Affordable apartments may make all the difference for foster youth facing homelessness

A local nonprofit rents 12 apartments at a low cost specifically to former foster youth, a population at high risk of homelessness.

By Berit Thorson

December 2022

Written for Solutions Journalism (Fall Term 2022)

Every year, tens of thousands of youth leave the foster care system because they reach adulthood. When they leave foster care as adults, or age out, they may not have a permanent home. They must then face their first official adult challenge: finding housing.

When youth age out of foster care, they are more likely to experience homelessness. Foster youth often do not have the skills, knowledge, and support they need to navigate the complex housing system.

“Not having a long job history,” Stephanie Lambirth, Services Manager at Looking Glass Community Services, said, “not having rental references, not having credit history — those things are kind of amplified for foster youth because they don’t have somebody, like a parent, that can step in and be a co-signer for them or do that sort of thing.”

According to Amy Dworsky, Senior Research Fellow with Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, about 25% to 33% of young people who have been in foster care experience homelessness after leaving the system.

In Oregon, 71% of youth in foster care who are 14 and older will age out according to data published in 2018 by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on child welfare.

Nationwide, that number is 51%. In Washington, it’s 32%.

Additionally, Oregon’s unaccompanied homeless youth — youth seeking shelter without a parent or guardian — make up 4% of the national number of homeless youth, according to a 2020 annual assessment by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

“For youth, it is absolutely critical to be able to get folks into stable housing,” Margaret Salazar, HUD’s Northwest Regional Administrator, said, “so they don't fall into the cycle of homelessness as they become [adults] and transition into adulthood.”

Government programs as well as nonprofits are working to address this gap by providing more opportunities for affordable housing to foster youth. One Springfield-based nonprofit, DevNW, runs an apartment complex, on Polk Street, in Eugene, that is entirely dedicated to housing former foster youth.

DevNW’s 12 apartments have offered housing to former foster youth since 2015, after being purchased with the help of the city and approval from the Whiteaker neighborhood association.  Emily Reiman, DevNW’s CEO, said she knew from the start that it wouldn’t be enough, but that it was viewed as a starting point. 

Earlier in her career, Reiman worked to provide services to foster youth. “We, as a society, as a city, as a state, do a uniquely poor job of creating the infrastructure that will help youth aging out of foster care make that transition to adulthood,” she said, “so that’s the status quo that we’re setting out to try to overcome and that youth are having to individually try to overcome.

“That’s the crazy part; they’re having to exercise so much resilience and perseverance and pain and suffering and confusion to try to navigate the system on their own because they’re not getting systemic help.”

Foster youth struggle to find housing

Housing that foster youth can access, and that provides a community of people who have similar experiences, is in short supply.

The 12 Polk Street apartments were dedicated to former foster youth because this population has less systemic support and is at a higher risk of becoming homeless.

“Some type of really serious housing instability seems to be quite common among this population,” Dworsky said. That may mean experiencing homelessness in the most literal sense of the word or homelessness in the sense of staying in shelters or on friends’ couches.

One way of tracking levels of homelessness over time is through yearly point-in-time surveys, which are conducted on a single day each year. These surveys try to count every person who is homeless on that day in a given community, though research implies that the accuracy of these counts can be inconsistent.

Lane County’s 2019 point-in-time count shows 131 transition-age youth, aged 18 to 24, experiencing homelessness: 98 were unsheltered, 14 were in transitional housing, and 19 were at an emergency shelter. Additionally, 26 homeless youth under 18 were not accompanied by an adult.

Additionally, the housing market in Eugene and other Lane County areas is tight right now, said Lambirth, which is an added stress because even the people with great references and credit and rental history, and plenty of money, aren’t able to find a place to rent. Foster youth already struggle to find landlords who will rent to them, and Lambirth said those challenges are “amplified” by the intensity of the housing market.

The Eugene-Springfield 2020 Consolidated Plan for housing and community development identifies a need for more beds in emergency shelters as well as beds specific to youth who are exiting foster care.

The Polk Street apartments provide 12 of these foster-youth-specific beds. However, DevNW did not have data on the total number of youth they have had as residents of Polk Street over the years. The lack of data hinders getting a full understanding of the impact that DevNW has had through its Polk Street efforts.

Other efforts to help transition-age youth

There are two main government programs also supporting foster youth at risk of homelessness as they age out of care.

One of the more prominent programs is the Independent Learning Program (ILP). The program serves youth aged 16 and older who have spent at least 6 months in foster care since age 13. It offers support services for youth so they can develop the skills and knowledge they need to live on their own.

According to Kelly Brezinski with the Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS), the ILP will expand in October 2023 to offer services to youth who are 14 and 15 years old, as well. From January to November of this year, out of 1,178 children and young adults who were eligible, 786 participated in ILP services.

Another angle of support available to youth transitioning from foster care to adulthood comes from housing choice vouchers. HUD offers these in two ways. First, through their Family Unification Program (FUP), to families and youth leaving foster care who are facing homelessness. Families receive these rental assistance vouchers as long as they need them, and youth are eligible for three years.

However, since FUP covers individuals as well as families, the two groups compete for one resource. Usually, the families generally get priority, so youth who are leaving foster care often do not receive FUP vouchers, leaving them to find housing on their own. With an increasingly expensive housing market, plus the added challenges that many foster youth often cannot meet necessary rental standards, do not have rental or credit history, and do not have a parent to cosign a lease with them, it is becoming harder for foster youth to find housing.

