Children without a safe place at night become homeless adults

By Jevon Wilks, especially for CalMatters

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California has mostly homeless youthand more than 60% of these young people are homeless. However, only 3.4% of beds in the state’s shelter and transitional housing systems are for youth.

Our safety net designed to protect children and youth is failing, leading them to a life of homelessness.

I know how it feels to be a young person looking for security and a place to sleep. I had to navigate the streets of Los Angeles County without a stable place to call home.

I entered the California child welfare system at birth and spent my childhood in foster care. At 16, I found myself in youth unemployment shelter in Hollywood. My story took me from sleeping on the streets, bouncing from place to place to even riding the subway from Santa Monica to Whittier to find a safe place to rest.

By the grace of God and a school counselor, I moved from sleeping rough to possibly attending college. This helping hand is why I have been advocating for the past 20 years to prevent, address and end youth homelessness, because today thousands of children and youth experience the same lack of a safety net.

Too many children are sleeping in cars, on rooftops, in empty buildings, couch surfing with strangers, or cycling through shelters built for adults. Our social service systems are failing to protect our young people and failing to prepare them for success once they age out of the foster care system.

We need to build a system that provides healing to overcome homelessness. Otherwise, through our inaction, we are building an endless pipeline to chronic homelessness for young people, especially those already in care systems or who are homeless.

Data shows that 50% of the chronically homeless population had their first experience of homelessness when they were young. Recent reports show that 49% of adults who have experienced homelessness in the City and County of San Francisco first experienced it under the age of 25. In Los Angeles County, 45% of homeless adults experienced it for the first time before age 25.

This nightmare and failed future for our children needs a bold decision to build and fund youth housing to show our children we care by giving them a safe and stable place to sleep every night.

That’s why the California Youth Coalition, the Alliance for Children’s Rights, Children Now and other child advocacy organizations support Senate Bill 492 to increase the availability of youth housing and break this line from youth homelessness to chronic, elderly homelessness.

SB 492, if approved, would increase housing stability and enhance the impact of California’s investments in youth housing by creating a dedicated funding source, the Youth Housing Bond Fund. The bond will pay for transitional housing where youth will have supportive services to help them build skills needed to transition to independence and self-sufficiency.

This would dramatically change the lives of many of California’s children.

Every community cares about its children. We support football teams and school trips. But are we supporting our most vulnerable young people?

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.