Nonprofits join forces to provide ‘one-stop shop' for youth seeking housing, medical services

For LGBTQ+ youth experiencing homelessness and/or with a foster placement history, barriers to education, work, health, and general safety are a common experience. The Quads on Lancaster supportive housing program in Philadelphia offers a small amount of transition housing for LGBTQ youth who have aged out of the system, establishing personal connections and providing services to help participants prepare for adulthood.

Many health care facilities that supply needles don't have the proper training or experience to work with trans-identified people that are undergoing hormone therapy. To help address this gap in care, an education and advocacy nonprofit in Eugene, Oregon acts as a hub for the community's clean needle exchange needs.

The Fostering Connections to Success Act helps aged-out foster children obtain housing, but it's not always easy for LGBTQ+ youth to find safe, accepting places to live. But with the newly implemented Resource Family Approval program, members of area child protective services departments and foster care representatives meet with potential foster families to evaluate how they would support LGBTQ+ youth in their home.

The Ali Forney Center is the largest of several organizations across the country serving LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness. It has seventeen sites and serves about 2,000 young people a year, nearly half of whom come from out of state. In addition to setting people up with stable housing, the drop-in center serves daily meals and offers showers and laundry. Advocacy programs and case managers help the youth find permanent jobs, further their education, or put funds aside to secure stable long-term housing. They also offer counseling services, support groups, and temporary employment for many young people.

In Philadelphia, the new HostHome program is working to decrease rates of LGBTQ+ youth experiencing homelessness by connecting youth with volunteer households to host them and social workers to provide additional support. The model has been adopted in cities across the nation and is seen as a cost-effective way to house youth who might otherwise not fit definitions of homelessness and receive the supports they need.

Washington State looks to an innovative program in Tennessee that centers around developing strong relationships between homeless youth and their case workers. The Tennessee program, which offers youth in foster care a sense of stability and family, has helped many of its participants stay off the streets; now, King County, Washington is looking to copy the program to reduce youth homelessness in the area.

The Mason County Housing Options for Students in Transition (HOST) program is filling the county's gap of youth shelters, helping almost 200 homeless youth graduate from high school through personal relationships and screened host families. The program has show particular success in helping homeless youth from marginalized identities, including youth of color and LGBTQ+ identifying youth.

In Philadelphia, a collaboration between three nonprofits is providing 500 free lunches, both filling a gap in nonprofit service on Friday afternoons and giving those recently entered into recovery for addiction a task and sense of purpose. How does it work? The Sunday LOVE Project, a hunger nonprofit, delivers extra food to First Stop Recovery, an addiction recovery center, where residents assemble and pack lunches. Those lunches are then delivered to people with addictions at Prevention Point Philadelphia.

L.A. Kitchen, a California non-profit organization, offers a creative approach that combines job training, healthy eating, and a reduction of food waste. The program trains youth coming out of foster care, giving them food-industry skills that will help them succeed. Upon completing the training program, 85% of participants have jobs, a success rate that is inspiring other organizations to work on supporting foster youth.

The 100 Families Program provides a vital connection point for community organizations serving people in need, streamlining the process for clients to get help with everything from obtaining a GED to finding housing and getting set up with food benefits. In Texarkana, which established its version of the program in 2022, over 100 community partners are now involved in the effort, and nearly half of clients who came into the program in the last year have since earned a high school diploma or are now working toward one.