Homeless youth numbers startling

​NORWALK, Conn. (AP) — It started like every day. Nothing was out of place as Hector Alicea left for Cranbury Elementary School 17 years ago.

But it's a day he'll never forget and one he remembers like it was yesterday.

At the time he didn't fully understand what was happening. All he knew at 8 years old was that, suddenly, he couldn't go home, and the Connecticut Department of Children and Families was at school to pick him up. In hindsight, he said, it's clear his family had been evicted that day.

"I remember walking out of school and the DCF worker was standing there, and he said, 'I'm here to pick you up. You have to move, you guys are going to be living somewhere new,'" Alicea said. "I'll never forget his expression, he felt for us, he knew we had nowhere to go."

Alicea, his younger brother and their mother moved into the family and children rooms at Open Door Shelter in South Norwalk, where they lived for the next year.

"I remember when we got there, and I remember freaking out because we always knew this was a place for people to get help, and so I associated it with us needing help," Alicea said. "It's not like we were prepared for it. When we left for school that morning, everything was normal."

Even so, Alicea, now 25, had something many homeless youth do not: his family.

Bridgeport-based Supportive Housing Works estimates there are 3,000 unaccompanied youth and young adults currently experiencing homelessness in Connecticut. In Fairfield County, 150 young adults between ages 18 and 24 call the United Way 211 hotline every month reporting homelessness and seeking resources.

Lisa Bahodosingh, community liaison for regional initiatives at Supportive Housing Works, said "youth" are defined as anyone under 24, and anyone who does not have stable housing is considered homeless, even if they're not necessarily sleeping on the street. In one survey conducted by SHW, Bahodosingh said there were 104 self-reported homeless youth at a single Bridgeport high school.

"Most people think the 3,000 in Connecticut is a poor representation of the problem in the state because we know a lot of these young people don't want to be identified as homeless because they don't want to be involved in the system," Bahodosingh said. "To have 104 unstably housed youth at one school . that's really significant."

Though he wasn't unaccompanied, Alicea's experience with homelessness has motivated him to pursue a career in which he can help end youth homelessness. He volunteers at a youth mentoring program, Veterans Empowering Teens Through Support, where he works with a lot of homeless youth, and is pursuing a double major in psychology and political science at Quinnipiac University in hopes of one day running for office on a platform to help young people.

"Being homeless, it completely shaped what I want to do with my life," Alicea said. "It's given me a passion and a compassion to help. It's guided my performance and how aggressively I look for resources for these young people. I can't imagine going through what I've been through alone. Being unaccompanied, I don't know how they would find resources to survive."

While homeless point-in-time counts have been conducted for years, 2015 was the first year Connecticut divided the count by age specifically to determine the number of unaccompanied homeless youth.

Though 3,000 is just an estimate, it has provided a better gauge for how big the problem truly is, and shed light on the lack of resources available for the homeless population in this demographic.

"We've been armed for the first time ever with the information to start to address the problem of youth homelessness," Bahodosingh said. "We never even had the ability to quantify what the problem was prior to 2015 ... Homeless youth have been the invisible population for so long. They often don't self report or don't feel safe reporting that. They don't feel safe going to adult shelters and there are really very few resources for minors that are displaced from housing."

As a result of the youth count, Bahodosingh said a serious dialogue has started among providers of homeless services as well as child and family services about the best way to collaborate in order to better serve the "in between" population of homeless youth. While the state seeks to end youth homelessness by 2020, there are no new funding resources or staff provided to accomplish this goal, so it's up to existing providers to find a solution.

"Prior to the youth count we didn't really understand how disconnected the two systems were, homeless service providers and youth service agencies," Bahodosingh said. "This has really helped to remedy that situation. We understand we have to reach out to law enforcement and LGBTQ community centers and schools and other youth serving agencies because it can't just be homeless service providers that are trying to stabilize these young people."

At Norwalk's Open Door shelter, Executive Director Jeannette Archer-Simons said it's a struggle to place unaccompanied youth because of the additional staffing and expertise required to accommodate them. Unaccompanied youth often are too young to be housed with the adult homeless population, but too old to be placed in the family section. Additionally, Archer-Simons said most unaccompanied youth are dealing with some sort of trauma, which requires a different sort of case management the shelter can't provide.

"For unaccompanied youth we actually have the space tomorrow," Archer-Simons said. "We have 10 beds and a place for them, but it takes additional staffing. We don't have the staffing funding it would require. We're not talking about huge dollars, but maybe $100,000 to $150,000 a year."

