A person experiencing homelessness sleeps outdoors.
April Ehrlich / JPR
Nonprofit organizations in Oregon that help homeless youth to find and keep housing will be getting millions of dollars in grant money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help them with their mission. According the Mid-Willamette Valley Homeless Alliance, an estimated 2,000 K-12 students in Marion and Polk counties are homeless. We talk with Tricia Frizell who directs the HOME Youth Services program in Marion and Polk counties, one of the network of services in the Mid-Willamette Valley Homeless Alliance. Carla Munns, a consultant for the Alliance also joins us, along with Miya Longsworth, a formerly homeless youth, who got housing through a similar network of service providers in Lane County.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
DAVE MILLER: Nonprofits in Oregon focused on ending youth homelessness will be getting millions of dollars in new federal grants. In Marion and Polk counties where at least 2,000 K-12 students are homeless. These service providers will get $3.7 million. Carla Munns is a consultant for the Mid-Willamette Valley Homeless Alliance. She joins us along with Tricia Frizell who directs the Community Action HOME Youth Services Program in Marion and Polk counties and Miya Longsworth, a formerly homeless young person. She got housing through a similar network of service providers in Lane County, which has also received a new federal grant. Is there an official age-based definition for youth homelessness?
TRICIA FRIZELL: There are a couple different definitions with the most widely used one being up to age 24. So for our region, when we say youth, we mean youth and young adults. That’s typically ages 11-24.
MILLER: Do you have a sense for how many people in that age group are homeless right now in Polk and Marion counties?
FRIZELL: Yeah, easily 2,000. We know just from the data that’s provided by the Mckinney Vento liaisons, within the school districts that just in the Salem Keizer region, a large school district within Marion and Polk, but definitely not the entire county region has at least 2,000 youth that are experiencing homelessness. And those are just the ones that are counted and recorded, so we know that that’s an underestimate of the true number.
MILLER: And if I understand correctly, that would also, if that’s a district-based number, stop at age 18. So it wouldn’t include the young adults who would make it potentially much higher?
FRIZELL: Correct. I believe that the school district counts up to age 21. But there’s a few 18 to 21 year olds that are actually in the school district, so there is a large portion of the young adult population that is not counted in that number.
MILLER: Can you give us a sense for the range of the circumstances that could be lumped together that we’re talking about. In terms of people living with families or people living on their own or couchsurfing or are fully unhoused, who are we talking about here?
FRIZELL: We’re talking about young adults and youth that are facing a lot of different challenges. Poverty is one of the highest predictors of homelessness. And there’s all sorts of factors that contribute to that ‚whether it’s mental health status for the young adult or their loved ones that they’re living with, substance misuse, unemployment or low employment , housing instability and things like that. Lots of crises and families just needing support and help. There’s a number of times where it’s the circumstances around them that are forcing the family to disband or the youth to flee and just to reach out for other resources. But the family unit itself is very loving and connected and it’s that poverty status that’s really forcing them to look elsewhere for resources. And other times there’s a true deep family conflict and abandonment as well. We have a number of youths [who] we’re serving right now that have just flat out been abandoned by their caregivers.
MILLER: Have you found that the services and programs aimed at older adults work for people ages 11-24?
FRIZELL: Yes and no. That’s a general answer. What we have found in the community and then also nationally is that taking the adult system approach and simply overlaying it on top of the youth and young adult population doesn’t work. If it works, then we would have ended youth homelessness a while ago.
And so there’s different interventions and different perspectives to take into consideration, especially when you’re working with minors and unaccompanied minors. A good portion of the youth that we work with in my program are 15 to 18 and they are unaccompanied, meaning that they don’t have a guardian in their life to sign papers for them or give them access to different resources that you legally have to be an adult to access.
MILLER: As I mentioned Miya Longsworth is with us uh formerly homeless young person who’s now on the youth council for 15th Night. It’s a network for homeless services in Lane County. Miya, my understanding is that you have been homeless on and off over the course of your childhood and teenage years. You have a home now. How long have you been there?
MIYA LONGSWORTH: I’ve been here for about two years now.
MILLER: What made the difference for you that helped you get into your home?
LONGSWORTH: It was just knowing that the resources existed to help me be able to get into where I am now. I’d say when I was growing up and struggling with homelessness, the resources weren’t very out there. People didn’t talk about them. But when I came to Oregon they were more talked about. And so when people were able to tell me about the different housing resources around here, I was able to apply to them and qualify for one.
MILLER: What kinds of resources do you think could have helped you earlier?
LONGSWORTH: Possibly a resource package that just goes through all of the biggest resources for different problems. And if I had seen that sooner, I probably could have gotten help a lot sooner.
MILLER: It’s interesting because it seems like you’re talking about two things that are both necessary. One is having the actual resources available whether that’s toiletries or housing or food or counseling or whatever. But the other which may be just as important is knowing that they exist. How do you tackle that second one? Getting the right information to young people who may be disconnected from school or social service agencies or their families or other networks?
LONGSWORTH: Yeah so it can be very difficult. That would be why The 15th Night does a lot of outreach. So we go out into the community and we will talk to youth and engage with them and we can give them resource packages when we see them and then they can tell their friends and it’s more of a connected thing. If one person knows about it and they use it and they get help using it they can tell their friends who might also need it.
