Help the foster kids, reduce homelessness
Foster care is a major driver of homelessness.
The other week I connected with Liz Schoenfeld, executive director of LifeWorks Austin (and former podcast guest!), about her group's efforts to prevent foster kids from falling into homelessness.
Foster care is a major springboard to homelessness across the country. The link between the two is even stronger in Texas, where a third of kids who age out of foster care experience homelessness by age 21. One survey found that an outright majority of unhoused young adults in Austin had contact with the foster care system as children.
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When you look at these figures, you understand why Alan Graham, founder of Community First! Village, describes the principal cause of homelessness as the "catastrophic loss of family." For some, the loss doesn't occur until adulthood. For many on the streets, it happened at birth.
Schoenfeld has some hopeful news to report, however.
