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2025 Grants Challenge

Pathway to Permanency

Much more than providing safety and shelter to unhoused youth, Youth Emerging Stronger creates a Pathway to Permanency that recognizes the importance of individualized support. We celebrate each youth’s desire and right to plan for their positive futures, and we help them develop the skills, the mindsets, and the networks that will make their goals a reality. By ensuring they do not return to homelessness as adults, we reduce the number of unhoused in Los Angeles, thereby serving the entire community.

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What is the primary issue area that your application will impact?

Affordable housing and homelessness

In which areas of Los Angeles will you be directly working?

County of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a countywide benefit)

In what stage of innovation is this project, program, or initiative?

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

What is your understanding of the issue that you are seeking to address?

Homelessness in Los Angeles impacts not only the unhoused individuals who wrestle with survival on a daily basis, but our entire community. Two primary issues continue to drive that crisis: the lack of affordable housing and a critical shortage of comprehensive supportive services. YES recognizes that, unlike their adult counterparts in the unhoused population, youth who are homeless do not arrive at that status with long histories of instability. And while their histories might reflect risk factors, like poverty, that have spanned generations, their futures do not have to be defined by persistent challenges. Rather, they can begin to establish their economic stability today, and so their hope for the future – to attain and maintain adult self-sufficiency – should be recognized as realistic.

Describe the project, program, or initiative this grant will support to address the issue.

YES’s Pathway to Permanency spans five years and comprises our Residential Program (1-2 yrs.) and then our Staying Strong Program (3-4 yrs.). Based on youth’s individual aspirations, we encourage either an education or employment focus, and then we support that choice. For youth on the education track, we introduce higher education options and help them negotiate application and financial aid processes. For those on the employment track, we encourage opportunities that reflect skills and interests. We help them develop compelling resumes and strong interview skills; we provide experiential opportunities through paid internships; and we introduce them to vocational programs and apprenticeships in the community so that they can pursue the best on-the-job training options.

Our direct services – which also include mental health counseling, life skills training, and opportunities for peer support – do not end when a youth transitions from YES into community housing. Our Staying Strong Program guarantees each youth’s continued access to their wraparound team. We recognize that while the public safety net provides clear points of entry, there is little support at the time of exit. By providing programs and services as well as linkages to vetted community resources for at least five years from the time of intake, we are expanding the safety net for the youth we serve and increasing the likelihood that they will remain self-sufficient as they negotiate the challenges of adulthood.

Describe how Los Angeles County will be different if your work is successful.

Every currently unhoused youth who does not later experience adult homelessness represents a better future for Los Angeles, and YES’s intended impact is to reduce homeless recidivism, one youth at a time. Our approach is individualized, and our effectiveness is witnessed in individual growth and ultimate self-sufficiency. For the youth who benefit from our 5-year Pathway to Permanency, the short-term impact will be a positive sense of the future as they work with their case management team to address mental health issues, identify and realize educational and employment goals, and learn and practice the types of life skills that result in everyday independence and self-sufficiency. In the long term, those immediate impacts will lead to fulfilling lives free of crisis and sustained by individuals and resources that support realistic goals. By serving every youth for at least five years, YES’s unique programming expands by design.

Approximately how many people will be impacted by this project, program, or initiative?

Direct Impact: 325

Indirect Impact: 1,200