MILLER: You were telling us that over time you realized that you can’t just assume that the kinds of services and programs for adults are going to work for youth. What are examples of youth specific services that you found really do work?
FRIZELL: My first thought goes back to the minor population and that’s kind of an obvious answer maybe because, like I said, when you’re under 18, it’s hard to get services that you need. A good example of that would be ID. It’s a strenuous process for anyone to get an ID, a state ID or a driver’s license. You need your Social Security card. But to get your card you need your birth certificate. To get your birth certificate, you need your Social Security card. And when you’re a minor getting access to even your Social Security number to start the process can be very challenging, whether they don’t have it or their guardians are withholding it from them. You’re really starting from square one. In addition to that you have the barrier of not being able to access some of your most basic identification needs to get that legal identification card.
MILLER: Were those issues for you… having access to IDs so you could access other kinds of services?
LONGSWORTH: That was very difficult especially since I came out of state. So I didn’t have a legal guardian technically. So getting my ID and my Social Security number was very tough and I needed help doing that.
MILLER: Carla I want to bring you into the conversation. As a consultant for the Mid- Willamette Valley Homeless Alliance which focuses on Marion and Polk Counties, you helped get the big grant for Marion and Polk Counties so people like Tricia Frizell can expand services. Do you have a sense yet for what this grant is going to mean for the kind of work that people like Tricia can do?
CARLA MUNNS: Well, Tricia is a bit of an anomaly throughout this State. She’s provided leadership in youth homelessness all across Oregon and we’re very fortunate to have her here.The successful award of this grant was only possible truly because of the engagement with youth. So they recently formed a youth action board and Tricia and her team have been a big lead in making sure that all of these pieces are in place. We’re just so fortunate. I digress. So the youth really provided a lot of feedback that was critical to the application for this Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program Grant from HUD.
MILLER: What did you hear from youth that went into the grant application?
MUNNS: Some of the feedback from youth was around what barriers there were to their services, what their needs are, what specific challenges are unique to the youth population and what a successful community would look like. The trends that came up were some of the barriers and challenges. One of them, being the ID that Tricia had mentioned, another is transportation. A lot of youth operate, with jobs and just personally, around different hours than the bus schedule, [making] reliable transportation also difficult. Cell phone plans were something that was new to me. Youth cannot take out a cell phone plan if they’re under 18. So then they’re put in a position of having to potentially rely upon an unsafe or unstable adult in order to have a consistent cell phone plan.
So, some of their needs were also around safety, needing a place to camp because adult homeless camps don’t want youth to be in their camps. And so they get run out. They think that the youth that are showing up are just runaway youth and that the police are going to be following these runaway youth and going into the adult camps. And so the adults are taking the spaces that were allowed by the city during different times for camping in parks. And the youth don’t have a space to go. So really trying to incorporate some of the feedback that the youth provided.
One example of successful engagement in that realm was the City of Salem actually took the answers that the youth had provided for this grant and they brought it to their leadership and their planning teams and they are opening a new resource center. And because of the feedback that youth have provided, now they’re looking at changing the architecture of this building so that there could be a particular space that was designated only for transitional aged youth and youth so that they have this safe space to go where there can be more peer support and more targeted conversations and discussions and resources for these particular youth.
MILLER: So, could the $3.7 million going to deal with youth homelessness in Marion and Polk counties go to things like cell phones or paying for cell phone plans or transportation, the list that you just mentioned, that came directly from the youth?
MUNNS: Yeah, so all of that will be taken into consideration. The first six months of this grant is to develop a coordinated community plan. So really taking a deep dive into the different partner services and experiences and data that we have with a strong presence of the youth action board and really integrating all of these together to create essentially a roadmap for the community in ending and preventing homelessness. So meeting some of those needs of youth will be listed in a local competition to some degree.
But there are forms of compensation that youth are able to get from just being active in this process right now. So they’re getting paid to participate, they’re getting gift cards and raffle cards. So some of the ways that we help support the needs they’re telling us [they have] is to tell us what type of gift card you want... is it to your energy bill or to your cell phone plan or transportation? So really trying to do a person-centered approach for what the youth need in terms of compensation.
MILLER: Miya, you’re on the Youth Action Council for 15th Night. This is in a nearby county for Lane County, but the idea is similar. Why did you want to be a part of that advisory group?
LONGSWORTH: Well, originally I didn’t really know what it was. I was just going for free food. But I went and I realized that a lot of the other youths who were there had gone through or were experiencing similar things that I was experiencing and we all have the goal of not wanting other youth to have to go through what we went through. And I just really wanted to be a part of that.
MILLER: Do you feel like the adults are actually listening to you and what you and fellow members of the youth council, what you bring to them is actually taken seriously?
LONGSWORTH: Yeah, I’d say that our voices have been taken completely seriously and I’d say that I’ve been taken more seriously doing this than I have been any other part of my life.
MILLER: What’s that like?
LONGSWORTH: It feels good, it feels good to be listened to and know that people care and also want to reach the same goal as you.
MILLER: What is the message you’ve given most often to the adults in charge who are earnestly trying to end youth homelessness, what do you tell them you need the most?
LONGSWORTH: When we ask for help to take that seriously specifically, when you’re trying to talk to youth who need help and they’re trying to voice it to you to even if it is not in a way that you might fully understand, really try and listen to it.
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