Aging out: Thousands of foster youth graduate to the streets every year

Sometimes at night, under the dark skies of Indiana’s capital city, Shavannaha Bryers was all alone. Homeless at 19 and living on the streets.

Scared, she admits now, feeling abandoned after she aged out of California’s foster care system about a year earlier.

“I have stayed in alleys, even in the wintertime when it snows,” says Bryers, now 21, her words spoken so softly you have to lean forward to hear them. “Unsafe, but it was somewhere to lay.

“I felt I had nowhere to go.”

Every year, roughly 20 percent of the young adults who age out of foster care in America — more than 4,000 — immediately become homeless, studies show.

And thousands more — rising to as much as 40 percent in some parts of the country — are homeless within four years of aging out.

“People don’t realize there are homeless former foster kids,” says Jason Chenoweth, CEO of Outreach Indiana, a nonprofit that helps homeless youth in Indianapolis. “They just don’t think it happens. You just don’t see them. They don’t stand out. If you don’t know them, they’re just another person on the street.

“They haven’t just fallen out the bottom of foster care, they’ve fallen out the bottom of everything.”

For too many, living on the streets starts them down a path of desperation that often includes sex trafficking and crime in order to eat or have enough money for a safe place to sleep.

In an investigation of the long-term outcomes of kids placed in the country’s broken foster care system, The Star found many kids once raised by the state now on their own and struggling to survive.

The Star surveyed inmates in 12 states, and nearly 60 percent of those who said they had been in foster care also had been homeless at some point in their lives.

Some of the 23,000 youth who age out of state care each year between ages 18 and 21 have a plan mapped out and somewhere to go. Many don’t.

Bryers had studied hard in summer school for two years just to get her high school diploma on time. But that wouldn’t be enough to help her after she aged out.

Nearly every state offers some form of extended foster care for youth who turn 18 and don’t feel ready to live on their own. Twenty-seven of those states have qualified to use federal dollars to help pay for those services.

Extended foster care is crucial when supporting foster youth who are entering into adulthood, said Mark Courtney, one of the authors of the Midwest Study, a widely-cited body of research published in 2011. That study, which followed youth in three states after they transitioned out of state care, found that aged-out youth fared poorly when compared to their peers in numerous areas, including employment, education and housing.

Extended foster care “keeps you connected to responsible adults who will assist you,” said Courtney, who has traveled the country talking about the study. And, Courtney said, extended foster care reduces a young person’s chances of being involved in the criminal justice system.

The majority of states, including Missouri, also allow foster kids to age out but return to care if they later decide they can’t make it by themselves. Twelve states, including Kansas, do not allow re-entry into foster care.

But many former foster youth told The Star that they don’t seek out additional help and services because they’re tired of languishing in the system. They just want out.

“It’s not a system that is actually built on being a parent, as much as they try,” said Danielle Pierson, a manager at Outreach. “They don’t parent. They do what a system is meant to do, which is try to fix the issue. But really, you can’t fix parenting by building a system.”

Pierson knows. Before she started working at Outreach and before she became a child advocate, she was a foster child who aged out.

When she was ready to be on her own, Pierson was fortunate to have the support of friends and their families and a high school teacher. But so many former foster kids she sees don’t have those natural supports.

“After the judge says your case is closed, every support that they have had are people connected to their case,” Pierson said. “They come with a list of case managers, people who get paid to work with them. They really don’t have any natural relationships.”

That’s why, she said, so many end up homeless.

Shelters become safety nets

Anthony Dumas sees it every day at Outreach. Many of the teens are struggling to get off the streets. They feel abandoned by a system that vowed to give them a safer and better life.

And they share stories that make Dumas fume.

A few years ago, an 18-year-old’s foster family dropped him off at a mall with only a few belongings. Then drove away.

Another young man recently showed up at Outreach the day after his 18th birthday. He had arrived home to find the door locked and his bags on the front porch.

A not-so-subtle message from his foster family: their job was done.

“It’s one of the things that ticks me off the most,” says Dumas, director of in-house programs for Outreach. “... They either show up or we’re called to go find them, to go grab them, with just a suitcase. Period.