So, in response to this issue, HUD created its second housing choice voucher program, but this one is only for foster youth exiting care. This newer program is called the Foster Youth to Independence (FYI) program. FYI requires youth to be within 90 days of leaving foster care or already out of care, be 18 or older, and be homeless or at risk of homelessness. Housing authorities can receive up to 25 FYI vouchers per year, and they must make certain social services available for youth to opt into.

While both housing voucher programs help with covering rent, and the Independent Living Program helps with navigating systems and providing knowledge and support, Lambirth said none of these programs make housing physically available to youth who are exiting foster care.

Without enough accessible, affordable housing, increased availability of rental assistance through vouchers will not have the desired impact. 

Furthermore, for those who can find landlords who will accept their application and apply the voucher, each voucher program only provides three years of rental assistance. While three years might be enough time for some youth, both Dworsky and Lambirth said, it may not be sufficient for others.

Jonathan Dodson, a caseworker with ODHS, has a different perspective. “I mean, it’d be great if we had funding to last these kids forever,” he said, “but I think that 18 to 24 age is pretty crucial because that’s kind of really starting your adulthood and having to start your formal adulthood with looking for someplace to live. I think that [the Foster Youth to Independence voucher] takes a huge stressor off of people.”

However, Dodson warned against getting a false sense of security. “It seems like ‘oh, this person’s housing issues are fixed because they have this stream of funding from the state.’ But that goes away,” he said. “It’s temporary.”

Still, having the resources available creates opportunities for youth to gain access to other resources, Salazar, from HUD, said. She said it is important to work alongside government and community partners since only providing housing resources will not be enough.

In terms of the services offered to youth by the government as well as nonprofits like DevNW, Dodson believes it’s all helpful and important work, but a lot of the work does end up essentially acting as a band-aid to a problem. No single service meets every need, but using various programs together can address most, if not all, of a youth’s needs.

The DevNW way

DevNW uses a three-prong method to provide affordable housing to former foster youth, says Reiman. The approach consists of owning or controlling units, like the Polk Street apartments, which allows DevNW to set the requirements for rental, like credit scores or rental history, something many foster youth do not have. Then, DevNW has grants or loans for youth to use toward housing, whether or not they are moving into DevNW’s units. Finally, it provides services to help youth transition into the adult world, such as educating them about financial aid for education, workforce training services, or even how to buy a car or file taxes.

“We are not in the business of trying to reform the foster care system or trying to prevent youth from coming into foster care,” Reiman explained. Instead, DevNW tries to provide resources to youth that will help them become self-sufficient and independent, to avoid falling into a cycle of homelessness or crime.

However, DevNW found that defining youth aging out of foster care is challenging. Reiman said that there are youth who did not technically age out but spent a lot of their lives in care. And there are youth who have run away from unsafe foster homes or families.

“Even if they spent a great deal of their childhood in foster care but didn’t age out,” Reiman said, “we’ll work with them, absolutely. So, we’ve sort of broadened that definition. But what we want is any youth who comes to have access to units that are welcoming of that youth and that are barrier-free for that youth.”

By barrier-free, Reiman means that DevNW will help youth however it can, such as by matching rent as needed or providing help using social services that support the youth as they decide how to live their adult lives.

However, in aiming for a barrier-free housing opportunity, DevNW may have created a new problem. There is no upper age limit at Polk Street apartments so that the resource isn’t just another place for youth to age out of, Reiman said, so residents are able to stay in a stable unit even if one form of rent assistance, like a housing voucher, runs out. The youth may be able to receive support from a different fund or even support themselves by the time their time-limited rental assistance goes away.

This can create a situation in which there are more youth looking for housing at Polk than there are units to support them, especially as the turnover can be low depending on how many youth stay beyond the three years that come with housing vouchers. Once residents move out, said DevNW’s Executive Coordinator, Anna Hindley, in an email, DevNW does not keep track of where they go.

Dodson said that as a caseworker, he tries to get youth on the waitlist for Polk Street early if he knows that an individual will need housing once they exit care. On average, Hindley said, Polk Street has one unit available out of the 12 at a given time.

Another challenge for some youth is that all the Polk Street apartments are one-bedroom units, and some of the youth do not want — or are not ready for — an apartment all to themselves.

“We need more units, period,” Reiman said. But some youth would do better with roommates: having a room to themselves but sharing living spaces, she said.

Next steps: Polk 2.0

DevNW is getting the chance to apply the lessons it’s learned from the Polk Street apartments to a new building on the same property.

Earlier this fall, DevNW broke ground on Polk 2.0, a project to build a second set of 12 units for youth who have been in foster care, are experiencing homelessness, or have been involved with other systems, such as residential treatment programs. All youth who live in the new building will have an income that is below 60% of the area’s median income.

Because most of the clients served by DevNW undergo a process to qualify for housing, their units usually require a security deposit and they provide services to assist clients before they house them, DevNW does not fall under a ‘housing first’ model. However, Polk 2.0 will set aside six of its 12 new units for permanent supportive housing for youth who are referred to them through the Lane County Coordinated Entry process, which is part of a ‘housing first’ approach.

The approval of $550,000 in funding to DevNW for the Polk 2.0 development by the Eugene- Springfield Consortium reflects the success that the original Polk Street apartment complex has had in addressing needs.

Although there is no formalized data showing the impact of the original Polk Street apartments on youth transitioning out of foster care, the approval of Polk 2.0, as well as support for DevNW’s work by others working in the space, like Lambirth and Dodson, indicates the positive impact of the Polk Street apartments on youth transitioning out of foster care.

“A huge disconnect in the system is that it is not designed for that unique transition-age population,” Reiman said. “We’re trying to interrupt that system and disrupt that transition so that youth have the stable housing that they need to gain employment, to finish education, to do all of those critical things for future stability.”

Originally published on Medium