvenile justice, or psychiatric facilities.
Polaris estimates 75% of adult survivors need trauma-informed therapy upon exiting trafficking, yet over half remain on waiting lists.
Thistle Farms (TN), a top recovery home, has 28 beds but keeps a 72-person waitlist, which it caps at 100.
Total safe housing capacity for adult survivors is estimated at fewer than 2,000 beds nationwide.
Both groups face major bottlenecks in access to care, with many survivors placed in inappropriate or unsafe settings due to lack of space.
Polaris and state agencies report that this unmet need contributes to re-exploitation, as survivors without stable housing or care often return to unsafe environments.
Covenant House NJ had over 100 youth on a shelter waitlist in 2024 despite serving 1,800+ — showing the demand for even basic shelter far exceeds availability.
The U.S. lacks a centralized system to track waiting lists, but evidence from multiple states and NGOs confirms consistent backlogs in survivor care programs.
Prevalence and Identification: Child trafficking (especially domestic minor sex trafficking) is a substantial issue. One study estimated that in Texas alone there were ~79,000 minor victims of sex trafficking as of 2016 socialwork.utexas.edu. Nationally, the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline identified at least 2,500–2,600 minor victims in the cases it handled in 2022 polarisproject.org humantraffickinghotline.org (likely an undercount, since many child victims are identified through state welfare or law enforcement rather than hotline calls). These figures underscore that thousands of children across the country are in need of recovery services each year.
Specialized Housing and Program Capacity: Dedicated safe homes and treatment programs for trafficked children are extremely scarce. As of the early 2010s, fewer than 100 residential beds in the entire U.S. were designated specifically for child trafficking survivors indiegogo.com. A federal Senate hearing noted that “less than 100 beds around the country” existed for minor victims at that time congress.gov. Even a decade later, the situation has only marginally improved. For example, in Texas, advocates in 2017 pointed out the state had only one long-term treatment facility for child sex-trafficking victims (with capacity for 20 girls) and no emergency safe-house beds for trafficked children recovered by police texastribune.org texastribune.org. In short, most U.S. states have had zero or single-digit specialized beds for trafficked youth.
Waiting Lists and Unmet Need (Children): Due to this limited capacity, many child survivors wait indefinitely for appropriate placement. One source noted that “each bed currently has a waiting list” for child trafficking shelters, meaning whenever a rare slot opens, it is immediately filled by a child from a backlog indiegogo.com. State-level data confirm large gaps. In Florida, for instance, 393 trafficked youth were evaluated for safe-house or safe-foster placement in FY2022–23, but only 46 (11.7%) could be placed in a specialized safe home or foster home myflfamilies.com. The remaining 347 children had to be housed elsewhere or went without appropriate placement myflfamilies.com. (Some were diverted to substance abuse treatment, mental health facilities, juvenile justice centers, or returned to foster care due to the lack of safe-home spots myflfamilies.com.) Florida further reported 11 cases where a safe-house placement was recommended but unavailable due to no bed open at that time myflfamilies.com myflfamilies.com. These numbers from a single state suggest hundreds of children per year — in Florida alone — do not get the specialized residential care they need. Extrapolated nationally (even accounting for varying state sizes), this implies several thousand minors annually may be unable to access trauma-informed housing or long-term recovery programs when needed.
Beyond housing, other services for youth survivors are also stretched thin. Trauma-informed therapy and behavioral health services for exploited children often have long wait times. Many child survivors end up in general foster care or shelters not equipped for trafficking trauma. Youth homeless shelters, which serve many trafficking survivors, are overburdened. For example, Covenant House (a major youth shelter network) reports that demand has surged: in New Jersey, Covenant House served 1,811 youth (including trafficked youth) in FY2024, yet by year’s end around 140 youths were on the waiting list for shelter – “over 100 young people” waiting for a bed covenanthousenj.org covenanthousenj.org. Such waiting lists underscore that significant numbers of trafficked or high-risk youth are not receiving safe shelter or care immediately, even after escaping exploitation.
