Agency staff work with youth to find safe alternatives for the night, such as staying with a friend or family member. In at least one case, when that wasn’t possible, a teenager had to be connected to a facility outside Sonoma County, Holmes said.
That rips young people from the community they know and their support networks, and deposits them among strangers, she said.
“Trauma on top of trauma,” as Twitchell put it.
VOICES staff have stepped up outreach efforts, she said. But without Coffee House, what happens next can be bleak.
“They’re hitting the streets more to build relationships with young people. But when they have to go pick up the kid at 1 a.m., I don’t know where they’re going to take them,” said Twitchell. “I mean, I do. They’re going to take them probably to San Francisco, but that’s horrible.”
Things that were tough even when SAY was in place have escalated in difficulty.
“Connecting young people to counseling, especially if the young person has Medi-Cal and or has special needs like they’re Spanish-speaking or need LGTBQIA-affirming providers, was extremely challenging before SAY’s closure,” Twitchell said. “Now it’s virtually impossible for those kids.”
Even for youth who landed in a safe harbor, the journey since SAY closed has been tough.
“I was just completely thrown off balance, and it took me a really long time to get back into a routine and to feel comfortable here, ” said Aaliyah Rodriguez, 19, who when SAY shut down had been living at the Dream Center for about nine months. She is now in long-term transitional housing provided by The Living Room.
In February, she still had more than a year to live at the Dream Center and stabilize her circumstances, Rodriguez said. Then she didn’t.
“It’s definitely been hard to feel safe somewhere and to feel stable,” she said. “I had this sort of plan, ‘I’m set, I’m secure, I’m going to have this place for this amount of time, and then I have to figure out what I’m going to do after that.’ It was like a goal I was trying to meet. And then it all just kind of got pulled away.”
Scrambling for funds
In the days after SAY was shuttered, Community Support Network, a Santa Rosa nonprofit, took over its Sponsor Based Rental Assistance program.
Funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, the program paid the rent for about 10 transition age youth to live independently; under the arrangement, SAY leased apartments and subleased them to the youth clients.
Quickly, Tom Bieri, executive director of Community Support Network, or CSN, learned the $327,000 from HUD didn’t cover the program’s actual costs because Sonoma County has higher average housing costs than were built into the contract. To cover the remaining six months in the contract, Bieri needed to raise about $110,000. Meanwhile, SAY checks had bounced for several of the apartments.
“The cost of rent CSN is paying right now is roughly $2,000 per person per month, almost double what HUD pays in the Sponsor Based Rental Assistance” contract, which is $1,030 a month for rental costs, said Bieri.
In what might be seen as an ironic twist, CSN did what SAY had done in its final days: turned to the community for assistance. In weeks, CSN secured $50,000 from Community Foundation Sonoma County; $30,000 from the family of late developer Ken Martin, who had also been major donors to SAY; and $25,000 from Providence Community Health Foundation. An $8,000 grant from the Sonoma County Vintners Foundation is pending, Bieri said.
“Thanks to the support of the community, the youth are doing well and taking positive steps in their lives. The community response to this situation was graceful and deeply appreciated,” Bieri said.
But looking ahead, he said, CSN will need to raise about $315,000 a year on top of the HUD grant in order to house 16 youth in their own apartments and provide them ongoing case management services.
“Housing by itself, without supporting services, will not result in positive outcomes,“ he said.
Positive lessons
That’s something officials at SHARE Sonoma County, which operates community living houses, echo. The nonprofit has taken in four transition age youth formerly living in SAY facilities.
Initially, said Amy Appleton, SHARE’s executive director, the youth were “extremely vulnerable.” While “it’s not easy,“ she said, with the help of intensive case management, they are now making great strides.
The nonprofit has also realized a benefit from placing younger people with the more typically older residents in its community houses, Appleton said.