Supportive Housing for Trafficking Survivors Exiting Foster Care

Support for foster and systems-impacted youth

West LA

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

As youth age out of foster care, many become vulnerable to homelessness. Child welfare history and homelessness are independent and interdependent risk factors for sexual exploitation and trafficking. Having grown up in homes where gender-based violence was normalized, female youth aging out of foster care readily fall for the guise of a protective pimp. Individuals in the sex trade industry are ongoing targets of physical and sexual violence, resulting in physical and psychological health problems, high morbidity outcomes, and disproportionately high mortality rates. According to the FBI, the average lifespan once in the sex trade is just seven years; the top causes of premature death among prostituted persons include: homicide, suicide, substance-related problems, and HIV. Just last year, Resilience Rising lost two of our former residents at the young age of twenty-two. Supportive housing is truly a lifeline for young women who desperately “want to leave but have nowhere to go.”

Opened in 2024, Resilience Rising’s supportive housing in Santa Monica provides urgent, lifelong access to safe, stable, affordable housing for survivors. We prioritize safe shelter as the foundation upon which other needs and goals can be met.

Our supportive housing program prioritizes the urgent healthcare needs of residents, as years of foster care and housing instability often results in neglected health issues and inconsistent access to care. A gender-specific housing program enables focus on the particular needs of women, including trauma-informed care and access to full reproductive healthcare. We partner with Venice Family Clinic to meet these complex needs.

To meet the significant mental and behavioral health needs of foster youth and trafficking survivors, we engage residents in evidence-based interventions like dialectical behavior therapy and harm reduction recovery models like medication-assisted treatment. We complement standard treatment with unique therapeutic opportunities like surf therapy, goat yoga, and pottery painting.

We prioritize educational and vocational empowerment. We provide academic tutoring, laptops, and scholarships. We help residents obtain safe, legal employment in the community. We enhance adulting skills like grocery shopping, cooking, navigating systems, scheduling appointments, navigating transportation, financial literacy, and civic engagement.

We also provide legal advocacy and coordination with diversion and probation as needed.

Specialized residential programs give survivors the opportunity to get off the streets, exit the sex trade, leave an unsafe relationship, or reenter the community after incarceration. Our program empowers survivors at the micro level while simultaneously offering systemic change at the macro level through alternatives to homelessness and incarceration.

Our program emphasizes education as an invaluable tool of empowerment, ultimately leading to self-sufficiency and providing lifelong protective factors against homelessness and sexual exploitation.

Our ultimate aim is to disrupt generational cycles of sexual violence and exploitation. Of our youth, 43% became young mothers, 88% as a direct result of trafficking or gender-based violence. We aim to open a second home for survivors with children, providing additional supportive services: parenting education and coaching, the enhancement of protective parenting capacity, and free childcare to allow for vocational and educational pursuits.