Archer-Simons said that in every case, the shelter provides what assistance it can and directs the client to United Way's 211 hotline, which can help pair them with other resources in Fairfield County. In many ways, the hotline is already providing the coordinated service Bahodosingh hopes to implement. The problem is that most of the resources 211 can connect people to aren't specifically targeted at unaccompanied youth.

Tanya Barrett, senior vice president at 211 Health and Human Services, said coordinated access is a relatively new approach to finding housing solutions, which was previously treated on a case by case basis with the goal to find short term solutions.

"That's basically the long term goal of coordinated access," Barrett said. "Finding solutions that meet their needs longer term. It's a very different approach than in previous years when shelter was the most utilized resource. Now there's a big emphasis on diversion and we try to connect people with those resources."

Bahodosingh said Supportive Housing Works has started to form coordinated access partnerships with Greenwich-based Kids in Crisis, Council of Churches of Greater Bridgeport, Malta House in Norwalk, Project Return and Domus, located in Stamford. Already, she said many of these youth serving agencies have started to meet on a regular basis, and have started conducting focus groups with homeless youth to determine what resources are really missing.

Still, she said SHW is looking to connect with more homeless and youth service providers to form a larger network.

"We know that 211 is an option and a way for youth to get into the system and say they need help, but they need other options as well, so we're trying to take an inventory of resources, " Bahodosingh said. "We need to have safe places they can come in. Most of the youth serving agencies serve the greater Fairfield County which is good because we understand adults and young people are traveling up and down the I-95 corridor."

Even though they're forming new partnerships to combat youth homelessness, Bahodosingh said they're not looking to recreate the wheel. The system in place has been effective for combatting adult homelessness, and in the most recent point in time count, the state has effectively ended veteran homelessness through coordinated access housing solutions.

"We're trying to create a system that will simplify it for young people," Bahodosingh said. "Coordinated access is nothing new. That's how our adult system works. We want to integrate them into a system that already works, with a few changes. For example we know that youth want a system that's responsive. Once you're connected with the appropriate resources, 211 isn't going to call you back and see how things went. Youth need that."

While there are many factors that could force a young person into homelessness, Bahodosingh said the issue is one that disproportionately affects LGBTQ youth, who are sometimes cut off from family resources after coming out. Nearly 30 percent of the homeless youth population identifies as LGBTQ, a national statistic that is mirrored in Fairfield County's homeless youth.

"There's a big LGBTQ population that are over represented," Bahodosingh said. "Particularly in street homelessness."

Norwalk-based Triangle Community Center is one organization providing resources to LGBTQ youth facing homelessness. Anthony Crisci, executive director at TCC, said the organization has co-sponsored a housing program with the Mid-Fairfield Aids Project to provide beds for homeless LGBTQ youth, and in 2015 TCC hired a full-time social worker and started a case management program. Last year, the program served 180 clients, 15 to 20 percent of whom Crisci estimates were housing insecure. He said TCC has also started working with area shelters and housing programs to educate them about working with transgender clients.

"It's a strong start because it's beyond what we had before which was nothing," Crisci said. "One of the biggest issues with LGBT homelessness is that a lot of shelters are not safe places for LGBT people, especiallytransgender people. We work to connect them to get them off the streets but the resources they need are often few and far between."

Following his stint at Open Door, Alicea went through the foster care system and was eventually adopted with his younger brother. After an unstable childhood, he knew he needed discipline and joined the Marines. He served from 2009-2013, and served in Afghanistan from September 2010 to May 2011.

Upon his return, he made the decision to go back to school, a daunting task for someone who's education had been constantly interrupted. While perseverance and a determination to never end up homeless again were contributing factors to his success, Alicea attributes a strong support system formed by mentors at Open Door, people he met through the foster care system and his adoptive family for his success.

"You need a support system," Alicea said. "It's how you get people out of the cycle. I still come back here (to Open Door) to visit the people who helped me."

That support system is exactly what Bahodosingh, Archer-Simons and the rest of Fairfield County's homeless and youth service providers are trying to provide.

"Everybody needs a family, whether that family is blood related or just a community making sure you get down the right path," Archer-Simons said.

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Information from: Connecticut Post, http://www.connpost.com

KAITLYN KRASSELT, The Connecticut Post

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The Gayly - 7/18/2016 @ 10:18 a.m. CDT