foster youth homelessness

No issue dominates big city politics right now like homelessness. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio have come in for the harshest criticism of their tenures over proliferating tent villages and visible human suffering on their sidewalks.

Alexis Barries’ story is a sadly familiar one to youth who have experienced foster care in California. At age 2, she entered the foster care system; at 8, she was told by her guardians that she’d end up in prison like her parents.

There are more than 400,000 youth in the American foster care system today, roughly that of the population of Sacramento, California. Foster care, created to protect the welfare of children, is a broken system, hobbled by an outdated bureaucracy, underfunded agencies, and overburdened workers frequently resulting in dire outcomes.

Representative Michael Turner created the “Fostering Stable Housing Opportunities Act” as a direct result of meeting with Ohio foster care youth during their annual Three Days on the Hill trips to Washington, D.C.

The Government Accountability Office’s report, “Higher Education: Actions Needed to Improve Access to Federal Financial Assistance for Homeless and Foster Youth,” examines enrollment data from 2011-2012 and 2013-2014, and completion data from 2009, to determine ways in which access to federal financial aid impacts homeless and foster youth’s experience in college.