“It Takes a Village…”

“It takes a village to raise a child,” this now, well-known African proverb aptly describes exactly what is needed in order to help transitioning teens from foster care become happy, healthy and successful adults. Adults who some day will be raising the next generation of little villagers.

In our first installment of It Takes a Village, we discussed Step I: Community Needs Assessment/Environmental Scan. In our second, third, fourth, and fifth installments, we began discussing Step II: Prioritizing Strategic Needs & Issues and Operationalizing Plans. Understanding the most pressing needs and issues of the village will allow us the opportunity of addressing them the best way possible and to finding solutions.

Under Step II, we have discussed the Educational Life of a young villager, Life Skills and Daily Normalcy Matters, Life-long Connections and Relationship Development, and Employment. Today, we will look at Housing or Living Arrangements – the most vital, initial need of a young transitioning villager, yet one that seemingly is the hardest to fill.

Assisting each young person in acquiring and sustaining a permanent, affordable, and quality living arrangement/housing is vital as a young person transitions from foster care. As the saying goes with folks who have asthma, “when you can’t breathe nothing else matters.” If transitioning young people have no place to live, then nothing else matters; not school, not work, not life skills, nothing. Living Arrangements can and should be expansive in order to meet the individual needs of a transitioning young person. A community should fully look at all current housing opportunities and needs, then maximize the current housing resources while developing new opportunities: prioritized opportunities focused on the transitioning teen population. Also, the village elders need to look at “housing opportunities” in an informal manner as well: one which considers all kinds of “living arrangements.”

A broad array of housing needs must be met with a large continuum of living arrangements and housing. Currently, not only is there a lack of adequate, affordable housing units, but due to the nature of the needs of many of the transitioning teen population, varying levels of housing supports are necessary; and currently sorely lacking. A village must ensure that no 17-year-old, on the eve of their 18th birthday, ever worries about where they are going to be sleeping the next day!

The following continuum and wide-array of housing assistance/living arrangements, as modified from Mark Kroner’s work on housing as well as several others, should be considered as a teenager grows up in and transitions out of foster care:

• Family Host Homes (homes where a room or more is rented out to a transitioning teen or teens. The young person assumes a natural lease arrangement. Though more care and support may develop from the adult home owners).
  
  
• Paired Mentor Homes (adults and/or families volunteer to not only mentor a youth but to offer them residence as well. A lease arrangement (room and board) may or may not be part of the arrangement. Adults knowing enter arrangement to offer guidance and support to transitioning teen).
  
• Cluster-site Apartments and Geographical Cluster-site Apartments (In order to give more regular supervision, and to still be able to use existing apartment housing stock in the community, young adults can live together in one apartment complex with an on-site supervisor or live near each other with a program supervisor living nearby; thus, able to give more regular, if not daily supervision to young people who need more help. This type of arrangement is usually subsidized by a community organization; either fully or partially).
  
• Agency-owned (non-profit or other) Multi-use Rental Properties (Houses or apartments which are owned by a non-profit for the sole purpose of assisting needful populations of adults; in this case, young adults formerly in foster care; subsidized by a community organization; either fully or partially).
  
• Scattered-site Apartments (Apartments in the community as part of existing housing stock where young people can lease apartments while being supported by a program – best if supported by a care manager).
  
• Subsidized Housing (Arrangements usually made through local housing authorities and tying into HUD housing – whether transitional in nature or Section 8 Housing Vouchers).
  
• Boarding Homes (Homes that have available rooms can be used to offer a young person room and possibly some room and board. While these arrangements are more informal, they absolutely can help add to the number of housing units available in a community. Further, while not a Mentor Home model, a responsible adult is usually engaged in supervising the young people; young people which typically need more ongoing supervision).
  
• Foster Homes (youth to remain in current placement and may or may not take on a room and board commitment, financially, themselves).
  
• Adolescent Homes (foster homes where specific recruitment, training, milieu, support are all focused on serving the needs of teenagers).
  
• Supportive Living Facilities (Arrangements usually offered to those young adults who have a severe disability whereas they qualify for Adult Services such as Adult Assisted Living in an Assisted Living Facility).
  
• Biological Parent/Relative/Friend Homes (Twenty-five percent of transitioning foster teens will return home (biological family) to try and live initially. While these are more informal arrangements, following up by a care manager should be done in order to ensure a safe and affordable living arrangement).
  
• College Dorms/Housing (Available to those youth where university and collegiate on-campus housing is available).
  
• Transitional Living Program-Housing – (Typically apartment arrangements with live-in staff/staff members with more intensive programming wrapped around more needful young adults in the areas of life skills, education, vocation/employment, and counseling. Many of these arrangements are funded from HHS under Transitional Living Programming and are specifically focused on the homeless and runaway teen/young person).
  
• Emergency Shelter/Housing – (While not permanent in nature, this specifically focused living arrangement can ensure that safe housing and ongoing services are available in order to ensure no young person sleeps on the street nor is forgotten, with regards to services.

Finally, to wrap up this edition of village-speak, a healthy village for a transitioning teen requires a comprehensive approach to finding appropriate living arrangements for its young adult villagers. A village that attempts to only use traditional rental units for use by transitioning teens will find that these young people will struggle immensely without ongoing adult attention. Thus, formal and informal arrangements with caring, committed adults, adults who may already have a solid relationship with a transitioning teen, need to be pursued first and foremost. After all, almost every 18-year-old to early twenty-something in the general population stills lives at home with mom and pop while they enter into adulthood.