BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — Leslie Olivarez experienced homelessness as a foster youth. Now, eight months pregnant, she’s fighting to keep from experiencing it again.
“I’ve spent most of my life on my own, I just want to be stable and happy,” Olivarez said. “As a mom, you want the best for your baby, and you want somewhere to call home.”
With a December due date approaching, the 31-year-old says she is running out of time and running out of options. Olivarez has faced homelessness before, and after aging out of foster youth benefits at 21, she says she has struggled to find resources to help.
For years, she says, she had her grandparents to turn to. Now they have been evicted, and Olivarez has nowhere to go.
She told me she waited eight years for her Section 8 housing application to be processed. She says she was finally approved, only to face more delays in actually using those benefits.
“What are the next steps from here?” Olivarez asked.
Janessa Fisher — a former foster youth and now works for the Dream Center, a resource center for foster youth facing homelessness — says 30 to 40 percent of foster youth experience homelessness.
“Lacking that support system. The system that can catch you when you fall, you don’t have that system,” Fisher said.
That, she says, is the purpose of Homeless Youth Awareness Month.
“That’s what homeless youth awareness is really about, it’s making sure that those youth that are on the verge of being an adult, that they get found when they are youth,” Fisher said.
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