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L.A. County's Homeless Youth Numbers Continue To Rise

Brianna Sacks |
September 11, 2013 | 3:38 p.m. PDT

Editor-in-Chief

(Homeless youth on Hollywood Boulevard/Brianna Sacks, Neon Tommy)
(Homeless youth on Hollywood Boulevard/Brianna Sacks, Neon Tommy)

The number of homeless youth in Los Angeles continues to rise, with numbers close to 9,000, though many experts and shelters say the total is much higher, citing the county’s failing child welfare system as the main cause.
 
About fifty members from various youth, health, housing and homeless agencies gathered inside a small, sparse room at West Hollywood’s Plummer park Wednesday morning to discuss how the city’s agencies could successfully create a unified system to deal with the rapidly growing problem of homeless youth.
 
“About 40 percent of homeless youth in Hollywood have been removed from their families and placed in child welfare at some point in their life,” said Arlene Schneir, co-chair of the Hollywood Homeless Youth Partnership. “Then these kids are dispersed to different agencies that don’t communicate with each other.”
 
Meaning struggling youth often fall through cracks in the system, an old theme and tired saying, but one that is having increasing reperucssions as these agencies try to map out a strategy to meet the problem head on.
 
The main purpose of the meeting was to explain a new grant application by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to develop a “model intervention system” that brings key agencies together from about 18 different L.A. communities to paint a much more thorough picture of youth homelessness and how to stymie the rising numbers.
 
“Communities will be forced to work together when they never have before,” said Angela Rosales of the Corporation for Supportive Housing.
 
The proposal is modeled after a national approach, and L. A. based agencies are hoping to hear if they have been approved for the two phase, $1 million grant by the end of September.  
 
An estimated 200,000 youth under the age of 18 and thousands more ages 18-24 experience some type of homelessness every year in California, according to the California Homeless Youth Project. The Los Angeles Housing Authority found close to 9,000 homeless youth this year.
 
And recent reports show that homelessness has increased by about 12 percent among transition age youth, meaning 18-24-year-olds.
 
“Transition age youth seem to consistently slip through the cracks,” said Schneir. “Many of these youth in L.A. are a only a step away from being homeless because of their family situations.”
 
Last May, nine major agencies that work with homeless youth launched the Los Angeles Coalition to End Youth Homelessness in an attempt to bring multiple aspects of youth homelessness, such as the Child Welfare Institute, Corporation for Supportive Housing, LA Gay & Lesbian Center and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, to the same table.
 
But the group has had trouble taking off.
 
“There is no unified system to see if youth are involved in other agencies,” said Tara Reed of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. “It’s rare that we coordinate efforts, even though individual agencies may be making a difference, there is no overarching system to tackle the problem head on.”
 
Identifying homeless youth is also difficult, since many youth stay with friends and neighbors, hide their homelessness, or find other ways to be off the streets.
 
However, these agencies say that these youth are still considered “homeless,” though they often go unmarked in county-wide homeless counts.
 
Thus “youth with unstable living situations” has also been added to the definition of youth homelessness, which adds more layers and frustrations to the process of getting these youth the proper services they need.
 
All of the red tape, bureaucracy and government agencies can be extremely overwhelming for an 18-year-old to navigate, which is why so many youth cannot get the services they need and give up trying, remaining homeless for months or years at a time, and often become life-long transients.
 
“A lot of times a youth is given all this information on who to contact, where to go and what to do by so many agencies they can’t handle it,” said Reed. “Especially when most of these youth leave foster care at 18 and have had unstable living experiences most of their lives. They are unprepared.”

SEE ALSO: Uncounted and Invisible: Homeless Youth In Hollywood

Reed explained that agencies are tied down by so many privacy restrictions they cannot see the problem of youth homelessness as a whole, but in fragments.
 
For example, the L.A. Unified School System is not allowed to reach out to agencies on a student’s behalf if they expect that student is experiencing homelessness.
 
The Department of Child Services also cannot coordinate with other agencies, says Reed.
 
 Many youth are also barred from shelters due to age restrictions, since many shelters only serve 18-24-year-olds.
 
“So many youth are in so many systems,” said Reed. “Youth can be placed in a mental health programs, social work programs, probation programs, housing programs, we don’t really understand how many youth we are dealing with here.”
 
The complicated and inefficient systems attempting to help homeless youth are also centered mostly in Hollywood, Venice and South Los Angeles, despite the rising number of homeless, runaway and unaccompanied minors in the valleys.
 
“There is an extreme lack of services in San Fernando Valley,” said Jessica Ivey, a housing coordinator at LA Family Housing. “What I am starting to notice is that we are getting a lot of young mothers and homeless youth looking for housing, but since they have no background and a lack of income, putting them in permanent housing is almost impossible.”
 
Homeless youth in L.A. is being touted as “a problem too big to ignore,” but the fact is that the city’s lack of services and programs paints a much different picture. If the problem is so severe, why isn’t the county, school systems or government doing more?
 
The city only has four operating drop-in centers specifically for youth, and with so many shelters over capacity, My Friend’s Place reported seeing close to 2,000 different young people every year, the need for more services and intervention programs is dire.
 
“There is no coordinated person to bring all of us together,” said Reed. “The government is involved but there are so many different departments we don’t know where the holes and gaps are.”
 
While foster care, child welfare, abuse and difficult family situations account for a majority of youth homelessness in Los Angeles, it could be argued that many of these youth remain homeless because finding help is too difficult and services are overflowing and strapped for cash.
 
“The whole system is like a ball of string,” said Reed. “We all have our own color, but we can’t seem to get tied together.”

 

Reach Editor-in-Chief Brianna Sacks here; follow her on Twitter



 

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