Foster Youth Housing Finance Project

Affordable housing and homelessness

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative (testing or implementing a new idea)

Extreme inelasticity in Los Angeles County’s housing market is a well-documented contributor to homelessness. According to the 2022 Los Angeles County Homelessness point-in-time count data, of the total unsheltered population, roughly 35 percent experienced the child welfare or juvenile justice systems. The County has the largest locally administered child welfare system in the world, impacting over 22,000 youth and families annually. Every year, roughly 1,000 Los Angeles County youth will exit the foster care system without permanent connections to adults, of which a stunning 86% are Black or Latino.
Despite public policy interventions for these young adults, stigma amongst private landlords and runaway housing prices have led to disproportionately high rates of housing precarity and homelessness amongst the population. Research finds that one quarter of youth, ages 21-23, have experienced homelessness, with an additional 28% reported having couch surfed.

The project is built on the thesis that it is possible to leverage philanthropy’s unique financial instruments (grants, program related investments, endowment allocations and loan guarantees) to develop and acquire youth housing at scale. This thesis was validated in May 2023, when Genesis LA, a local community development financial institution, released a report detailing how these instruments can be used to privately finance transitional housing for youth. Since release of the report, the Project has worked in concert with local philanthropy, nonprofit service providers and youth to design a cogent strategy. This grant will support continued efforts to streamline public support for young adult, identify and work with nonprofit service providers, and broadly communicate the opportunity to change the current reality facing youth in and exiting foster care.
The project will culminate in the launch of a $250 million real estate investment fund to solve the foster care to homeless pipeline.

Staunching homelessness simultaneously requires expanding the existing housing stock and eliminating the inflow of people onto the streets. Foster youth are disproportionately likely to find themselves on those very streets, for no fault of their own. This project is working towards stopping this inflow by contributing to our collective fight against homelessness writ large. To get there, we are actively working with nonprofit transitional housing providers. The majority of which are not property owners, but renters. Our strategy puts these providers on a path to ownership, permanently setting aside units for youth and allowing providers the freedom to focus on delivering high quality services.
We envision a county where every transition-aged foster youth experiences safe and stable housing, affording them the chance to thrive. And we envision an L.A. that provides a blueprint for preventing homelessness and uplifting youth that can be replicated across the country.

Good River is working with an experienced affordable housing investment fund manager to launch a private equity fund to provide housing and supportive services to current and former foster youth. While currently in its pre-offering stages, the ultimate Fund and strategy will launch in 2025 and begin acquiring housing for young adults exiting care. Once operational, Good River will measure and evaluate youth outcomes related to education and workforce attainment, exits to permanent housing, and youth perspectives related to self-sufficiency and permanent stable connections. Success will be defined not only by the number of units earmarked for youth, but also by the young person’s ability to achieve independence during and after their participation in the program. We plan to work with an external evaluator to measure social impact outcomes of the project.