Summary (Children): In summary, Group A (minors) faces a critical shortage of recovery services. Only on the order of tens of beds (to a few hundred at most) exist specifically for child trafficking survivors nationwide indiegogo.com, while the number of children in need is likely in the thousands per year myflfamilies.com myflfamilies.com. The result is that many rescued minors end up on waiting lists, in inappropriate placements, or even detained due to the lack of safe healing environments. Advocates widely describe this capacity gap for children as “staggering” lambstolionsinc.com and in dire need of remedy.
Prevalence and Identification: Adult survivors of human trafficking (including sex and labor trafficking) also number in the many thousands. The National Human Trafficking Hotline recorded over 15,000 individual victims involved in the cases it tracked in 2022 humantraffickinghotline.org, the majority of whom were adults. Over the past decade, Polaris (which operates the hotline) has documented more than 75,000 victims who received assistance, indicating a large and growing population of adult survivors emerging from trafficking situations nationalreview.com. Moreover, prevalence research suggests the true number of victims is far higher – for example, a Texas study estimated ~234,000 labor-trafficking victims in that state in 2016 in addition to nearly 79,000 minor sex-trafficking victims lbb.texas.gov. Nationally, experts infer hundreds of thousands of adults could be living through trafficking or dealing with its aftermath canvasrebel.com. While not all come forward for services at once, these figures show the scale of potential need for adult survivor support.
Capacity of Services for Adults: The capacity to shelter and treat adult trafficking survivors is also severely limited. Many adult survivors rely on general homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters, or a patchwork of NGOs for help, since specialized programs are few. Polaris’s survey in 2012 found about 1,644 total shelter beds in the U.S. that could serve trafficking victims (of any age) – and only 529 of those were exclusively reserved for trafficking survivors lambstolionsinc.com ccasa.org. The rest were in programs that also serve other populations (e.g. domestic violence or youth shelters with some trafficking-focused funding) lambstolionsinc.com. While new programs have opened since 2012, advocates suggest the growth has not kept pace with demand. Some recent estimates put the current number of dedicated safe house beds for survivors in the low hundreds. For example, one anti-trafficking advocate noted there may be “only 400 beds for trafficking survivors in the United States altogether” canvasrebel.com – a rough figure illustrating the order of magnitude of available spots. Even if this is an underestimate, most experts agree there are well under 2,000 total beds nationally for adults, which is a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of survivors in need.
Waiting Lists and Unmet Need (Adults): As with minors, adult survivors frequently encounter long waiting lists or simply no openings in programs. Polaris’s National Survivor Study revealed that upon exiting their trafficking situation, 75% of survivors urgently needed trauma-informed mental health services, yet many struggled to obtain them polarisproject.org. In a mid-2020s evaluation of Polaris’s direct assistance program, over half of survivor participants were still on waiting lists for services like counseling or specialized healthcare, even after receiving some emergency aid; 63% reported ongoing difficulty accessing necessary care polarisproject.org. This indicates that even when survivors actively seek help, the support systems are overwhelmed or inaccessible.
Safe housing is a particularly acute need for adults. Thistle Farms in Tennessee – one of the nation’s renowned long-term residential programs for female trafficking survivors – can house only 28 women at a time, yet keeps a perpetual waiting list of roughly 72 additional survivors hoping to get in wpln.org. (They cap their waiting list at 100 names and it remains near capacity wpln.org.) This example is not unique: many safe houses report being full with more survivors waiting. End Slavery Tennessee, upon expanding services in 2021, noted it would immediately help local survivors who previously had to be referred out of state due to lack of beds wpln.org. Similarly, law enforcement and service providers across the country report that after rescue, adult victims often must be put on waiting lists for shelter or counseling, or are placed in non-trauma-informed facilities (such as generic homeless shelters) because dedicated programs are full youthxyouth.com skywoodrecovery.com.
In the realm of long-term support, the shortages are just as dire. Affordable housing programs and public benefits that survivors rely on (like Section 8 housing vouchers) commonly have wait times of 7–10 years for assistance freedomnetworkusa.org freedomnetworkusa.org – effectively out of reach for someone trying to rebuild their life in the near term. Many survivors without safe housing end up homeless or in unstable environments, which heightens risks of re-exploitation. In fact, survivor advocates warn that because of the lack of safe long-term housing, a high percentage of survivors fall back into traffickers’ hands; one organization notes “80% of survivors end up back in the hands of their traffickers” when appropriate housing isn’t available guidestar.org. While that figure is hard to verify, it underscores the vicious cycle created by unmet service needs.