“Just a suitcase,” he repeats, shaking his head.

So far this year, 68 percent of the homeless youth served by Outreach had been in foster care. Last year, 50 percent of the youth served had been in the state’s care.

Indiana has faced huge increases in the number of kids coming into care, much of it — advocates say — due to the opioid crisis and the state’s slow response to it. The state was hit with a class action lawsuit this year alleging that Indiana was failing in its duty to protect more than 22,000 kids in the child welfare system.

About 240 miles west of Indianapolis on Interstate 70 in St. Louis, Covenant House Missouri homeless shelter for youth routinely sees former foster children. In Fiscal Year 2019, 28 percent of the young people at Covenant House had been in state care at some point in their childhood. In the first two months of FY 2020, the figure was 39 percent.

Shelters on the East and West coasts see the same issues as the staff at Outreach on Indianapolis’ east side.

At Outreach, former foster children get help finding housing and mental health services, obtaining birth certificates and other forms of identification, even nailing down a job.

For Dumas, it’s all about showing love for the young people who have been deprived of it.

“It’s a hopeless feeling, to be told that you’re not really a part of this family and that when the time comes, you’ll be leaving this family,” he says. “It’s tough to see, it’s tough to watch.

“It’s just knowing that there are young people out there not being loved properly, that are not cared for. That are thrown away, almost. I think knowing that … for me is the hardest thing.”

Looking for family

When Bryers was 7, her mom dropped her off at a friend’s house in San Diego and didn’t come back.

Then began the little girl’s string of foster homes, followed by mental health hospital stays as a teen. Intertwined in all of that would be about a dozen stints back with her mom, and eventually her dad, where they tried to make family work.

It never did.

The time she felt most at home in the years spent moving between her mom and foster care was living in a group home with other kids. There was structure, which she needed in order to grow. And there was discipline, which she needed to be able to learn.

“When you first walk in that group home door, it’s like, ‘Wow!’” she says, her eyes lighting up. She thought, ‘“Can I call this home, or can I not?’”

She remembers going through an exhaustive check-in procedure. Immediately afterward, something happened that made her feel like she belonged. Something she never felt in the foster homes, or even back with her mom.

“They took me personally and bought me new clothes and hygiene stuff, new everything, so nothing was ever borrowed,” she says, her eyes still wide. “Just to have new clothes every day. And so my closet was full. … I never had that before.”

After aging out of care, Bryers tried going back with family. But that didn’t work. So when her boyfriend at the time asked her to go to Indiana with him, she packed up and left the West Coast.

“When I got out here, he wanted to change me,” she says. “He was having me go out, be a prostitute at night, get weed for him at night. He would make me have sex with different guys at nighttime just so he could get weed.”

The trajectory had begun: Homeless. No job. Sex trafficking.

Her voice grows quiet when she describes that period, the loneliness she felt.

“I needed support at that time. I didn’t have it,” she says. “I needed my mom at that time. I didn’t have it.”

When she wouldn’t do as her boyfriend demanded, she says, he abused her. Eventually, she ran.

“I was like, ‘How much is a ticket to just anywhere, that’s close to here, but far?’” she says.

Bryers took a bus to St. Louis, but before long returned to Indianapolis, homeless again and on her own, only a year out of foster care.

Sometimes, she’d hop on The 39 bus in Indianapolis and just ride. She felt safe there and if she was lucky, she’d get a couple of hours to rest.

“I would wake up between stops, but I would try and get as much sleep as possible,” she says. “Then I would hop on the next bus and do it again until the buses stopped running.”

As she describes her experience on the streets, it’s almost as if she’s detailing someone else’s life. No tears, no emotion.

“There were plenty of nights where I went hungry,” she says. “There would be plenty of nights where I would ask people for money. I would have to go steal from Kroger sometimes just to go get something to eat. I would have to ask McDonald’s just for a cheeseburger. I would have to ask somebody for something.

“They’d ask me every time, ‘Where’s your family?’”

Every time, she’d answer: “I don’t have family.”

And she wondered if she ever would.

Help from Washington

Desperate to address the critical housing need for former foster kids, a national advocacy group went to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in March. That meeting led to an initiative last summer that allows local public housing agencies to offer housing vouchers for those aging out.

