Many of us can remember getting our first apartment: looking on-line or for some of us, even the classifieds! We were often helped by our parents, who explained how the process worked and sometimes, even helped us with the security deposit and first month’s rent.
JBAY Youth Advocate Junely Merwin didn’t have this kind of hands-on assistance. After aging out of foster care Junely struggled to find housing. She thought her luck had changed when she was awarded a special housing voucher for former foster youth, which provides affordable housing and supportive services for 36 months. This was just the kind of support she could use to provide stability to herself and her young son, while she completed her degree at Cal State Fullerton.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. Junely struggled to find a landlord that would accept her housing voucher and spent three months searching for housing. During this time, she stayed with friends and couch surfed, worrying about the safety of her personal belongings and her son. She knew the homelessness statistics about former foster youth and was afraid that she was about to become one.
Sadly, Junely’s experience is not unique. Locating housing is a challenge in the best of circumstances, but securing housing with a housing choice voucher, commonly known as a “Section 8” voucher can be even harder. As Junely experienced, many landlords don’t accept these vouchers. Additionally, as a young person, Junely didn’t have the credit, work or rental history to make her a competitive tenant applicant. She had no knowledge of the process and no one to help her.
Over half of county child welfare agencies in California recently reported that there were instances when youth were unable to secure housing with their housing voucher. As one county representative put it, “We have a lot of vouchers. The issue is we don’t have enough funding for housing navigation and housing case management. Since we can’t provide this, we are not able to provide as many vouchers.”
JBAY plans to address this issue in the upcoming legislative session. Together with Assembly Member Phil Ting, JBAY is proposing to establish a permanent funding source to provide “housing navigation services” for young people like Junely. These services will provide intensive housing search assistance to decrease the time required to locate and secure housing. The program can also help with housing start-up costs. JBAY proposes to achieve this change by increasing the age of the state-funded Housing Navigators Program to age 25, to align with the special housing vouchers for former foster youth. JBAY is also proposing to increase funding for the program by $8.7 million annually.
After three long months, Junely was able to use her voucher to secure housing and according to her, safe affordable housing has made all the difference. “That is when I really saw a big shift. I was able to finish my degree and focus on the things that really mattered to me. It was thanks to housing.” She is now looking forward to working with JBAY as a youth advocate to give back to the foster youth community.