Marin's forgotten homeless youth
The film The Blind Side is based on a true story about Leigh Anne Tuohy, a wealthy mother who takes a homeless black teen into her home and family and compassionately offers an approach to addressing youth homelessness.
Ambassadors of Hope and Opportunity, a Marin nonprofit working with homeless and at-risk youth, ages 16 to 25, has been using this host family approach as one of its strategies since its inception five years ago. AHO uses other natural housing resources by brokering a rental rate with landlords so two or three of its youth can each pay $400 a month to live close to their schools and work places. AHO has been on the forefront of highlighting the growing trend of youth homelessness in Marin, the greater Bay Area and Sacramento, bringing attention and resources to fight youth homelessness in our communities.
I am proud to note that AHO is the only nonprofit in Marin that provides the housing/life coach support network and resources vital to the overlooked vulnerable young people it serves. I am not talking about young people who have been in "trouble" or in foster care, or the young people who have serious mental health and/or substance abuse problems for which many good government sponsored programs are in place. AHO clients did not seek or choose to be homeless; they were pushed into it either because their parents explicitly "kicked them out" of their homes because of their sexual orientation or because family conflict, addiction or abuse forced them to leave.
Nell Bernstein, the California Research Bureau's head researcher for youth homelessness in California, provides some interesting statistics:
Although fine articles appeared in North Bay Biz and Marin Magazine calling attention to the plight of the homeless in Marin, I am deeply concerned that they ignored the problems of homeless youth age 16 to 25. This age group has very different needs than homeless adults of varying ages. Unfortunately, traditional programs have not met the unique needs of youth, but have attempted to serve them as part of the adult homeless population.
Research indicates that unless youth have programs that match their developmental age, by age 25, they are unlikely to turn their lives around later in life. In today's world, the 2007 Children's Advocacy Institute research reports that no young person can fulfill his or her potential without a minimum of $5,000 per year, a caring adult ally and a foundation of supportive resources through age 25. AHO's young adults have none of these, so it should not be surprising that they are the largest growing homeless population.
In five years, AHO has successfully served 775 youth who were without families or resources find stability and the foundation to thrive. All of these young people were at risk for chronic homelessness and a life of dependency on the system. With AHO's safety net they are now in stable housing, working one to three jobs, attending college and "giving back" to AHO through its Youth-Led Task Force team projects.
My religious community, the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael, have provided funding for AHO's important work, but AHO needs the larger community's support as well. The health of future generations will be determined by what we as a community do now, so that the future generation is not burdened by the cost of the growing numbers of young people who are homeless without hope or opportunity for a healthy future.
Go to www.ahoproject.org to listen to some of the youth's stories and see how you can be part of the solution to youth homelessness.
Sister Marion Irvine
25 April 2010