“No young person who grows up in foster care should experience homelessness once they set out on their own,” said HUD Secretary Ben Carson, in announcing the federal program. “The foundation of a stable life is stable housing.”

Some in Washington want to further increase the number of foster youth who can receive housing vouchers. Lawmakers of both parties have proposed legislation to expand HUD’s Family Unification Program that administers them.

Their proposal, which has already passed the House, would provide housing vouchers immediately to youth at risk of homelessness as they leave state care. Currently, recipients have to live in the jurisdiction of a public housing authority that has been awarded the vouchers. And only a fraction of the 4,000 public housing agencies in the country receive the vouchers.

“We need to help prepare them for aging out,” said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who co-sponsored the Fostering Stable Housing Opportunities Act of 2019 with Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.

Grassley told The Star that he’s heard stories about those who age out of foster care and were told to “get your belongings in a garbage bag and you’re out in the street.”

Brown said too many kids turn 18 and then “they no longer get money and then all of a sudden they’re on their own.”

“And most 18-year-olds aren’t prepared to be on their own at 18 without some safety net,” he said. “In the end, it’s good for our country to do this.”

Congress has made other attempts to help kids leaving state care, but those efforts have been largely fruitless.

Like the housing vouchers that go to only a select few jurisdictions, another program fell short of hitting its targets directly, or delivering widespread relief to the thousands of former foster kids who need it.

In 2001, Congress created the Chafee Education and Training Voucher (ETV) program. Administered by the states, the program provides grants of up to $5,000 per academic year to eligible current and former foster youth for higher education expenses including tuition, fees, books and supplies, housing and transportation.

But a high percentage of former foster youth don’t even graduate from high school, and critics say the application process to receive the assistance is complicated and, in many cases, those aging out of care aren’t even aware of the programs.

They also note that while tuition and other costs associated with college have risen dramatically since the program was created 18 years ago, there’s been no increase in the maximum annual award of $5,000.

Lawmakers agree that more is needed to help these kids raised by the state.

“After the age of 18, they kind of just fall off the edge of the world,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii. “We obviously have to do a lot more to prevent people from going into a situation where they can’t support themselves and therefore turn to crime.”

Trying for a ‘happy life’

Bryers goes to Outreach in Indianapolis nearly every day. She heard about it when she got off the Greyhound bus. The bus station is near the police station, where she had gone in search of any kind of help they could give.

“They was like, ‘We’re gonna take you to this place called Outreach,’” she says. “... They’ve watched me for three years grow tremendously.”

For Bryers, Dumas is like an uncle. So is caseworker Anthony Baker.

And group facilitator Devin Miller? He’s like her dad.

“There’s nothing but family here for me,” she says, a hint of a smile crossing her face.

Other young people feel the same. Each day they gather in the front room, talking and charging phones and taking the opportunity to get in out of the heat or cold.

And like Bryers, they become close to the staff at the faith-based nonprofit.

When Garrett Goller — who was in foster care as a child before he was adopted — was homeless his senior year of high school, he’d hop the fence at night after Outreach had closed and sleep outside in his sleeping bag. He felt safe in the center’s back yard.

In the morning, he’d go to school and end up at Outreach in the afternoon. Then, at nightfall, he’d repeat the same hop over the fence. The staff, he said, helped him stay focused to get his high school diploma.

“They help you with like a job, trying to get a phone, Social Security, all that,” Goller said. “That’s how I got housing.”

The staff supported Bryers when she got a job at a local Dairy Queen, where she worked as a cashier 30 to 40 hours a week. Now they’re helping her find a place of her own so she no longer has to stay with a friend.

No more nights worrying about where she’s going to sleep, or days hopping on The 39 bus just to get a little rest and be safe.

For the first time, she’s able to think about the future with a little hope. And that includes a family of her own.

“I hope for at least two kids,” she says.

She wants to give them what she says she hasn’t had in her days growing up in foster care and aging out, homeless and afraid.

“A very happy life,” she says. “My kids wouldn’t want for nothing.”

This story was originally published December 15, 2019 at 5:00 AM.