John Burton Advocates for Youth (JBAY) works closely with community-based organizations across California to improve the lives of youth who have been in foster care or homeless.
That’s how we learned about the virtual absence of funding to help homeless youth. It’s also how JBAY successfully advocated for a 10% “youth set-aside” in the state’s main homelessness program: the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) program.
Since that critical policy change in 2019, JBAY has helped community-based organizations implement HHAP and recently issued a series of profiles about how the HHAP investment is helping young people in communities across California.
In Contra Costa County, HHAP is putting a much-needed focus on preventing chronic homelessness, according to Chief Executive Officer Deanne Pearn of Hope Solutions. “Without HHAP, there’s no plan for youth until they hit the adult service system and, at that point, they’ve been homeless for three years, addicted or their mental health is unstable because of the trauma that we’ve forced them to suffer.”
In Los Angeles County, the LA LGBT Center is using HHAP to save lives, according to Policy Advocacy Manager Robert Gamboa. “They (homeless youth) will die. It’s that simple. Unless we can create a pathway of success and stability there will not only be the challenge of recidivism, but these youth may never have the opportunity to live their lives.
In Northern California’s Butte County, HHAP was there to help when a natural disaster threatened to make youth homeless, according to Youth for Change’s Emily Pereira. “We had a housing crisis prior to the Paradise Camp Fire. After the Camp Fire our housing is pretty much non-existent. HHAP funding gave us stability for our youth and for our programs.”
Covenant House California has used HHAP in both Northern and Southern California to move youth off the street, establishing the City of Anaheim’s first youth shelter and breaking ground on a 30-bed shelter in Hayward, the first youth shelter in Southern Alameda County.
According to Covenant House California’s CEO Bill Bedrossian, HHAP is working. “In just a short amount of time, HHAP has had such a tremendous impact. HHAP is one of the only tangible ways we have right now to keep people from becoming chronically homeless until we can really get upstream and change the systems that are creating homelessness.”
These are the kind of results JBAY believed were possible when it advocated for the youth set-aside. “HHAP has assisted over 11,000 youth,” said JBAY Executive Director Amy Lemley. “We are pleased to see this new funding source help young people and will keep making the case the to the California State Legislature to make it permanent.”