Summary (Adults): In summary, Group B (adults) also faces an enormous unmet need for healing and recovery services. Thousands of adult survivors each year seek help – for housing, counseling, medical care, legal aid, and job training – but available programs can only serve a small fraction at any given time canvasrebel.com wpln.org. The result is significant waiting lists and a “patchwork safety net” that leaves many without timely care. Polaris describes the support landscape as a “system that fails survivors”, where even basic needs like trauma-informed therapy and safe shelter often go unfulfilled when they are most needed polarisproject.org.
Bringing the data together, it is evident that the number of trafficking survivors in need far exceeds the capacity of current services in the U.S. For children under 18, likely on the order of 1,000+ minors (and potentially several thousand) at any given time are awaiting safe placement or specialized care, given the hundreds left unserved in states like Florida and Texas annually myflfamilies.com texastribune.org. For adults, the gap is even larger in absolute terms: many thousands of adult survivors nationwide are not receiving the trauma-informed housing, therapy, or long-term support they require – a gap that experts estimate in the tens of thousands when considering all forms of assistance canvasrebel.com. Meanwhile, the total dedicated capacity (beds in safe homes or long-term programs) can be tallied only in the low thousands (at best) lambstolionsinc.com, and often those few programs have waitlists stretching into months or years wpln.org.
In concrete terms, virtually every data point highlights hard numbers of unmet need: waiting lists of dozens to hundreds of survivors at individual agencies wpln.org covenanthousenj.org, 90%+ of identified child victims in some areas not placed in appropriate facilities myflfamilies.com, and 50% or more of survivors unable to promptly access critical medical/mental health care polarisproject.org. The consensus across law enforcement, NGOs, and researchers is that the U.S. must dramatically expand trauma-informed recovery services for trafficking survivors. Until the capacity shortage is addressed – adding many more safe housing beds, specialized counseling services, and long-term care programs – thousands of survivors will continue to languish on waiting lists or go without help, even after surviving the ordeal of trafficking. The current shortfall is not merely a gap in numbers but a humanitarian crisis of unmet survivor needs, one quantified by the sobering statistics in this report.
Sources: (All information is drawn from authoritative reports and statistics by anti-trafficking organizations, government agencies, and research institutions, as cited below.)
Polaris Project, “Shelter Beds for Human Trafficking Survivors in the United States” (2012) – national survey finding 1,644 total beds for survivors (only 529 exclusive) lambstolionsinc.com ccasa.org.
Safe House Project – notes <100 beds for child trafficking victims nationwide circa 2018 indiegogo.com and ongoing efforts to expand capacity.
Florida DCF, 2023 Annual Human Trafficking of Children Report – 393 child victims evaluated vs 46 placed in safe homes (347 not placed) in one yearmyflfamilies.com myflfamilies.com.
Texas Tribune (2017) – Texas had 1 specialized child facility (20 beds); no emergency beds for recovered minorstexastribune.org texastribune.org.
WPLN News (Nashville Public Radio, 2021) – Thistle Farms (TN) 28 beds with 72 survivors on waitlist (capped at 100) wpln.org.
Polaris National Survivor Study (2023) – 75% of survivors needed trauma-informed mental health care at exit polarisproject.org.
Polaris Resilience Fund Evaluation (2025) – 50%+ of survivors still on waitlists for services; 63% struggling to get care despite seeking help polarisproject.org.
Covenant House NJ (2024) – served 1,811 youth (incl. trafficked youth) in FY24; ~140 youth on shelter waitlist as of Dec 2024 covenanthousenj.org
Eileen Dong interview (CanvasRebel, 2022) – cites 315,000 trafficking victims in Texas vs ~400 beds for survivors nationwide canvasrebel.com (illustrating the national scale of unmet need).
Lambs to Lions Inc. (anti-trafficking nonprofit) – highlights the “staggering” imbalance of survivor needs vs resources lambstolionsinc.com.
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