Child welfare leaders declare victory when “kinship families” step up: Fewer children go into costly foster care and more kids stay with people they love. In truth, relatives say, child welfare agencies hand them the bill – and blame them when they can’t afford it.
All too often, when parents can’t afford safe housing, the solution child welfare services offer is putting their children in foster care.
Wisconsin has shown that it’s cost-effective and completely possible to keep families together by stabilizing their housing. That’s not the only promising development in the field.
After being evicted from her Housing Choice voucher apartment more than a year ago, Tytinisha Mitchell, a 26-year old pregnant mother with a young child drifted in and out of the homes of friends and acquaintances, before living in her car for several months. The experience left a physical toll on her. She was hospitalized once for high blood pressure and later developed pre-eclampsia, a condition marked by dangerously high blood pressure during pregnancy. Affordable housing options for people like Mitchell are critical, say housing advocates.
For Vietnamese seniors living in a mobile home park in Santa Ana, limited English proficiency make navigating leases, code enforcement, or eviction notices difficult to understand. They teeter on the edge of eviction for failure to comply with the numerous demands from the management.
Unhoused and Housing unstable Vietnamese seniors gather on the streets in Little Saigon, communing with each other and preferring that "freedom" over shelters. Severe rent burdens, an aging population, and low labor force participation are factors that have increased homelessness risk in this population.
The Observer offers a look through the eyes of advocates and community members working directly with Black homeless people and exploring how to provide solutions.
Data analysis is a powerful reporting tool. But as one reporter learns, it’s insufficient unless it’s grounded in the reality of the community you’re reporting on.
Compared to its population, Gilroy has the highest homelessness rate per capita of any city in the region, but resources are sorely lacking.
Malachi, raised by his grandmother after a troubled childhood, now advocates for foster youth. Kinship care and family-first approaches are helping reform child welfare systems.
