To the editor: Guest contributor Margaret Olmos is right to applaud California’s historic investment in helping schools identify and support students experiencing homelessness (“California schools are on the frontlines of fighting homelessness. Now they have funding,” July 15). Educators are often the first to recognize when a family’s housing instability becomes visible, and those early connections matter. Working with the Orange County Department of Education and school districts, my organization has seen firsthand how schools and community partners can work together to identify and stabilize at-risk families early before a crisis becomes lifelong homelessness.
But if we truly want to change the trajectory for these children, we must also invest further upstream. By the time a student is identified as experiencing homelessness, the family has often exhausted every option to remain housed.
Many families are just one unexpected expense, rent increase or job loss away from losing their homes. Providing emergency financial assistance, housing stabilization and supportive services before families become homeless not only helps keep children housed, but also keeps them in their classrooms, connected to their teachers and on track academically.
California has demonstrated bold leadership by investing in students experiencing homelessness. The next step is ensuring more families never reach that point in the first place. Prevention and intervention are not competing priorities; they are complementary strategies that together can help break the cycle of homelessness for the next generation.
Christy Cornwall, Aliso Viejo
This writer is chief executive officer of Families Forward, a nonprofit addressing homelessness and housing insecurity in Orange County.