YouthCare works to end youth homelessness by ensuring young people can find safety today to build a future for tomorrow. This passionate vision—where no young person experiences homelessness, all young people can thrive, and the systems that oppress them are dismantled—drives YouthCare every day. YouthCare operates at 15 sites across Seattle and serves over 1,500 young people every year through a comprehensive range of services including crisis response, basic needs and engagement, shelter and housing, education, and employment training. Over the past four decades, YouthCare has defined best practices, developed programs that drive innovation and set a national standard for excellence, ensuring that young people experiencing homelessness have the hope, skills, and self-confidence to achieve their dreams.
We are requesting support for critical case management services at YouthCare’s South Seattle Shelter in the Rainier Beach. Rainier Beach is home to BIPOC and immigrant populations which are disproportionately represented in young adult homelessness. YouthCare’s South Seattle Shelter was established to provide services for young people in proximity to their communities of support, improving their chances of gaining stability. The program is open 24 hours a day, year-round, offering overnight shelter, access to meals, showers, and a safe space to rely on during the day to help youth avoid exploitation and dangers of street-life. In compliment, Case managers develop critical trusted relationships with youth to address the impacts of homelessness and connect to medical and mental healthcare services, education and employment programming, and more to interrupt the cycle of homelessness.
About Low Income Housing Institute – Tiny House Village Project:
Homelessness is a serious problem facing our region. With far more unhoused people than available shelter space and affordable housing, thousands are on the streets, struggling just to survive. The Low Income Housing Institute’s (LIHI) Tiny House Villages provide innovative shelter for homeless individuals, families and their pets. Tiny Houses ensure that people’s experience in homelessness is safe, dignified and as brief as possible. They offer tremendous benefits over tents; they are weatherproof and lockable and allow residents to reclaim their confidence and get on a path to permanent housing in a supportive village environment. The communities provide stability and assistance that residents need to get back on their feet. Plus, Tiny House Villages work! As the preferred shelter type for people who are houseless, LIHI transitions people into permanent housing at a higher rate than any other program in King County.
LIHI has developed and operates villages throughout the region, including eight in Seattle with three new villages currently under construction. With a PYP grant of $128,520, the program could fund materials to build 30 Tiny Houses to serve King County’s unsheltered population and give hundreds of people hope for a more stable future.
The Center for Children & Youth Justice (CCYJ) creates better lives for generations of children and youth by reforming the child welfare and youth justice systems. CCYJ advocates on behalf of the 50,000 children and youth who experience our foster care and juvenile justice systems in Washington every year. These systems have become “feeders” to recurrent incarceration, sex trafficking, poverty, and chronic homelessness. Young people of color and LGBTQ+ youth are affected disproportionately by these broken systems. As the only statewide organization focused solely on reforming Washington’s child welfare and youth criminal legal systems, CCYJ works to ensure that the young people who must rely on these systems are served justly, effectively, and compassionately. We have strong partnerships with state agencies, direct-service providers, juvenile courts, advocacy groups, and more. CCYJ develops model programs, processes, and protocols that improve outcomes for all children.
If awarded, funds will be used to support CCYJ’s Leadership, Intervention, and Change (“LINC”) program. LINC functions as a collaborative effort to assist young people and families in reducing violence within their communities, improving safety, and fulfilling their goals to be thriving members of the community.
